Steak and Blue Cheese Salad with a Walnut Pesto Dressing Recipe

This steak (opens in new tab) and blue cheese salad (opens in new tab) with a walnut pesto dressing is the perfect meal for two. There’s nothing quite like a good steak, and we’ve ditched the chips in favour of salad here for a lighter meal option. If you have the time or the willing this is delicious made with barbecued steak. We’ve used succulent sirloin steak in our steak and blue cheese salad recipe, but the joy of this is that you can tweak it depending on your preference – ribeye or fillet steak would also be delicious and just as easy. Swapping the traditional pine nuts for walnuts gives the pesto in this quick steak and blue cheese salad recipe a gorgeous earthy flavour, for a slightly more grown-up twist. If you like less pesto than the recipe requires then you can easily freeze the additional quantities to use on another day – it’s delicious stirred through pasta or used as a salad dressing for green veggies, still warm from steaming. In fact, we like it so much that we often make double, just to ensure there is plenty to stash away in the freezer for a later date!

Ingredients

• 250g sirloin steak
• 2tsp olive oil
• 100g cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 50g watercress
• 50g blue cheese

For the pesto

• bunch basil
• clove garlic
• 75g walnuts
• 30g parmesan
• 150ml olive oil

Method

1. Allow the steak to reach room temperature. Rub well with the olive oil, and season generously. Bring a heavy-bottomed frying pan to a medium high heat and cook the steak for 3-4 mins on each side. Remove from the heat and rest.
2. To make the pesto add all the ingredients to a food processor and blitz until smooth. Toss the cherry tomatoes in 1tsbp of pesto to dress.
3. Slice the steak thickly and arrange on plates with the tomatoes, watercress and crumbled blue cheese. Serve more pesto on the side, if liked.