Look what my Peruvian cooked me for dinner tonight:

I am a lucky girl :)

As far as a mid-week meal goes, it was pretty fantastic! In fact, this is something that I would be more than happy serving for a small dinner party (4-6 people) as I am certain it will go down a treat (well, as long as they are not vegetarian that is…)

C found the recipe is this months Men’s Health issue – I have to say, they tend to have really good recipes. I got the pork udon soup from them as well which has turned out to be another mid-week favourite which I can highly recommend.

When we were playing around with things to make for dinner tonight, this popped to mind and I am really glad it did. We had some sweet potato and asparagus that needed to be used up and this provided the perfect excuse. Now I’m a big gravy fan and I have a real weakness for the traditional brown creamy gravy that you get in Europe (my Morfar made the best gravy in the world) I love it so much, I have absolutely no qualms about eating it by the spoonful straight out of the pan (and I wondered why I was such a fatty growing up!!) But I have to admit this wine based one was excellent (and half the calories I would imagine!)

Seared Sirlion with Red-Wine Mushroom Sauce – 4 servings

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 6 170g steaks (trimmed sirlion or petite filets)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 shallots, minced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 250g white mushrooms
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 cup low-sodium beef stock
• 2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C

Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skillet on high. Season the steaks with salt and plenty of black pepper and add them to the hot pan. Sear for 3 to 4 minutes until a deep brown crust develops on one side. The flip the steaks over.

Place the skillet in the oven to finish cooking (6 to 8 minutes for medium rare).

Remove the pan from the oven and transfer to the steaks to the cutting board to rest.

How to make the Sauce

Place the skillet back on the stove over medium heat. Add the shallots, garlic and mushrooms. Cook until mushrooms begin to caramelize, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the red wine and stock scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.

Cook until the liquid has reduced by about half, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the rosemary.

Divide steaks among four plats top with mushrooms and spoon sauce.

For the steaks, we both found ours more on the well-done side rather than medium (I actually prefer my steak rare so this was way over cooked for me) so next time, I would decrease the time in the pan and oven probably by a minute. Also I have to admit, that although we only made 2 steaks, we made the same amount of gravy and finished it….it was that good :)