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A Rare Occasion – “Entrecôte Saignant, Avec Salade Verte À La Française” (Rare Strip Steak With French Style Green Salad)
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Usually, I don´t fancy my red meat cooked rare. Medium rare is more to my liking.
However, today I woke up with a craving for a rare steak. This craving stayed with me until noon, and when it was time to prepare lunch, I decided to give-in and have a rare steak. To my dismay, there was no steak in the fridge, so I had to walk to my neighborhood butcher to get the fine steak pictured here. Its only a 10 minute walk each way, so normally that´s not a problem, but the longer I had to wait to dig in, the bigger the craving grew 🙂
Since the steak was big enough, I thought the only side I needed was a green salad, so that was it. A few slices of bread below the steak to soak up the juices and there it was – the perfect solution to satisfy my hours-long craving 🙂
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As for the salad – “Salade Verte À La Française” sounds rather fancy, but it is really just a green salad with a dijon/garlic dressing. This is the classic French salad, the one that invariably appeared whenever you wandered into a bistro and ordered une salade. It consists simply of lettuce and dressing – no cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes or other embellishments. It doesn’t need them. For it is perfection in its simplicity – light and packed with flavor. The lettuce most often used in France is what Americans call Boston lettuce, and what the French call simply salade . Another favorite is escarole (Scarole in French). Rarely were other types of lettuce used in the old days, but now one may encounter innovations like feuille de chêne, literally oak-leaf, a variety of lettuce with scalloped leaves. As for the dressing, in previous times salade verte was almost always served with vinaigrette à la moutarde – a vinaigrette of Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, sunflower or peanut oil, salt, pepper and shallot or garlic. In Paris, at least. In southern France, olive oil was used, sometimes with lemon instead of vinegar. Now there are variations throughout the country, with balsamic vinegar and other upstarts making an occasional appearance.
The tragedy today is that it’s next to impossible to find a classic salade verte in a French bistro, much less anywhere else in the restaurant World. The lettuce may be the same, but bottled dressings have largely replaced the homemade vinaigrettes that gave this salad such distinction. The newfangled sauce is runny, white and – perish the thought – can be sweet.
(Part of this description of french salad is an excerpt from “The Everyday French Chef”)
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Bon Appétit ! Life is Good !
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A Rare Occasion – “Entrecôte Saignant, Avec Salade Verte À La Française” (Rare Strip Steak With French Style Green Salad)
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A Rare Occasion – “Entrecôte Saignant, Avec Salade Verte À La Française” (Rare Strip Steak With French Style Green Salad)
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A Rare Occasion – “Entrecôte Saignant, Avec Salade Verte À La Française” (Rare Strip Steak With French Style Green Salad)
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Salade verte à la française
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grilled sour dough bread
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Preparation :
To read instructions, hover over pictures
To enlarge pictures and read instructions, click on pictures
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- New York Strip Steak, size of your choice (this one was 30 oz) season with kosher salt to taste
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- since the steak is fairly thick, grill on all four sides
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- trim, wash and dry a small head of butter lettuce, add 1 tsp dijon mustard, a pinch of garlic paste,kosher salt, red wine vinegar and pepper to taste, 2 tblsp EVO, 1/2 small, finely julienned onion, 1 2 tblsp of chopped herbs (I used chives and parsley), whisk the dressing until emulsified before adding to the salad
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- cook the steak to your desired doneness, remove to a warm plate, let the meat rest for at least 5 minutes before slicing
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- meanwhile, grill some bread of your choice (I used sour dough)
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- grilled sour dough bread
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- top the bread with the just sliced steak, sprinkle with sea salt
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- Salade verte à la française
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- A Rare Occasion – “Entrecôte Saignant, Avec Salade Verte À La Française” (Rare Strip Steak With French Style Green Salad)
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- A Rare Occasion – “Entrecôte Saignant, Avec Salade Verte À La Française” (Rare Strip Steak With French Style Green Salad)
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- A Rare Occasion – “Entrecôte Saignant, Avec Salade Verte À La Française” (Rare Strip Steak With French Style Green Salad)
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- A Rare Occasion – “Entrecôte Saignant, Avec Salade Verte À La Française” (Rare Strip Steak With French Style Green Salad)
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ChefsOpinion 
Rare must taste good to some or it wouldn’t be all the rage, but for me, I need a little more heat put to the meat first. No blood.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Annely,
My own preference is almost always med-rare for red meat.
But then, never say never 😉
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P.S.
It is really more about the texture than the taste
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Cheers !
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