Steak with potato fondant and fennel salad

Friday night dinner. Special offer at the local butcher. Red wine marinated ribeye steaks, which of cause calls for a bottle of red wine from the secret safe - the closet :)

My boyfriend and I enjoy to buy some delicious meat at the butcher or some lovely fish from the local fisher man. Most often this part becomes the center piece of the evenings dish. Therefore we do not usually put much thought into the side dishes. Well this night was a mix. Today we tried cooking potatoes in a way I have never tried before. Not a difficult dish, but fun to try something different.

A potato fondant is simply a baking potato cut into small cubed pieces. First you fry them in lots of olive oil and butter on the pan. Then you cook them in the oven at 200 degrees with for example chicken stock up to just underneath the top of the potatoes and together with some in our case thyme, and of cause seasoning. Fry them until they have a nice color, then cook in the oven until done. In our case this was around 10-12 minutes.

The cubes 

The steaks only got just a little more than 2 minutes on each side on a very hot frying pan and then rested for 5-10 minutes. Add some whole garlic cloves - do not bother peeling, thyme and butter while frying.

Finally we made a very simple but very tasty fennel salad. Slice the fennel very thin. Remember to cut out the middle part. Marinate in equal parts of lemon and olive oil while you cook everything else. Remember to season.

Steaks with potato fondant and fennel salad.

The sauce, I have to admit was a bought sauce from Irma (a danish finer grocery shop). This was actually not the greatest match. The cognac pepper sauce drowned the fine flavors of the meat.

If the post has any spelling mistakes, bear over with me. The red wine was good :)

"Frikadeller" and potato salad

Another danish form of meat balls - "frikadeller". It is made on minced pork, and my favorite kind is the small version. Plenty of lovely crust. I made the meat balls the day before in another dish. I used a whole kilo to make sure there was enough for the day after. I also cooked the potatoes the day before. This made it a very easy dish for making after for instance a workout, where your body only wants to lie on the couch.

The meat balls are seasoned well with salt and pepper. Ingredients also included chopped onion, eggs a little milk and flour. Very easy.

As a side dish I made a lovely potato salad. Instead of buying the greasy kind from the supermarket, try to make this yourself. I mixed small bites of potatoes with radishes, cucumber (without the middle part), green bell peppers and chives. Mix it all with equal parts of sour creme and a nicely smoked cheeses from the island of Fyn - between Sealand and Jutland. Also add some lemon juice to bring out the flavors.

After mixing the potato salad, pour it into a clean bowl and add some of the chives on top. Sometimes a little presentation goes a long way.

Frikadeller and potato salad

I have also added a picture from a while back. We made pancakes for dinner - you are allowed to do that, when you are a grown up :). The last pancake always gets a funny shape. This one I thought looked like a fat rat of some kind, and therefore wanted to share with you.

Fat rat pancake