ROASTED FILLET OF BEEF IN HERBS AND PORCINI AND WRAPPED IN
PROSCIUTTO
This is one of my favorite Jamie recipes. I made it for Christmas, and that worked just
perfectly because you can prepare everything the day before, and then you just pop it into
the oven.
(serves 4)
Ingredients
900 g / 2 lb fillet of beef, left whole
12 - 18 slices of prosciutto or Parma ham
1 good handful of dried porcini, soaked in around 285 ml / 1/2 pint of boiling water (or you
could just use fresh chopped mushrooms of your choice)
2 glasses of red wine
3 peeled cloves of garlic
3 good handfuls of fresh rosemary and thyme, leaves picked and chopped (although I used
dried herbs, a good table spoon of each, but of course fresh is better)
3 good knobs of butter
juice of half a lemon
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Method
1 Preheat your oven at 230° C / 450 ° / gas mark 8.
2 Lay out your slices of ham on a piece of grease proof paper, so it makes a sheet large
enough to wrap your meat in. Make sure there are not gaps.
3 Chop one of the garlic cloves, and fry it together with the porcini in one knob of butter for
about 1 minute. Then add half the soaking water and let simmer for about 5 minutes, before
adding the lemon juice, the remaining butter and salt & pepper. If you're using fresh
mushrooms, it'll take a bit longer, but either way you want the moisture to reduce down so
your mushrooms are moist, but there's no excess fluids. Spread the mushrooms out on half
the laid-out prosciutto. If you put the mushrooms on the ham while they're still hot, they'll
warm up the ham and make it sweat and wrapping the meat will be a lot harder. So better
let them cool down first.
4 Season the beef and roll it in the herbs. Place it on the mushrooms and wrap the ham
around it, pulling back the paper. Again, make sure there are no gaps. Tie everything
together with string. I know the chefs have elegant ways of doing this, but I just use a
whole lot of string and make sure it is secure. You'll take this off before you serve it anyway,
so I'll say better safe than sorry.
5 And now for the roasting! Put your meat in a roasting tray with the garlic. The time it'll
take of course depends on the size of your fillet. For this amount Jamie recommends 25-30
minutes for rare, 40 min (medium), 50 minutes (well done) or 60 minutes (cremated). Add
the wine halfway through.
For my Christmas dinner for 22 people, I used two pieces of fillet, each weighing about 1.5
kg, in the same roasting tray - that took over 2 hours to get to medium. So if you're making
a large amount, I'd use a meat thermometer (to 55 - 57° C) to be absolutely sure your meat
is done.
When your meat is done, let is rest on a carving board for 5 minutes before carving. In the
mean time, remove all juices (scraping all the goodness from
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