Time is one of the most expensive commodities. The expression ‘time is money’ is an understatement, it’s definitely a lot more. Imagine you had all the time you wanted to spend with your family, with friends, your spouse, work or even yourself. Wouldn’t that be a perfect world? Unfortunately this is never the case, you always have to juggle all and somehow try find a healthy balance. Obviously this is easier said than done.
Cooking should not be one of the time consuming chores in your life, and without compromising the freshness, nutrition and even taste. Goodness, I’ve just had a déjà vu moment. It feels like I’ve said this to you before. Probably, but moving on.
As much as I enjoy my time in the kitchen, sometimes I’m just tired or don’t have the time to spend in the kitchen as I’m juggling family, work, studies, friends, social life, etc.
So I’ve come up with fail safe foods to cook when I don’t have the time. On the top of the list we have pasta dishes using different types of pastas and sauces, this usually takes me 15 minutes and you can throw any veg or meat with this. This also helps me keep up with my veg quota for the week. The others include steak dishes, fish dishes and salads( vegetable or leafy greens).
Tonight is one of those days, no time and no energy. So I’m going to my fail safe foods: it’s ostrich steak, served with beetroot and pickled mango carpaccio topped with a tangy tomato sauce. I do love ostrich, it’s lean, healthy and quick to cook.
What do you need? Serves 2
- 2 x 200g ostrich steaks
- 1 x beetroot, thinly sliced
- 1x mango, thinly sliced
- 1x sour nectarine, chopped
- red wine vinegar
- sugar
- salt & pepper, paprika
- 2 x DIY peeled and ‘canned’ tomatoes
- 1/2 onion
- 1 tbs of chopped garlic
- olive oil
What to do?
– Season your steak with salt, pepper and paprika and set aside.
– In a bowl, add 50 ml of red wine vinegar, 2 tbs of sugar, pinch of salt and 1 tbs of whole peppercorns. Mix well, then add your slices of mango. Let this pickle for at least 10 minutes.
– Keep the raw slices of beetroot, they are sweet and healthy the way they are.
– In a hot pan with olive oil, add in the chopped 1/2 onion and garlic until soft. Then the chopped nectarine, 2 peeled tomatoes, with a bit of the tomato liquid from our container. Combine well with the onions, then add 25 ml of red wine and season with salt and pepper. Let this cook for 5 minutes.
Then off the stove and roughly blitz it. Not too smoothly.
My timer is at 10 minutes now.
- Last part, the steak. In a hot pan, add 2 tbs of olive oil. When hot add the steaks to brown on each side. It should be 2 minutes each side, at the most. Then add 25 ml of red wine to deglaze the pan and let this continue cooking for 2-3 more minutes for a perfect medium rare steak. Obviously this is dependent on the thickness of your steak.
Mine is now done in 6 minutes. I’ll serve it unsliced because I want it to rest on the plate and no get dry from all the juices running out.
Timer: 16 minutes.
Assemble your dish, with the pickled mango and beetroot carpaccio at the bottom of the plate. Rest your steak on top of them, pouring a tbs of the red wine glaze on top of the steak, then the tomato sauce.
Done! In less than 20 minutes! Delicious yet so quick and easy. It has so many flavour profiles, but still healthy.
