#NaBloPoMo - New Recipe Saturdays

We've decided we're going to try and cook a new recipe on Saturday nights. Saturday nights without plans that is. J and I both love to experiment with new kinds of food. Unfortunately there aren't too many new and yummy restaurants on the Gold Coast that excite me enough to want to go out every Saturday night. Besides, going out would involve wearing a bra which sometimes is more effort than it's worth.

Cooking is something we both enjoy. The weeknight menu isn't always exciting because those meals are more about what is easiest and/or quickest. Saturdays allow us the luxury of time so why not try a new recipe while we're at it?

I bought a book on Spanish food almost 2 years ago to cook a surprise dinner for J's birthday and it's one of the best recipe books I've ever bought. So last night, we cooked up a Spanish-themed feast - steak with chimmichurri, bean salad, prawns and haloumi. I know, I know haloumi isn't Spanish at all but hey, it was the perfect addition to the meal. Of course we had some vino tinto to go with.

I'm no food blogger so the pictures aren't great :(

The books I used.

The end result :)

All ingredients are easily available at Coles or Woolies. The steak however we bought at The Gold Coast Fresh Meat Centre in Burleigh and it was really great quality meat. It was cooked medium rare.

To go with the steak, we made some Argentinian inspired Chimichurri. We first had some at an Argentinian restaurant in Melbourne and have been wanting to make some for ourselves ever since. It's really easy to make and tastes absolutely divine on the steak. I used this recipe. Mmm...garlic!

The Haloumi is available in the cheese section (Lemmos..Lemnos?) and we fried it off in a pan until brown and squeezed a bit of lemon over it before biting into it. (Heaven!).

The prawns (also known as Gambas al Ajillo) were a tiny bit of a letdown as they didn't caramelise the way I would have liked (still yummy thought). But, I think that's more to do with my oven and less the fault of the recipe. I used a combination of this recipe and the recipe pictured below (from my Spanish book). I like the use of the sherry and the parsley in the Food.com recipe.

The recipe

The salad is a recipe from the salads recipe book pictured above. The recipe and a picture from the book is below. I'm happy to report the end product looked exactly like the picture from the book. I loved the mustard and lemon dressing as I'm not a fan of heavy salad dressings. 

The recipe

The salad.

It was a feast of a Saturday night and I can't wait till our next cooking adventure.

*This post is part of the November NaBloPoMo blogging challenge.