Beef Robart

A quick pan dish rather than a slow stew, despite the word: thin slices of tender beef are barely coloured, then finished in a savoury gravy. The hinge is restraint at both ends of the cooking.

• The cut"The inside of a sirloin" is the fillet or tenderloin that runs under the sirloin bone. A trimmed beef fillet or centre-cut tenderloin, sliced across the grain about 1/4 inch thick, is the modern equivalent; sirloin steak sliced thin will also serve.
• Fry just to change the colourThirty to sixty seconds a side in hot butter is the whole of it. The beef finishes in the gravy, and anything approaching a proper sear followed by stewing will give you grey, tight meat.
• ShalotsShallots. Two or three, finely chopped, softened in the pan butter after the beef comes out, before the gravy goes in.
• GravyHere this means brown stock or the strained juices from a roast, not thickened sauce from a jug. About 3/4 to 1 cup for a pound of beef. Good beef stock reduced a little does the job.
• Anchovy-essenceA bottled anchovy extract sold throughout the nineteenth century. Anchovy paste, or two or three fillets mashed to nothing in the pan, replaces it; start with a teaspoon of paste and taste, as the essence was salty and assertive.
• The oystersAdd them at the very end and give them two minutes at a bare simmer, until the edges just ruffle. A long stew, which the word "stew" invites, turns them to rubber. Their liquor should go into the gravy.
• ThickeningBeurre manie, equal butter and flour worked cold and whisked in off the boil, keeps the sauce glossy. A tablespoon of each will bring a cup of gravy to coating consistency.
• SippetsTriangles or small fingers of stale bread fried in butter or dripping until crisp, arranged round the edge of the dish. They are structural, not decorative: they take up the sauce.
• YieldA pound of trimmed beef with a dozen oysters serves three or four with potatoes or plain boiled rice.