Steak and Kale Salad with Pomegranate Seeds and Fried Shallot and Poached Egg

Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad

  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad
  • Lauren and Joe’s Steak Salad

NOTES

Skip the steak and keep the egg for a hearty vegetarian meal. Great main course salad, Winter salad, restaurant worthy.

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place grill pan in oven to heat up while you prepare the steaks.

Rub olive oil all over the steaks. Season steak aggressively with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

 Finely mince herbs and rub all over the steak.

Allow steak to come to room temperature while the herbs, salt, and pepper flavor the meat.

 Using tongs, place steak on pre-heated grill pan and cook about 4 minutes per side or until the internal temperature measures 130 degrees. Remove steak from oven and allow to sit and cool until ready to assemble salad.

To make the salad dressing, reduce heat in the oven to 350 degrees.

Place 6 cloves garlic, skin on, on a baking sheet and roast garlic for 15-20 minutes (leave papery skin on cloves), or until garlic is soft.

Allow to cool before handling. Remove papery skin from the cloves.

While oven is still hot, toast walnuts in the oven on 350 degrees until golden brown. Set aside.

In a small bowl, add white wine vinegar and salt to taste. Add extra virgin olive oil and roasted garlic. Whisk to combine olive oil and garlic with vinegar and add salt to taste.

Thinly slice shallots and pour enough canola oil in your frying pan to go up 1/4” high, and place on high heat. Fry shallots until just crispy. (They’ll be a golden brown color) Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.

Take the eggs out of the fridge to bring to room temperature while you finish working on the salad.

Layer, roll, and cut into a chiffonade (super thin slices) the leaves of 2 bunches Lacinato kale, stopping before you reach the bottom of the stalks.

Cut pomegranate into quarters. Place in a large bowl of water, and separate seeds from pith. The pith will float to the top, whereas the seeds will sink. Pour off the pith and water and reserve the seeds.

 Finely grate parmigiano-reggiano cheese.

In a large salad bowl, add, kale, pomegranate seeds, walnuts, and cheese. Add dressing and toss to combine.

To cook the eggs, heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Once hot, turn heat down to low and add olive oil to coat the pan.

Crack eggs into pan. (Depending on the size of your pan, 2-4 might fit.) Season with salt and pepper. Allow egg white to almost completely solidify.

Gently flip egg, season with salt and pepper, and cook another 1-2 minutes based on how runny you like your eggs.

Divide and heap tossed salad onto 4 plates. Cut steak into 1/8” slices and arrange a portion on top of each salad. Place eggs on top of steak.Top with fried shallots and Serve immediately.

RECIPE

DIFFICULTY

MODERATE

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SERVES

4

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PREP TIME

30 MINS

Salad

  • 2 
    bunches 
    Lacinato kale, also called Dinosaur kale
  • 1 
     
    pomegranate
  • 1 
    cup 
    walnut halves
  • 1 
    cup 
    parmigiano-reggiano cheese
  • 5 
     
    shallots
  • 1/4 
    cup 
    canola oil (or enough to make a 1/4” thick layer of oil in the pan)

Dressing

  • 3 
     
    garlic cloves
  • 3 
    tbs 
    white wine vinegar
  • 5 
    tbs 
    extra virgin olive oil
  •  
     
    salt and pepper to taste

Steak

  • 1-2  
     
    NY strip steaks
  • 1 
    tbs 
    olive oil
  • 1 
    tbs 
    kosher salt
  •  
     
    cracked black pepper
  • 1/4  
    cup 
    fresh English Thyme
  • 1/4 
    cup 
    fresh rosemary

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place grill pan in oven to heat up while you prepare the steaks.

Rub olive oil all over the steaks. Season steak aggressively with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

 Finely mince herbs and rub all over the steak.

Allow steak to come to room temperature while the herbs, salt, and pepper flavor the meat.

 Using tongs, place steak on pre-heated grill pan and cook about 4 minutes per side or until the internal temperature measures 130 degrees. Remove steak from oven and allow to sit and cool until ready to assemble salad.

To make the salad dressing, reduce heat in the oven to 350 degrees.

Place 6 cloves garlic, skin on, on a baking sheet and roast garlic for 15-20 minutes (leave papery skin on cloves), or until garlic is soft.

Allow to cool before handling. Remove papery skin from the cloves.

While oven is still hot, toast walnuts in the oven on 350 degrees until golden brown. Set aside.

In a small bowl, add white wine vinegar and salt to taste. Add extra virgin olive oil and roasted garlic. Whisk to combine olive oil and garlic with vinegar and add salt to taste.

Thinly slice shallots and pour enough canola oil in your frying pan to go up 1/4” high, and place on high heat. Fry shallots until just crispy. (They’ll be a golden brown color) Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.

Take the eggs out of the fridge to bring to room temperature while you finish working on the salad.

Layer, roll, and cut into a chiffonade (super thin slices) the leaves of 2 bunches Lacinato kale, stopping before you reach the bottom of the stalks.

Cut pomegranate into quarters. Place in a large bowl of water, and separate seeds from pith. The pith will float to the top, whereas the seeds will sink. Pour off the pith and water and reserve the seeds.

 Finely grate parmigiano-reggiano cheese.

In a large salad bowl, add, kale, pomegranate seeds, walnuts, and cheese. Add dressing and toss to combine.

To cook the eggs, heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Once hot, turn heat down to low and add olive oil to coat the pan.

Crack eggs into pan. (Depending on the size of your pan, 2-4 might fit.) Season with salt and pepper. Allow egg white to almost completely solidify.

Gently flip egg, season with salt and pepper, and cook another 1-2 minutes based on how runny you like your eggs.

Divide and heap tossed salad onto 4 plates. Cut steak into 1/8” slices and arrange a portion on top of each salad. Place eggs on top of steak.Top with fried shallots and Serve immediately.

Artist Lauren Carter and Artist/experimental composer Joe Grimm are old friends from our college days in Providence, R.I. Lauren and I reconnected in 2008 while interviewing for the MFA program at CalArts. In lieu of shmoozing with the other prospective students at lunch hour, we stole away to Whole Foods and hit the salad bar – I recognize a fellow salad snob when I see one. Needless to say, neither of us matriculated at CalArts.

Last I had heard, these two were getting their Master’s degrees at The Art Institute of Chicago. Then I came across an article about Grimm Ales in Edible Brooklyn, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Lauren and Joe were brewing artisinal beer in my very own borough.

Each of their beers has its own unique yeast strain, chosen in order to best express the flavors and aromas of that particular beer. I’ve never done a beer and salad pairing, but it was an excellent way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Lauren and Joe serve their ale in wine glasses, which encouraged me to sip, not chug (a very unladylike habit of mine).

Check out the recent Grimm Ales article in the WSJ!

Lauren Carter and Joe Grimm in Their Own Words

Julia: How did you guys start brewing beer?

Lauren and Joe: We got into home-brewing after dabbling in all kinds of wild fermentation — kimchi, sauerkraut, kvass, mead, lacto-pickles, ginger beer, etc. In 2005 Joe was on tour in Brussels playing music alongside Ben Russell’s experimental films. He discovered Belgian beer, and when he came back to Providence, we started tasting as many Belgian beers as we could find. They were scarce at the time and expensive, so we started to make them at home.

Julia: What does home-brewing provide for you personally, that visual art and music do not?

Lauren and Joe: We evaluate our beer based on how much pleasure it gives us.

Art, on the other hand, is judged by a different set of criteria.

It’s not just about aesthetics alone. What makes a work of art successful is much more slippery. Maybe food today is what art used to be in the old modernist regime? A search for beauty and pleasure within the confines of its medium.

Beer is liberating for us — we make what we love.  We’re trying to bring that attitude back to our art as well, trying to escape our education a little bit.

Julia: What is your favorite beer that you have made so far, and what distinguishes it from other beers?

Lauren and Joe: We made an Imperial porter in the style of a Baltic porter, but we fermented it with a Scotch ale yeast, which accentuates its complex malt character. We’re really into thinking about how micro-organisms and fermentation drive the character of the beer. 

Julia: Would you say that having a basement full of craft beer is an occupational hazard, or just a perk of the job?

Lauren and Joe: It’s a total perk.  We drink beer everyday, but we don’t overindulge.  Neither of us particularly likes getting plastered. The bottles of home-brew you saw in our basement is a perk of the recipe development process.  For each commercial beer we release, we make many variations of home-brew.  When we hit on one we love, we scale it up and brew the recipe as a commercial batch.

Julia: Is beer making an “art” or is it a “craft”  or is it just a job?

Lauren and Joe: It’s a craft.  But at the end of the day, maybe policing the boundaries between art and craft and commerce isn’t that fun or important.  The important thing for us is pouring our labor and ingenuity and creativity into something that we love to do.