Recipe corner - Steak with blue cheese sauce

I suppose I should preface this post by saying if you don't think it is worth using half of your daily points on one meal, you may want to skip this.

Me, I like a bit of luxury at dinner time, and am prepared to scrimp earlier in the day if I've got something really yummy to look forward to in the evening. And the following is seriously good...so good that it is even worth hitting the gym for an hour and sweating out a few extra points.

In my last post I mentioned that I wanted to try and incorporate cheese into my meals a bit more in a kind of look-the-devil-in-the-eye type way and here is my first attempt.

Ingredients

2 x 200g medallion steak - trimmed of fat
100g strong blue cheese
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Shallot, finely chopped
Tbsp white wine
Tbsp butter
2 tbsp water
200g oven chips (I like McCains)

Serves 2, 13 points per person

Over a low heat, soften the shallot and garlic. A pinch of salt at this stage will help the veg to sweat rather than brown.

Add the wine, let it reduce down. Then add the blue cheese, and, over a low heat, melt it down to a gorgeous, oozy sauce. Check the seasoning - I'd add pepper but it probably won't need any salt.

Heat the butter in a frying pan, and when frothing, season the meat, add the steaks and cook to your own preference. I like the cow to basically still be alive on the plate, so a minute or so each side is perfectly good for me.

Remove the steak to a warmed plate and allow it to rest (you should never eat meat straight out of the pan - it needs time to recover from the trauma!)

Add the water to the steak pan and use it to deglaze - i.e. scrape off all the lovely, steaky burny bits in the pan. Pour the meaty juices into the blue cheese sauce to loosen it slightly.

Bake the chips according to the packet instructions to serve on the side. You could make your own from scratch if you were so inclined...

***

If you are NOT keen on the idea of blowing so many points on one meal, I reckon it would be fairly easy to bring the total down. Ditch the butter for a start, and cook the steaks in a dry pan (maybe add a little spray oil first). This saves you 2 points per portion. Also, you could make the sauce using 50g blue cheese and 50g extra low fat soft cheese which would save you another 2 points. Oh, and it has just occurred to me that you could make butternut squash chips to serve on the side which would save you ANOTHER 2 points - making all of these changes turns this into a 7 point supper, which is probably much more reasonable. I might try it that way next time and see if D notices the difference (he's a good gauge - he tends to pull a face if he thinks that I am trying to serve him "diet" food.)