Читать книгу The New English Table: 200 Recipes from the Queen of Thrifty, Inventive Cooking - Rose Prince - Страница 56

Raw Beef with Horseradish, Sorrel and Rye Bread

Two years ago I travelled to Copenhagen on an assignment. The story was a young chef whose restaurant, Noma, was attracting much attention. Rene Redzepi has since won awards for his curious cooking, which uses only Nordic raw materials on a strictly seasonal basis. He made a ‘tartare’ similar to this one, and advised that we should eat it with our fingers. I recommend it (if occasion allows); somehow the absence of a cold fork is just right. It is a nice primitive way to eat a dish that feels northern European down to its boots, yet would not be out of place in Venice.

Redzepi made this with the fillet of a Musk Ox, a native Greenland breed. With none to hand, seek out any of the pure native British breeds: Angus, Hereford, Red Poll, Galloway, Devon, Highland, Welsh Black, White Park, Dexter and so on. Use only beef that has been hung for a minimum of three weeks, preferably four.

Serves 4

450g/1lb prime fillet beef

4 small pinches of sea salt

4 thin slices of rye bread, each slice trimmed of the crust and cut into 4 squares (pumpernickel is the closest alternative to Danish rye bread)

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons grated fresh horseradish

a handful of sorrel leaves – or sorrel sprouts (see Kitchen Note below)

2 shallots, very thinly sliced

1 tablespoon juniper berries

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

For the tarragon sauce:

6 sprigs of tarragon

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon chicken stock or water

½ shallot

½ garlic clove

150ml/¼ pint olive oil

lemon juice

sea salt

Begin with the tarragon sauce. Put the tarragon, vinegar, stock or water, shallot, garlic and oil in a liquidiser and blend to a smooth cream. Season to taste with salt and a few drops of lemon juice, then refrigerate.

Using a very sharp knife, ‘scrape’ the meat into fine strips along the grain, parting the grain. Divide it between 4 serving plates. Sprinkle each portion with a small pinch of salt. Fry the rye bread lightly in the oil, then scatter it randomly over the beef, followed by the horseradish. Finish off with the sorrel and sliced shallots.

Heat the spices in a deep frying pan until they begin to brown, then grind to a fine powder using a mortar and pestle or a redundant coffee bean grinder. Put a large pinch of the spice mixture on the side of each plate. Serve with little bowls of the sauce to one side of each plate, eating the tartare with your fingers by taking a pinch of the raw meat and dipping it first in the sauce, then in the spice.

	Kitchen note
Sorrel takes just 2 or 3 weeks to grow in a bed or pot but is sometimes available from specialist greengrocers. Alternatively, try a peppery leaf such as rocket or even cress, instead of the lemon-flavoured sorrel.

Beef leftovers

In 2006 a stunning statistic revealed that the average person throws over £400 worth of food away each year, and I’ll bet a proportion of that will be leftover meat, carcass bones and fat. If, after reading the introduction to the beef section, you are convinced that spending more on naturally reared beef is essential, then absorb the extra spend by making use of the leftovers. This food is a bonus, and a strong point in favour of the argument that good eating is more a question of knowing what to do with food than one related to money.