Chip crusted eye fillet steak with mustard potato mash.

Do you like crunchy textures in your mouth? When it comes to steak, most people want a tender bite and beefy flavour. Mum used to make crumbed steak when I was a young fella. It was so good that I would spit on the spare one which Mum always cooked, so my two younger brothers wouldn’t want it. Yes, I was a very naughty boy. Some might say, I still am! 😉

Ingredients

• Eye fillet steak
• Rock salt (in a grinder)
• Whole black peppercorns (in a grinder)
• Red Rock Deli Lime & Black Pepper potato chips (1 bag, crushed with a food processor)
• Dijonnaise mustard
• Birds Eye potato mash (with butter)
• Wholegrain mustard

Instructions

Steak

1. Go to the supermarket and look for the cheapest eye fillet you can find. There’s no point going for a super expensive steak because this meat will be cooked under a vacuum in a water bath (sous vide).
2. When you get home, and after you’ve made an excellent strong (Atlas blend) coffee in caffettiera, season your meat with liberal quantities of freshly ground rock salt (iodised, of course) and black peppercorns.
3. Seal your meat in a vacuum bag and refrigerate and go about your day. For example, I went for a lovely walk around Lake Ginninderra and admired God’s wonder in the beautiful autumn leaves.
4. When you’re ready to think about dinner seriously, heat a water bath to 54 °C and put the steak into the water bath and cook for about 2 hours and 10 minutes.
5. After cooking, remove your perfectly cooked meat from the water bath, open the bag, and dry your meat with absorbent kitchen paper.
6. Sear your meat in a cast-iron skillet or use a torch. Avoid basting with butter (yea, I know this sounds heretical for regular readers who know my unparalleled devotion to butter, but there is a purpose to my madness). You want the seared surface to be relatively dry.
7. With a kitchen brush (yeah, not a bathroom brush), apply a coat of dijonnaise mustard to the outer surfaces of your meat. Then dab your sticky beef into a bowl of crushed potato chips.
8. Set aside or, if you prefer, sequester your meat to somewhere warm and moist but not too humid. You don’t want the chips to get too soggy quickly. 

Potato mash

1. Remove the package from the freezer.
2. Note the instructions to cook using microwave radiation for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Also, note the microwave radiation oven doesn’t have a functioning 1 or 2 button, so do some mental arithmetic to calculate a two-step cooking process. Make a note to buy a new microwave radiation oven, given this one is nearly 14 years old. 
3. When you have ceased to irradiate the potato mash, allow the package to stand for one minute.
4. Open the packet and transfer the potato mash to a warm bowl. Stir through a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard for an added bit of flair!

Plating up

1. Transfer the mustard-flavoured potato mash to a warmed dinner plate.
2. Place the potato chip crusted steak atop the potato mash.
3. Serve with green vegetables.

Final thoughts

It’s not a meal to write home about, but it will do.

If you live alone, you can make a slightly pretentious and fancy meal out of steak and potato. Please give it a go and let me know what you think.

You don’t need to cook sous vide either. Eye fillet pan-fries very well and will be tender.

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