Harissa Beef Salad Pittas – £1.30 per serve

Have you ever been so vain as to count your macronutrients in your diet and then realise you’ve been underestimating the amount of protein you’re eating by a considerable amount? No? Yeah me neither…

On a completely unrelated* note, I bought meat for the first time yesterday (BIG Lidl haul – I should make a youtube account and instead of doing makeup hauls, I should do food ones) and purchasing bit of dead flesh kind of got to me a bit, morally. You can read this next bit if you want to waste your precious time, or you can scroll past the photo for the actual recipe if you’re bored of even more debate about food and are just hungry af.

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I haven’t bought beef this whole time and I kind of thought about cows and how detached these floppy meat slabs seemed from those magnificent black and white beasts you see in fields and on ice-cream trucks. I bought 6 chicken thighs too and it made me feel a bit sad that three whole birbs went into that KG of meat in a plastic box. Buying supermarket meat isn’t the best idea and I think I’ll go to the butchers down the road next time, and spend a little more on higher quality welfare.

That said, I think it’s important to recognise and acknowledge that meat is sometimes good for us. The right sorts (unprocessed – fucking bazooka those chicken nuggets and richmond sausages into hyperspace ples) are quite nutrient dense and you needn’t use a lot in your cooking to get a great all-round flavour. I also wanted a complete protein source rather than having to bulk-eat a load of nuts and beans every day. Meat shouldn’t be the centre of ya dish anyhoo – that title should be awarded to vegetables. I’ve bought enough meat yesterday to last me about a month (I’ve pre-portioned them and stuck it in the freezer), which shows you how much of it I actually eat in one sitting. I spent twice as much money on veg than on meat, and that’ll last me about 10 days, all being well.

There’s just half a steak in this recipe – it’s about the size of a deck of cards, which is roughly 1583% less than what restaurants give you. Even that amount will give you a boatload of iron and vitamin B12, which are two things that are more difficult (though by no means impossible) to come by on a strict vegetarian diet.  Meat isn’t essential, but it’s convenient as a protein source and these were absolutely delicious. I would say something flippant like ‘no ragretz’ but I actually would have bought higher quality meat if I hadn’t just splashed out on a pair of winter hiking boots. But that’s a bloody poor excuse and the boots themselves are leather and oh god what have I done…look, you came here for a beef pitta recipe and a beef pitta recipe you shall have. Enough of my whinging. This is my blog and I can write crap without any conclusions, so there. Journalism (lol) needn’t be conclusive!

Have some food.

Did you skip the rubbish just then? Good for you.

Here’s a dank recipe for some delicious food, which also makes use of the manky green pepper you get in the pack of three that no one really wants to eat cos it’s bitter on its own. I promise this method makes it well lush and it goes really nicely with the beef and rocket too. Proper punchy. DW if you don’t have everything – as I said, I did a big shop yesterday so had all of this lot on hand.

To serve 1 smol female – make more if you’re one big boi:

• Half a beef frying steak – £0.40 (Using half of steak from a 3 pack of steaks also saves money)
• One green pepper, slicely thinned – £0.33
• about a quarter of a red onion, chopped quite smol – £0.07
• Big old handful of rocket or spinach or something leafy. Not grass. – £0.25
• 1 tsp harissa paste if you’ve got it – if you don’t, use spices of your choice £0.10
• tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley – £0.10
• 3-4 cherry tomatoes, sliced -£0.20
• lil sploop of butter and/or olive oil – £0.10
• Wholemeal pitta bread – £0.10
• black pepper and salt

Getcha frying pan nice and hot and fry your onion in the oil so it’s a bit charred and looking bomb. Turn the heat right up and push the onions to the side so they don’t burn too much. Dry your steak with some kitchen roll (v important for a good sear) and lay it in the pan. Cook on the first side for like, just under a minute, and then flip it over and cook on the other side for 30 seconds. This is for medium rare cos I like it when it’s got pink bits in it. Remove the steak and put it on a board to rest, covered in foil.

Add some more butter/olive oil to the pan with the onions and turn the heat down a tad. Put in your green peppers and harissa/spices and saute until they’ve colored but havnae gone flaccid. While they’re doing their thing, toast your pitta. Add the chopped parsley to the pan with the peppers and take it off the heat. Slice your steak and them cherry tomatoes and stuff everything into the pitta breads with some seasoning and some mayo and eat!

Disclaimer: the filling will not all fitta in the pitta.

*definitely related note