Sirloin in asparagus sauce and caramelized onions

17.Apr.2020

This is a recipe for those of you who want to spoil yourself with an elegant lunch.

Meat, vegetables, some fruit…why not?

Easy PREPARE

2 PORTIONS

components

500 gr of asparagus
500 gr of potatoes
4-5 shallot onions
1 carrot
1/2 Granny Smith apples
3-4 radishes
1 lemons
salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar
1/4 teaspoons of powdered ginger or 1/8 teaspoons of fresh grated ginger
olive oil
50-60 gr of butter
1 sirloin

Instruction

Wash, clean and peel off the vegetables.
Cut into cubes the carrot and Granny Smith apple , brunoise. Cut radishes with a mandolin into thin leaves. Cut the onion into halves by length and sprinkle with sugar on the inner side.
Make a marinade from lemon juice, ginger, a bit of salt and white pepper for the carrot, apple and radishes which have to be put in it.
Cut the asparagus into pieces and blanch in boiling water until it softens. After that, put it in cold water so that it preserves its colour. Once it cools down, put the tips aside and use them to decorate the plate, and blend the rest of the asparagus into a puree. The texture should be like the Greek yogurt, if your blender can do it.
Then, heat up the asparagus puree before serving in a pot with a bit of olive oil, just so a bit of liquid evaporates for 2-3 minutes. Take it off the burner and mix in with a cube of cold butter. Stir off the burner until the butter melts. Do not put back on the burner.
Prepare the butter at the same time as the asparagus, but in a separate bowl.
Put the cleaned potato in cold water and let it boil. Once it is boiled, cook for another 1-2 minutes depending on the size of the cube. After that, strain and carefully dry with a napkin.
Bake the potato in a heated oiled pan on every side until it reddens. Check if it's baked with a toothpick.
After baking, and before serving, put the asparagus tips and potato in a pan coated in butter so that they get shinier.
Once everything is ready, you can serve it 🙂 Decorate it to your taste.

Sometimes the simplest dish hides in a photo of the most unusual dish. When you saw the photo, you probably thought: „This must be something complicated.“

The only complicated thing is that I spent more time on presenting the ingredients.

Meat in a sauce doesn’t sound so special, but let me dissuade you with this type of preparation and presentation.

Ingredients for meat in sauce

You need:

Meat – sirloin, green asparagus, shallot onion, potato, radish, a wonderful Granny Smith apple (sour apple), a bit of ginger, lemon juice, salt, white pepper…and love, always.

Part of the necessary ingredients

Meat in a sauce

The meat I chose was Faux fillet (according to French Beef Cut rules). This piece of meat is the most similar to sirloin, but it is not really the same. So, if you buy sirloin, that is more than fine. But, to be fair, you can actually buy any type of meat. If you haven’t tried grilled sirloin yet, this is the time to do it. When you pick meat in a supermarket or at the butcher’s be sure to pick the one that has the MOST fatty fibers.

I know you’ll say it’s hardest to find, but if you have a friend who happens to be a butcher, this will not be a problem.

Why so much fat?

Simply because the meat is softer once grilled. It literally melts in your mouth. And I guarantee you, one bite will not be enough 🙂

The meat in this recipe is baked at the very end. It’s best to use thermometer, if you want to have perfectly baked meat. Medium rare is between 52-55°C, anything under is bloodier, and everything above is well roasted.

On each side for 3 minutes

The best option is medium rare. There is no reason why you should buy an expensive piece of meat and then over-bake it. For chefs, this is violation 🙂

I baked it for about 3 minutes on each side in a very heated pan.

Asparagus

Always read the recipe first, and then organize yourself, prepare all the ingredients, and finally start working. If you manage to organize yourself so that you can do two things at the same time, your lunch will be very quickly prepared.

And now…

First, we prepare the asparagus.

It should be cleaned and blanched. Blanch it so that you put it in a boiled water for about 2-3 minutes.

Take it out of the boiling water and shock it with ice-cold water. We do this in order to preserve the green colour of the asparagus. It’s best to put it in a separate bowl with cold water and ice and let it be for a bit.

Cut the tips and leave them aside, cause we will not blend them into a puree. We will use them as an additional asparagus texture on our plate (see my pictures). You will just butter them up a bit on a heated burner along with the potato, so that they become a bit shinier. Salt and white pepper are always welcome.

Put the rest of the asparagus in a blender and mix it up until the last lump, so that it becomes like a pudding (if you have a blender that can make it happen).

Heat up a bit of olive oil in a pot, put in the asparagus puree and let it stew (2-3 minutes). At the end, once you take it off the burner, add a small cube of cold butter and stir until it melts (do not put it back on the burner).

Potato

You can make potato along with the asparagus…

Wash, peel and cut into medium size chunks. Put the potato in cold water until it boils. Once it boils, leave it to cook for another 1-2 minutes, and then take it out and dry it with a napkin.

Add a bit of olive oil in a pan, add the dried potatoes and bake them until they redden on each side. You can check if they are baked enough with a toothpick (if the toothpick stops in the middle, they are not baked). At the end, add some butter, or even better clarified butter for the shine. Salt them and they are ready for serving. I suggest you make as many of these potatoes as possible, because they will certainly be in high demand. Don’t make me say „I told you so“ later 🙂

Caramelized onions

Clean the shallot onion, cut in half by length and bake on the inner side on a teflon pan with a bit of water (in order for it to bake, the water should evaporate, of course). You can add some sugar on that side, before you put it on the pan.

Pickels

This is a popular word for a vinegar based marinade these days, that is, ingredients that can conserve food for longer periods.

In my case, pickles is made out of 1/2 lemon, ginger, salt, white pepper and olive oil juice. I put in it radishes thinly cut on a mandolin, carrots and Granny Smith apple cubes.

Once I prepared all of this, I started arranging it on a plate. You can do it like me, or you can decorate it to your taste, and share it with me, of course.

Isn’t it so simple? And yet so different 🙂