Home › The Belgian Kitchen › Roasted Fillet of Beef
Roasted Fillet of Beef
About three pounds of fillet of beet roasted in a good hot oven for forty minutes; let it be rather underdone. Take three turnips, four good-sized carrots, cut them into jardiniere slices. Cook them separately in salted water, drain them and add salt, pepper, a tiny pinch of sugar and one dessert-spoonful of butter. Dress the fillet on a long dish with the garniture of carrots and turnips, and some artichoke-bottoms cooked in water and finished with butter, also add some potatoes chateau. Be sure the dish is very hot. Put a little water, or, for choice, clear stock, upon the roasting-dish and pour it over the fillet.
A plain roast presented in the French-Belgian manner, where the garnish carries as much weight as the meat. The instructions assume you know the classic cuts and the finishing of vegetables in butter.
- "A good hot oven"Read this as 425-450F. Forty minutes at that heat suits a thick three-pound centre-cut fillet, but ovens and fillet shapes vary too much to trust the clock alone.
- "Rather underdone"Fillet is lean and unforgiving. Pull it at 125-130F at the centre for rare to medium-rare and let it rest 10-15 minutes before carving; it will climb several degrees off the heat.
- Jardinière slicesNot slices in the modern sense but even batons, roughly 1/4 inch square and 1 1/2 to 2 inches long. Carrots and turnips are cooked separately because they soften at different rates and turnip water muddies carrots.
- Finishing the vegetablesDrained, then seasoned with salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar and a dessertspoonful (about 2 teaspoons) of butter; tossing them briefly over heat until glossy is the usual way to do this, though the recipe does not spell it out. The sugar is presumably for gloss and to balance the turnip rather than for sweetness.
- Artichoke bottomsTrimmed artichoke hearts with the leaves and choke removed. Fresh ones need lemon water to stop them browning; frozen artichoke bottoms are the practical substitute, and jarred ones packed in brine should be rinsed and drained well.
- Pommes châteauPommes chateau -- Potatoes turned into small barrel or olive shapes, then cooked in butter until golden and tender; some cooks blanch them briefly first, others start them raw in the butter. The turning is for even cooking as much as looks; small whole new potatoes are a reasonable stand-in.
- The pan gravyAdding water or, better, clear stock to the roasting pan amounts to a deglaze, though the recipe says no more than to put it on the dish and pour it over. Setting the pan over heat to scrape up the browned residue before pouring is the obvious way to get the most from it.
- Hot dishThe instruction to have the platter very hot is not decorative. Butter-glazed vegetables and a rare fillet both go dull and cold fast on a room-temperature dish.
- YieldThree pounds of fillet with this much garnish serves six generously.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in England during the First World War, its recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had fled the German occupation, and it is often said to have been produced in aid of relief work. That origin explains the tone of a page like this one: the cooking is unmistakably in the French professional idiom that Belgian kitchens shared, with its jardinière cuts, artichoke bottoms and pommes château, and it sits in a book otherwise full of thrifty dishes built on chicory, leeks and cheap cuts. A three-pound fillet with three separate garnishes was a prosperous person's dinner recalled from a country that had just lost its ordinary supply lines, and the collection preserves both registers side by side. The garnish names themselves are kitchen shorthand of the period: château for turned potatoes browned in butter, jardinière for the mixed baton-cut vegetables.