Marinated skirt steak on a fresh roots salad and crispy matchstick fries

by Regula Ysewijn
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2
45 minutes

Ingredients

Marinated skirt steak

  • 600g of beef skirt
  • 3 tbsp of olive oil
  • 2 tbsp of honey
  • 1 tbsp of white wine vinegar
  • 1 garlic clove, crushed
  • 1/2 tsp pepper

Fresh root salad

  • 3 carrots, multi-coloured or plain
  • 1 beetroot, red or yellow
  • parsley
  • 1 tsp apple vinegar
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp of natural yoghurt
  • salt
  • pepper

Matchstick fries

  • 3 potatoes, floury
  • oil, for deep frying

Method

1
First make the marinade, as the meat needs to rest in it for at least 2 hours (preferably overnight)
2
Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl and set aside. Place the meat in a heavy duty freezer bag and pound it with the back of a pan or a meat mallet if you have one. Don’t bash it too hard, just flatten it out a little so it is about 1cm thick
3
Now pour the marinade into the bag. Massage the meat with it, close-up the bag and chuck it into the fridge to rest
4
Heat your oven on low to warm 3 plates – 2 for serving and 1 to rest the meat
5
For the root salad, use a food processor or mandoline (careful!) to finely grate the carrots and beets. Chop the parsley finely and mix in with the roots. Make a dressing by mixing together a little apple vinegar, olive oil, yoghurt, salt and pepper. Toss the dressing with the roots
6
If you used more vegetables you might need to double the amount of dressing. Cover the salad and place in the fridge until needed, or serve at once
7
For the matchstick fries, use a mandoline to carefully cut matchsticks from the floury potatoes. You could also cut them by hand if you like, 3–4mm is the size to go for. Pour enough olive oil into a wok or deep pan to cover the bottom generously so fries are kept drowned at all times during frying
8
Test the heat of the oil by carefully putting in 1 fry, if it starts to sizzle immediately then your oil is ready. You could use a deep-fryer too of course but I tend to let it sit in the basement to gather dust
9
Batch fry the fries and put them on kitchen paper to absorb the oil
10
While batch frying – don’t forget to heat your plates – let a heavy grill pan become scorching hot to fry the meat. Remove the meat from the bag and remove the excess marinade (leave a little on – there's no need to dry it completely)
11
Place the meat in the pan and let it fry until it comes away from the pan, which means that side is done. Turn and do the same on the other side. Now add plenty of butter, and when I say plenty I mean a lot. While it melts use a spoon to splash butter over the meat, this is to keep it moist. Don’t fry for too long as it needs to be medium rare
12
Take it out of the pan and leave it to rest on one of the warm plates while you finish off frying your matchstick fried. You might need to heat up your first batch at the end
13
When your meat has rested, this takes about 5 minutes, cut into thin slices of about 1cm wide and serve with the roots salad and matchstick fries. A good way to see if your meat has rested enough is to cut into it – if the juices flow out, rest it some more
14
The meat will have a beautiful red wine colour on the inside, and the colours with the root salad will be very pretty. Maybe you have some homemade mayo as well? Then use it!