Chocolate with salt

The rain just doesn't want to come and we are over a month late this year. Every day we have cloud covered skies, yesterday we even had thunder, but still no rain. The days are so hot by now, that even me, who normally doesn't mind, just wishes the rain to fall. The Namibians are praying and wishing for nothing else then rain at the moment.

Wouldn't we have such nice organic ice cream, I would say, the weather is perfect for loosing some weight (I'm trying to get rid of my pregnancy fat), but yeah, we have extremely good ice cream , so no, no weight loss here.

Still, I love salads, no matter what weather we have and when it's as hot as it is at the moment, I don't want to eat anything else. But Namibia has a tradition of eating primarily meat. I got to know people, who said, they don't eat anything green or others, who said, they don't eat meat, the cow has had already enough grass. So you can imagine it's kind of difficult to introduce salads as a main course.

Therefore I thought, why not combine meat with a nice salad to start with. Normally I would have taken a rump steak, but we've got the opportunity to buy veal, that's why the following salad is with veal stripes.





Ingredients for 2 salads

leafy salad e.g. lollo rosso
8 cocktail tomatoes
1/4 cucumber
1 bunch red grapes preferable seedless
1 handful sunflower seeds
200 - 300 g veal rump or rib eye (or beef )
olive oil

For the dressing:
30 ml balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp honey
1 finely chopped garlic glove
salt
pepper
40 ml olive oil

Wash the salad, tomatoes, grapes and cucumber. Leave the salad in whole leafs, spin and tear then in bit-sized pieces. With cleaning your salad that way, your preserve most of the nutrition.

Mix your dressing ingredients in a small jar in the prescribed order. Add the olive oil at the end only, shortly before serving.

Brown your sunflower seeds till you can distinguish the roasting. Cut the tomatoes and grapes in half. Remove the seeds from the grapes if necessary. Quarter the cucumber along and cut into slices.

Rinse your steak quickly under cold water, pat dry, season with salt and pepper and rub with some olive oil. Heat your pan properly and sear your steak to your taste. Mine is always medium rare, depending on the size of the steak, you sear it 2-3 minutes on every side and leave it to rest for an other 3 minutes.

While the meat is resting, mix the salad, tomatoes, grapes and cucumber in a bowl with your dressing. Place on a plate. Cut your meat in thin slices and arrange around the salad. Sprinkle the sunflower seeds all over. Serve with nice warm ciabatta or French loaf.

Enjoy!