Pan-fried sirloin steak with simple Chianti butter sauce

Last night's dinner: steak, red wine, butter. Sounds like an Atkins diet dream - and sounds delicious. It nearly wasn't, through no fault of the recipe. I had been out with my parents and managed to leave my handbag in their car; when I realized, we had to drive to my parents' house to retrieve it, only they weren't there and hadn't got their mobiles switched on and we had to wait. We returned home incredibly hungry and eager to make dinner as fast as possible. This meant that instead of making the olive oil mash that Jamie teams with the steak first, then doing the steak, as he suggests, I was doing both at once, as well as chopping shallots, making a lemon dressing for the salad and tramping round the garden for thyme leaves. It is not so surprising that I succeeded in over-cooking the steak (I think it was medium; I like it more rare than that), because I was distractedly following the instructions like a sheep and not using my brain. Jamie suggested 8 minutes frying for medium-rare steak; I did 8 minutes, but my steaks were clearly, from the image, thinner than his, so 8 minutes was that bit too long. I would have noticed, if I hadn't been doing about ten other things at the same time and swigging a glass of (medicinal!) wine into the bargain. Anyway apart from the steak being overdone, this was delicious. I liked the Chianti butter sauce; I have made this sort of sauce before and it is a winner. The olive oil mash (which also has butter and Parmesan in it...) was also delicious, although ours didn't look anything like as creamy as Jamie's does in his picture. Either he used a lot more olive oil than we did, or he uses electric beaters to mash his potatoes, or... I don't know! Still, even if our dinner didn't look like a carbon copy of Jamie's, it was still very nice indeed. Weekend comfort food - yum.

Tonight I also did some baking - peanut butter choc chip cookies from Bill Granger's new book. I had vaguely intended to make Jamie's carrot cake but we have been out all day today and there is a duck roasting in the oven now, so there wouldn't have been time. The cookies were quick and easy but delicious.