Skirt steak with homemade oven chips and red cabbage slaw recipe

A proper steak supper, using one of my favourite cuts, the skirt. It’s got a great flavour, is very lean and is tender as long as it’s not overcooked and is sliced across the grain. The chip recipe is based on one by the food writer Barney Desmazery. Adding lemon juice or vinegar to the cooking water gelatinises the starch, making for a crisper chip.

Timings

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Serves

4

Ingredients

• 450g skirt steak

• 1kg floury potatoes

• 1 lemon

• 4 tbsp vegetable oil, plus a little extra for the steak

• 1 tbsp cornflour (or ordinary flour)

• 320g red cabbage (about ½ a cabbage)

• 3 spring onions, thinly sliced

• 2 carrots, grated

• 4 tbsp olive oil

Method

1. Sprinkle the steak with a pinch or two of salt and place, uncovered, in the fridge while you make the rest of the meal.

2. Wash the potatoes and cut them into fat chips about 2cm thick. Put them in a saucepan, add enough water to just cover along with a squeeze of lemon juice (more juice and the zest will be used in the slaw) and a fat pinch of salt.

3. Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes or until almost tender, but not falling apart. Drain well.

4. Preheat the oven to 220C/200C fan/gas mark 8, putting in a roasting tin to heat up. Add the vegetable oil to the roasting tin and give it 5 minutes in the oven to get hot.

5. Meanwhile, toss the chips in the cornflour or flour. Add them to the tin and line them up in rows, turning them over in the oil. Bake for 20 minutes then turn carefully and cook for a further 20 minutes. Drain on kitchen paper.

6. While the potatoes are cooking, make the coleslaw. Slice the cabbage very finely (use a mandolin if you have one).

7. Rub the spring onion slices between your fingers to separate the rings. Mix together with the grated carrot and cabbage and grate in the zest of half the lemon.

8. For the dressing, mix 1 tbsp lemon juice with ½ tsp salt, then whisk in 4 tbsp olive oil. Season with freshly ground black pepper and more salt if it needs it.

9. Take the steak out of the fridge and pat it dry with kitchen paper. Rub all over with a trickle of vegetable oil.

10. Heat a sturdy frying pan (not non-stick, ideally) and add the steak. Cook for a couple of minutes on each side, just enough to brown it well. Take the steak out of the pan and allow it to rest for 5 minutes on a board.

11. Slice across the grain (the long fibres of meat) into strips no more than 1cm thick.

12. Serve the steak trickled with any juices that have accumulated on the board, with the chips and slaw.