When the opportunity for a fresh farm shop steak came up this Saturday morning, there was almost no doubt what our dinner plans was going to be. It was a bit of a cobbled ‘mon-coction’ (e.g. mon’s food concotion) which sometimes turns out well, sometimes turns out disastrous. This one turned out well. All those cooking programmes must be slowly filtering into something useful in my brain.

For sides, we decided on a carmelised red onions, peas and potato wedges, which despite being the first time we attempted home made oven baked wedges, turned out spicy and lovely. The wedges are a definite contender to just mash, which is easy but a bit boring in terms of texture. Wash and cut up the potatoes, parboil for about 4-5 mins depending on the size. Stick into a bowl or plastic ziplock with paprika, salt, pepper, whatever seasoning you want – mix then stick into a hot oven at 200 degrees for 30 minutes.

The sirloin steak was fried for about 4 mins on both sides with just salt and pepper to season. No oil, no butter. When the steak was cooked, they rested on some warm plates while we deglazed the pan with butter, peppercorns and red wine. Since this inspired idea was a spur of the moment decision, we decided instead of cream (which we didn’t have in) to add a tiny bit of milk to the mixture to make it more of a sauce. This was poured over the steak, the sides served up and the result was a fantastic Saturday night dinner.

There’s no doubt that sweet sides (or sauce, e.g. meat and a berry sauce) work well together, and this was really brought out in the awesome sweet peas and caramelised red onions. A quick tip from my mum was to always add a pinch of chilli powder to rice to bring out the flavour of other foods – as a sesoned chilli eater, this was certainly appreciated in the mild paprika flavour of the potato wedges which matched nicely with the peppery steak sauce and sweet side dishes.