King Island Beef with Lighthouse Blue and Smashed Potatoes

If you can find a whole Scotch Fillet from King Island, south of Victoria in Bass Strait, you have a couple of options. With this cut of meat it doesn't matter what you do it will be fantastic. Raw as a carpaccio, roasted as whole piece slowly or cut into steaks and char grilled. Well done, rare or medium, this beef is good no matter what...

With this fillet I decided to cut it into 8 very large steaks and cooked them on the BBQ at a very high heat. The marbling of fat keeps the beef very moist and adds to its richness and high level of flavour.

Ingredients

2kg piece of KI scotch fillet or similar!!

12 new potatoes

1 small wheel of KI lighthouse blue - it's a creamy mild blue cheese

Olive oil

no sauce required.....

Parboil the potatoes till just tender, allow to cool and then using the bottom of a cup or glass slightly squash them on a baking tray till they are about 1cm thick. Brush with olive oil, sea salt and black pepper. Bake in an oven at 180C for 40min or until golden.

Get your BBQ or grill plate as hot as possible and just the second before you put the beef on season each steak with salt and pepper. the salt aids in the caramelisation and gives the steaks a great crust.

6 minutes on the first side and 4 on the second should have them cooked about medium rare. A good tip is to turn them when you see little blood or juice coming to the uncooked side of the steak. Once cooked to your liking let them rest for 10min. If you are cutting your own staeks from a fillet, a good idea is to cut them in thicknesses depending on how the person want it cooked. Thin for well done, thick for rare. You can take the tick ones from the tapering end and the thin ones from the fat end of the fillet and most people will get about the same size steaks.

To plate, stack three smashed potatoes on the plate, the steak drizzled with pan juices and little extra virgin olive oil and a thick slice of the blue cheese. Maybe a chiffonade of rocket or baby spinach to make the plate look a little healthy and away you go....