Who Is The Red Flash?

…well, actually it was steak, polenta, beans and shallot tarte tatin.

the other night, i decided to cook a steak, the local had a half-price special on sirloin and combined with my cool handling of a particularly obnoxious turd at the counter beside which gained me the respect of the overworked meat slinger and resulted resulted in a further 50% reduction i ended up with a 500g sirloing for around £3.
i have a charcoal bbq, so that was a no-brainer as they say across the pond, and in a flash i recall reading a great idea for shallot tarte tatin on theKitchn.
luckily i had a pile of shallots and a few red onions already at home so again, a no-brainer. the recipe is super simple, particularly if (like me, ashamedly) you have some puff pastry already in the freezer, and you’re happy to use it.

I altered theKitchn recipe slightly and when cooking something llike this, i tend not to bother with weights and measures, because i’m rad.

basically the recipe is:

heat the oven to about 200c
cut a red onion into rings, and cook it slowly in butter in a heavy, ovenproof pan. (mine was a le creuset around 15cm across and about 3cm deep).
cut shallots in half (or don’t if they’re small). add them into the pan with the onions.
let them cook for a bit, then add some balsammic vinegar. you want it to be pretty dry by the time it goes into the oven, so the more you add, the more you’ll have to reduce, and the more syrupy-vinegary-sweet-acid the whole event will be.
i also splashed in a little white wine and some dried oregano.

roll out the pastry so it’s just a little bigger than the pan you’re using in a circle (or the same shape as the pan, if you happen to be using an unorthodox pan), to about 3mm thick.

put the pastry on top of the onion/shallot/balsammic in the pan and poke it down the sides.
put it in the oven
cook till golden brown and a puffy, ensuring your flatmate’s girlfriend does not turn off the oven before the food is cooked.

take it out of the oven, put a plate or something similar over the pan, and turn it over.

shallot tarte tatin. rad.

i just seasoned the steak we got, grilled it to rare, grilled some hard polenta, and steamed some beans as well. it was a little strange, because although the steak was lovely, the savoury tarte tatin was totally the centrepiece of the meal.

try it.