Fillet Rossini - by Boy

So H and I went to Barristers and she absolutely fell in love with their Fillet Rossini. Coming from a restaurant background I have always liked to re create dishes and put my own spin on them, sometimes for better sometimes for worse. I found it very difficult to put a recipe on paper as I never follow any recipes. I cook with my senses. I think it is very important to always taste things as you go so that you can adjust a recipe as needed. I have found that people tend to be scared of cooking and tend to stick to a recipe 100%. Food is supposed to be fun and as in life always sticking to the rules is boring. Don’t be scared to try new things and if a dish fails take it as a learning curve and try and improve the dish.

 So here is my take on the Fillet Rossini. After cooking it I realised that they might have used red wine as a base to their sauce where I decided to use some fresh beef stock along with the red wine. Their recipe also did not call for fresh coriander but I am a bit of a coriander whore. I think it adds some freshness to the dish.  

Fillet Rossini served on a bed of whole grain mustard mashed potato. (I also served it with fresh home made bread- recipe to follow).

Ingredients

400 g Beef Fillet

250g Chicken Livers

1 Red Onion

1 Celery stick

1 Red Pepper

Half a punnet of exotic mushroom mix

1 Red chilli

1 Clove of Garlic

1 cup Red Wine

Coriander

Flat leaf parsley

1 cup Beef stock (fresh or cube)

250ml Cream

Salt & Pepper

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Mashed Potato

4-5 small to medium potatoes

2 tbs Whole grain mustard

Salt & Pepper

Method

Start by cutting the fillet into medallions and marinade in some red wine.

Clean the chicken livers and cut in half.

Sauce

Finely chop the onion, garlic, celery stick and red chilli. Heat a sauce pan with some extra virgin olive oil and sauté over medium heat until the onions are golden brown. Be careful not to burn the garlic.

Add the chicken livers and sauté.

Deglaze sauce pan with red wine. Do this 3 times. (When you sauté something, your pan begins to “burn”. When you deglaze a pan, you add little bits if liquid to the pan and stir. You will notice that the part of the pan that looked like they started to burn- this is actually caramelisation-  are then lifted back into your sauce. This is what gives good sauces all their flavour and is normally done three times).

Add 1 cup of stock and 1 cup of red wine and simmer until reduced.

While the sauce is reducing heat a sauté pan with some olive oil and roughly chop the red pepper and mushrooms.

Sautee mushrooms and red pepper until the mushrooms are golden brown. Add directly to the sauce. Add the cream to the sauce and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and allow the sauce to simmer until cream starts to thicken.

Remove the fillet from the red wine and sauté in a smoking hot pan with some olive oil until desired temperature is reached. NB fillet cooks much faster when cut into medallions. Season with salt and pepper.

Mix the cooked fillet medallions into the sauce. Just before serving, add a handful of fresh coriander and parsley (roughly chopped).