So, I’ve been trying out a vegetarian lifestyle during the week, in a way to help lower my carbon footprint (as well as my food budget). In doing so, I’ve been coming up with a variety of vegetarian meals and side dishes to share on the blog. Some of them are not pretty, so I need to find ways to make them look more photogenic, but they’ll get in here.

In the meantime, over the weekend, I am enjoying some meat. And when I do have meat, I’m trying to make sure that it’s organic and grass-fed – it’s more expensive, but at least it’s ethical and more environmentally friendly. I was visiting one of my favourite shops/butchers Feather and Bone, and chatting to the butcher at their Gage Street shop. He’s made some amazing recommendations for me (such as this barramundi) and decided to go with two personal-sized tenderloin steaks. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but I knew I’d come up with something.

Low and behold, I did. I used only two pans for this, and a board to rest the meat on. Made for very easy cleaning. I am so glad I invested in my skillet. It’s just perfect, and I love using it so much. I’ve used it for omelettes, steaks, chicken, veggies, you name it. It’s been done. I even bought two smaller sized skillets to make personal desserts in (that’s coming later).

This was a great dinner after a big lunch, and was absolutely delicious considering I was winging a lot of it. I have to admit, I don’t tend to test my recipes lots of times unless I am trying to perfect something that hasn’t worked out. I usually have a base for a lot of recipes, and play with it as I go. If the spicing level is off, or times need to be adapted, then I will try them, of course. But for a lot of these, I trust my instincts and taste buds. Having said that, there are things that don’t work out and those are usually the recipes I am working on from complete scratch with no real base of a recipe to work from. But that’s what testing recipes is all about.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a fairly easy mid-week dinner, this one is for you. The recipe below serves 1, but you can just double the ingredients to cook for two.

Ingredients
225 gram beef tenderloin steak
200 grams asparagus, tough ends removed
20 grams + 30 grams salted butter, divided
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 lime
salt
pepper
olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 200°C.
2. Season steak with salt and pepper on all sides.
3. Place a large skillet over a medium heat. When hot, sear the steak on all sides, about a minute on each side. Add 20 grams of butter while searing.
4. Place the skillet, with the steak, in the oven for 10 minutes for medium-rare, 15 minutes for medium. Turn over half way through cooking time, and baste with the butter in the skillet.
5. Remove the steak from the oven and rest on a wooden board for 5 – 10 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, place a grill pan over medium heat and place the asparagus on the pan. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Cook for 5 – 7 minutes, turning half way. Remove from heat.
7. Place the skillet over a medium-low heat, and add the remaining butter and garlic cloves. Wait for the butter to change colour and start to turn a golden brown. Remove the garlic cloves, and then remove skillet from the heat.
8. Squeeze the lime over the asparagus, then add the asparagus to the garlic butter in the skillet.
9. Slice your tenderloin steak and place over the asparagus.
10. Serve in the hot skillet.