Steak Sandwich with Rocket Pesto

Steak Sandwich with Rocket Pesto
Home Cooking



I've been trying really hard to accumulate stuff to blog. I haven't been out anywhere spectacular for a while. I am too tired to cook anything interesting when I get home (boiled veggies with olive oil hardly deserves merit). When I've been back in Brisbane lately, I found myself gravitating to old, familiar restaurants rather than venturing to new places. Exactly NOT what a food blogger should be doing.


In the face of all this... 'unproductivity', I have been trying to make SOMETHING to write about. I attempted gnocchi last week, which turned out OK but the sauce was a disaster. Unbloggable. We saw them make rosti on Masterchef and tried to make sweet potato rosti. Unfortuantely we made the incorrect decision to take a bath while the potatoes were boiling and ended up trying to grate and fry mashed potato... not successful by any standards.

Well today we had a bloody awesome steak sandwich. Yeh, yeh, I know... steak sandwiches are hardly chefy. That aside, we smeared the bread with a special pesto that was at least made from scratch. It's not at all difficult to make but we've made it twice now because it's that good. Byron's got a little herb garden (dammit - I should've taken photos!) and we picked some fresh rocket and basil for this dip/spread.

Rocket Pesto

Ingredients:

• large handful of fresh rocket
• small bunch of fresh basil leaves
• 1/4 cup toasted cashew
• 1/4 cup macadamia
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 30g parmesan, grated
• salt

Procedure:

1. Whiz the nuts and leaves in a food processor.
2. Add olive oil until you get a good spreading consistency. I don't like the nuts too crushed because larger chunks give a good texture.
3. Add the grated parmy and give it another few whizzes. Add the lemon juice.4. Taste and adjust with salt.

This dip is awesome for dipping with wholegrain rice crackers. We used it for our steak sandwich.


I'm not going to give a 'recipe' for the steak sandwich for obvious reasons. We barbequed the steak and onion slices. The boys had bacon on theirs too.


The other components were: the rocket pesto, fresh tomato slices, thinly sliced cheese, fresh rocket leaves and barbeque sauce.


We toasted some light rye to sandwich it all together.

Leftover piece of steak used as a cracker

I don't think pesto is a conventional addition to a steak sandwich but that and the fresh rocket leaves gave it a wonderful zing and nutty texture. Definitely improved something that's already great (which is not easy to do).