how to cook the perfect steak

i don't eat a lot of meat in my day-to-day meals, and red meat even less. when i go out to dinner it sort of becomes somewhat of a treat to order the steak, usually because someone else is nearly always paying for my meal, and i see a nice, well-cooked bit of steak as a bit of treat. this stems from the fact that i absolutely fail at cooking steak at home; always have, always will. well, until now, that is...

when the team behind barbecoa london - jamie oliver's famous bbq restaurant got in touch, challenging me to cook a steak in the exec chef's style, i was intrigued. could i follow a few simple steps and recreate the legendary dish, the one that's always (let's not kid, there's well more than just one) foiled me in my preparation of it? it was worth a bloody shot. so, off i went to the butchers over the weekend, and picked up a nice piece of meat, called the "feather blade" cut.

i let it sit at room temperature for at least half an hour before i even considered cooking it, and then i prepared myself. all that was needed, it seemed, was some olive oil, salt and pepper, and some herbs. job done, apparently. i oiled up both sides of the meat, as well as rubbing in some sea salt and cracked pepper. then, over a medium heat, i popped it in the pan, and waited.

turning with tongs every one minute over the course of three minutes, my instructions from barbecoa reckoned that at that point, my meat would be cooked. mediumly so, in fact. which, curiously, it was not. i let the meat rest on the cutting board for two minutes before slicing into it only to find it very pink inside indeed. not a fan of anything less than medium, i figured i'd simply overcooked the outside of the meat while the inside had gone slightly under-cooked. well, once again i'd messed up a really rather simple instruction, but wasn't going to let it get me down; i turned the heat right off, sliced the meat up entirely, then popped it back in the hot pan to seal it all off. one extra minute later, and it was job done as far as i was concerned.

if you fancy trying the barbecoan way at home yourself, here is the instruction sheet you'll need. you can see what i mean about it being super easy to follow, but don't get yourself down if you can't recreate the dish yourself the first time around. practice makes perfect after all, and if all else fails, there's always the restaurant. at least you know there you will never be let down. 

*post written in association with barbecoa. all words are mine*