What you'll need
Serves 1
- 3 tablespoons cooking oil
- 50g beef scraps
- 150g beef eye fillet
- 1 small carrot, chopped
- 1 stalk celery, chopped
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 clove garlic, chopped
- 1 bay leaf
- 1⁄4 bunch thyme
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 cups red wine
- 3 shallots, peeled
- 10g butter
- 1 cup beef stock
- 1 small tray enoki mushrooms
The easy bit
- Preheat oven to 220°C.
- Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a heavy pot and fry the beef scraps – at the same time seal each side of your eye fillet. When the eye fillet is sealed, remove from pot and set aside.
- Add carrot, celery, onion, garlic, bay leaf and thyme. Season and sweat off. Using a wooden spoon, scrape the bottom of the pot to avoid burning, which would turn the sauce bitter.
- Add tomato paste, reduce the temperature and cook for 5 minutes.
- Turn the temperature back up and deglaze the pot with red wine, then scrape the bottom of the pot one last time.
- Bring wine to the boil, reduce to a simmer, then add beef back into the liquid. Poach beef for 5 minutes, then remove and rest. Reduce liquid by half.
- In a small ovenproof pan, sweat off shallots in butter, then put in a hot oven for 10 minutes or until soft, making sure you turn them every 3 minutes.
- Add the beef stock to the wine reduction and reduce further until it coats the back of a spoon. Pass this through a fine sieve.
- Heat beef in the oven for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, shallow-fry the mushrooms in the remaining oil until crispy. Transfer the eye fillet to a serving plate, drizzle over the red wine jus and serve with the mushrooms and shallots.
