North African Long Pepper Steak and Preserved Lemon Sauce

 Lest you all worry about me surviving solely off caffeine and cake (I know for a fact my mum certainly gets worried at times) today I have a savoury recipe for you (and if you follow me on instagram you might have already seen some of these shots).  Although I mainly post sweet recipes here, I do actually really enjoy cooking and experimenting with savoury ingredients too.  Like with baking I don’t tend to limit myself to a single regional cuisine although I do go through phases of cooking a lot of Indian, Thai, Italian or Mexican Food (in addition to spots of nostalgia-induced cooking of some of the German dishes I grew up with).  The Peppermongers had asked me to come up with a few savoury recipes using their peppers and here is the first one – a North African twist on the classic steak au poivre (or pepper steak).

Pepper steak is a tried and tested classic that is as simple as it is delicious. For something a little different I used a rub flavoured with long pepper and served the steak with a preserved lemon sauce – inspired by the flavours of chermoula, a sauce used for grilling meat, fish and vegetables. Common in Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan cooking, different recipes for this sauce abound. What almost all chermoula recipes include are coriander, pepper and preserved lemon. Here those flavours find their way into a dry spice mix that gets rubbed into the steaks as well as a preserved lemon and herb sauce to drizzle over the grilled meat. The tangy and fragrant sauce cuts through the richness of the red meat and takes these peppered steaks from good to great.

Head on over to the Peppermongers’ website to see the recipe.