Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

Sings tunelessly ♪ ♫ "Chim chim-eny, chim chim-eny, chimichurri"♪ ♫ 

I really only chose today's recipe just so I could include a reference to my favourite film ever.  Mary Poppins for the uninitiated.  I have watched it approximately eleventy-million and one times in my life.  I know it word-perfect.  I want to be Julie Andrews in that dress when they jump into the chalk picture. Still.  

More sauce than steak

If Sir Jimmy Savile (RIP) was to pop up and ask me to name my price, I would without a doubt eschew the chance to have enough plastic surgery to deal with my wobbly belly, wobbly thighs, squirrel flaps and sagging boobs; a massive lottery win (although that would also deliver the Poppins-dream); and the chance to snog any of my guilty crushes (although there is one I'd possibly pick over the Poppins-dream) in order to wear that dress and dance with Dick van Dyke (as he was then, not as he is now).

Last week I had a bit of a win on the dinner front in that I managed to get both Miss A and the husband eating steak.  So Thursday's was declared as steak night and with that in mind, I decided to whip up some chimichurri sauce after reading all about it on Tonight's Menu during the Olympic Food Challenge.  And it gave me an excuse to open the blog with the Chimichurri pun.  

It's dead simple - a lot of parsley, a pile of garlic, some onion, lemon juice, olive oil, red wine vinegar and salt and chilli flakes.  Mix it up, dollop onto steak.  Perfect for a Thursday night tea.  And my colleagues will be eternally grateful that I'm working from home tomorrow because boy, did the raw garlic have a kick to it.  Although I'm wondering if all the parsley negated that? 

It made the steak more enjoyable than my usual staple when I'm dieting which is just simply pan fried with salt and pepper.  Although it had oil in it, the green bits at least made me feel I was being a bit healthy.  And having chosen a portion of angel hair pasta on the side, it became clear that the spare sauce would make a good raw pesto.

I chopped all my ingredients by hand because I couldn't be faffed with cleaning out the food processor. Looking at different recipes, they mostly agree on the basic recipe for the sauce with variations on the herbs but some advocate the herbs being hand chopped and the garlic and onion only going in the food processor while others process the lot.

Whatever.  If you have really fresh parsley - I had a mahoosive bunch from the Morrisons Market then it's definitely worth a make.

And it means I get to post the Argentinian flag on my blog tonight.  Huzzah!

Even better, I've volunteered to help complete the sweep up for the Olympic Food Challenge during the Paralympics so watch out for more foreign dishes (and flags!) heading to this blog shortly.  Happy days!

Argentina - previously colonised by Ewan from Tonight's Menu