TOUGH CUTS, RARE DELIGHTS

Supermarket steaks may lack the tenderness of the very best meat, but there’s plenty you can do to make them special By By Bill Bill Granger Granger

Asimply grilled steak is one of my favourite meals. The range of steak available here is huge, from both affordable and hugely expensive imported meat, to some very reasonably priced high quality domestic cuts, down to what can charitably be described as shoe leather.

Aside from what can be found in some of the more specialist butchers and markets, your average supermarket steak can turn out to be quite disappointing.

Even so, I don’t always get the chance to make a special trip to the butcher. I work and have three kids — real life’s too busy — so I’ve learned to make compromises and find that once you get over the fact that supermarket steak won’t necessarily be as tender or have the same depth of flavour, it’s easy to find ways of bringing it up a level or two.

These three recipes hold fond memories for me — the steak with peppercorn sauce takes me right back to the 1970s and a time when anything French felt terribly sophisticated.

The gyudon (beef bowl) transports me to a winter living in Japan as a wideeyed 19-year-old, and is possibly one of the easiest weekday meals you can make — just make sure you take the time to slice the beef as thinly as possible, for the loveliest, tenderest result.

And the yum nuea (beef salad) — or at least my version of it — is one of the first dishes I had where I tasted that wonderful sweet-hot-sour combination that has influenced my whole approach to cooking. It is food from my past — but it’s more than survived the test of time.