Filet mignon and crunchy chickpea salad

Filet mignon and crunchy chickpea salad

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve cooked a steak. I picked up some eye filet steak this morning, thinking that I would cook it sous vide and have enough beef leftover for lunch meat during the week.

I wanted something crunchy like croutons for the salad, but rather than fried or toasted bread; I went with a crunchy chickpea salad. I got the idea from Bon Appétit.

Ingredients

• Eye filet steak
• Iodised salt
• Black peppercorns
• Chickpeas (tinned) for crunchy chickpeas
• Olive oil
• Lettuce
• Fennel
• Red onion
• Cucumber
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cracker Barrell Maple-infused cheddar cheese with toffee bites

Instructions

Steak

1. Unwrap the steaks and tie them with cooking string to create steak rounds. Tieing the meat isn’t necessary, but it keeps the muscle bundle together and helps when searing the steak at the end.
2. Season the steak rounds with a liberal amount of iodised salt.
3. Vacuum pack the steaks and refrigerate for a few hours to permit the salt to penetrate the muscle.
4. Heat the water in the water bath to 55 °C and then cook the meat at that temperature for two hours.
5. At the end of the cooking time, remove the steak from the plastic bag and pat it dry with kitchen paper.
6. Grind some pepper and salt in a mortar with a pestle. Grind enough so you can make a thick coating of pepper on the steak.
7. Heat a cast-iron skillet to smoking hot.
8. Add some high vapour point oil to the skillet and allow the oil to spread across the hot surface.
9. Sear the steak using tongs to ensure all surfaces form a nice crust.
10. While searing the steak, add in some butter and spoon melted butter over the steak.
11. Allow the steak to rest for about 10 minutes before slicing it open with a sharp knife.

Crunchy Chickpea Salad

1. Heat some olive oil over low heat in a non-stick skillet.
2. Toss in some drained and rinsed chickpeas and sautée until the chickpeas become crunchy.
3. Allow the crunchy chickpeas to cool on kitchen paper which will absorb the excess oil.
4. Cut the vegetables for the salad and the cheese, and put them into a salad bowl.
5. Season with some salt.
6. Add in a good glug of extra virgin olive oil.
7. Add in the crunchy chickpeas, which are now like croutons and toss your salad. Do not look up “tossed salad” in the urban dictionary.

Plating up

1. Plate the salad onto the dinner plate.
2. Dissect the steak round by cutting it in half to create two semi-circles of meat.
3. Slice one half into thin slices and lay them out on the plate.
4. Spoon the burnt butter from the cast-iron skillet over the cut surface of the steak.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Final thoughts

This dish was a nice simple steak meal with a heap of good mouthfeel.

• Do you like steak and salad?
• Do you like crunchy chickpeas?