Raw beef tataki – sweet soy, instant coffee, mustard, nuts

Because sometimes you put off experiments and just cook.

I was at Cumbrae’s shop and decided to buy a hanger steak. I felt like eating it raw after having some damn good tartare the other day. But instead of making a tartare, I wanted to find ways to really bring out that raw flavour. I find that sometimes, tartare starts to become more about the dressing rather than the beef.

I remember Shane Harper mentioning that you can always tell when someone is searing a Cumbrea’s steak because it smells like roasted hazelnuts. I was going to add exactly that, but I currently have this infatuation with toasted pecans so I went for that instead. Then I also came across hazelnut instant coffee from Nescafe. Why the hell not. The toasted pecans and instant coffee became a crumble. Some lightly pickled yellow and baby zucchinis for acidity, pomegranate for sweetness and colour. The shallots, Kozlik’s triple crunch mustard and quail egg yolk are there to reference tartare. Yolk was cooked confit at 63C for 10 minutes. The beef was salt cured for 30 minutes before slicing. Then brushed with the sweet soy.

At this point I was starting to feel like I lost track of the original goal of highlighting that raw beef flavour. Though thankfully when I tried the dish, the pairings weren’t too convoluted. Here it is.