Winter Steak Salad

I’m not going to deny it.  I love beef. But times, as they say, have changed.  I try to go meatless more.  But there’s this primal desire for Beef.  I wondered how I could put a healthy spin on a Steak dinner and voilà, I found a recipe for a Winter Steak Salad.

Butter lettuce covers the plate and is then topped with dried cranberries, salted pecans, wedges of Gala apple. A Balsamic Salad Dressing adds another layer of flavor.  Then for a creamy complement, honeyed goat cheese is crumbled on the plate.  And finally sliced beef is added and the salad is served.  And the topper here? The entire dish came together in the very few minutes it took to cook and rest the steak!  Eureka! Now you can have a steak dinner on a whim any day of the week.

My discovery came from a recipe I found from Laura’s Lean Beef. Laura Freeman took over her family farm over thirty years ago, just as the country began to question whether beef was too high in fat and cholesterol. She was determined to ‘continue to eat beef in good conscience”. She was ahead of the curve in raising lean beef that was free from antibiotics and growth hormones.  And she developed a treasure trove of healthy beef recipes. Scroll down the page for the link…

My beef came from White Gold Butchers, a relatively new Butcher with a store at 375 Amsterdam Avenue at 78^th St. on the Upper West Side. Three women are the backbone of this snout to tail butcher.  The ringleader is April Bloomfield, an Englishwoman who is best known for having a Michelin Star for each of her restaurants, The Spotted Pig and The Breslin Bar and Dining Room.  She was joined at White Gold by Erika Nakamura and Jocelyn Guest.  The front of the shop holds a 38 seat restaurant, a very casual eatery most famous for its Chopped Cheese Sandwich which created a whole hullabaloo which I covered extensively.  Scroll down for that link too.

In the interest of full disclosure, I had an appointment very close to White Gold and any excuse to go there and order a Chopped Cheese is a personal mandate.  Yes, the day I made Winter Steak Salad was also the day I ate a Chopped Cheese too.   And it was there that I discovered a new (to us) cut of meat called a Coulotte steak.   You remember coulottes?  They were a kind of woman’s short that looked like a skirt.  This of no help when I tell you that the Coulotte steak takes its name from the French word Calotte, which means ‘cap’.  The steak is cut from the cap of the top sirloin.  Mine was beautifully marbled and priced much lower than New York Strip…at $18.00 a pound.

Here’s the recipe for 2 servings.  You can easily double it.

Winter Steak Salad

October 29, 2017

Servings: 2

Difficulty: Easy Peasy

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A great take on Steak! This Winter Salad takes the guilt out of a great steak dinner

By: Monte Mathews

Ingredients

• 1 lb. Coulotte Steak or New York Strip
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• ¼ tsp Kosher salt
• 1 Head of Butter Lettuce
• 1 Gala apple
• 3 tablespoons dried cranberries
• 3 tablespoons crumbled honey goat cheese
• 3 tablespoons salted pecans
• 3-4 tablespoons Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing, or your preference

Directions

• Step 1 1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
• Step 2 2. Trim any excess fat from the meat.
• Step 3 3. Place a cast iron skillet on the stove. Allow the pan to heat on high and then place your steak in the pan. Sprinkle your steak generously with kosher salt and pepper and then sear the meat on both sides.
• Step 4 4. Once the steak is seared on both sides, place the entire pan into the oven and let it continue to cook while you prepare the plated salad.
• Step 5
• Step 6 5. While the steak is cooking, prepare your salad by plating the lettuce, cutting the apple into wedges and top the lettuce with them. Add the dried cranberries and the pecans. Dress the salad with the balsamic.
• Step 7 6. Remove the steak from the oven and allow to sit for 5 minutes or longer to cool down if desired.
• Step 8 7. Cut the steak across the grain and serve on top of the salad. Serve.

To read more about April Bloomfield and Chopped Cheese, here are some links on Chewing The Fat.

http://chewingthefat.us.com/2012/04/visit-to-april-bloomfields-spotted-pig.html

http://chewingthefat.us.com/2010/04/visit-to-april-bloomfields-breslin-and.html

http://chewingthefat.us.com/2011/02/april-bloomfields-incredible-edible.html

http://chewingthefat.us.com/2017/06/to-add-to-your-summer-burger-repertoire.html

For more of Laura’s Lean Beef recipes, go to https://www.laurasleanbeef.com/recipes