Steak salad with blue cheese and buttermilk dressing recipe

This seems a quintessentially American salad. Romaine leaves, rare steak, buttermilk and blue cheese tick all the boxes. I make it with Cashel Blue, but you could use another blue cheese, though Roquefort is too salty.

Timings 

Prep time: 15 minutes, plus cooling time

Cook time: 50 minutes, plus resting time

Serves 

4

Ingredients

• 8 plum tomatoes, halved
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• ¼ tsp ground cayenne
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tsp caster sugar (optional)
• 4 hanger steaks (also known as onglet), about 165g each
• Groundnut oil
• Leaves from 1 head of romaine, separated, washed and carefully dried

For the dressing

• 100ml buttermilk
• 50g mayonnaise
• 2 tsp white balsamic vinegar
• 50g blue cheese, crumbled

Method 

1. Heat the oven to 190C/180C fan/gas mark 5. 
2. Put the tomatoes in a small roasting tin where they can lie in a single layer. 
3. Mix together the vinegar, cayenne and olive oil with some seasoning, and pour it over the tomatoes. Turn the tomatoes round in this and finish with them cut-side up. 
4. Season again and sprinkle on the sugar if you’re using it (some tomatoes just don’t have much sweetness, even in the summer). 
5. Cook for 30-40 minutes, or until the tomatoes are slightly shrunken and the tops are caramelised in patches. Leave sitting at room temperature.
6. Take the steaks out of the fridge while the tomatoes are cooking. Lower the oven temperature to 150C/140C fan/gas mark 2. Put a roasting tin in it.
7. For the dressing, mix the buttermilk, mayonnaise and vinegar together. 
8. Work the blue cheese into this with a fork, completely mashing some of it and leaving other little chunks whole. 
9. Taste for seasoning – you should only need pepper as the blue cheese makes the dressing salty.
10. Dry the steaks using kitchen paper – wet meat doesn’t get a good colour on it. 
11. Brush with groundnut oil and season all over. 
12. Heat a large pan – or two smaller pans – until very hot. 
13. Add the steaks and brown for 1-3 minutes on each side, turning them over with tongs, until they have a good dark colour and crust all over.
14. Transfer the steaks to the roasting tin that’s been heating and cook in the oven for another four minutes. This will give you rare steak.
15. Leave the steaks to rest for seven minutes, covered with foil.
16. Divide the leaves and tomatoes between four plates and drizzle over the dressing.
17. Slice the steaks, cutting against the grain, and add them to the plates (I prefer to keep the steak slices together, served on top of the leaves, but you might want to toss everything together). Serve immediately.