I’ve got a whole fillet and I’m just going to clean it. This is going to be roasted whole and I’m going do it with a mashed potato. This is nice because you could brown it on top of the stove and you could throw it in the oven. It will be done in like half an hour. You want to leave some of the fat on the outside, I don’t know if you could see this but it comes usually in kind of two parts. You’ve the long part and there will be like a little knob in the end. You want to separate that knob off. You just kind of cut all the little spots out. I’m going to clean some of the fat off and not all of it.
And there’s a silver skin which you want to get rid off because that will be tough. That’s this part right here. They call it silver skin because it’s on the outside of the meat and it’s silver. It’s the shiny stuff. Some of it is fat and it’s like kind of dull. The shinny stuff is the bad stuff. I’m just going to cut down on the middle to separate them. Now, you want to season liberally with salt and pepper. See my pan, it is smoking. That is what you want right there. All around all the sides. So I’m going to put a little oil on my hot pan, we’re going to get a nice sear all around on that. This is a good thing to get done kind of earlier in your preparation as to start to the sear, then you could throw your meat in the oven and you got half an hour to finish the rest of your stuff.
Can you see that color? That’s what you’re looking for right there, like all around. That’s the flavor. All that brown, that’s all the caramelized proteins and sugars from the meat. It will give it a nice crust and it will like really give it that beefy flavor. The other nice thing about that is it’s going to leave a pond on the bottom of the pan and you could use that to make a sauce. So this is going to get the cooking process started too. Get some nice color all around and I’m going to throw it in the oven. I’m going to cook it in about 450 because it’s going to cook quickly and that’s going to help brown it on the outside a little bit more and give that crust.
I have some red potatoes. We’re going to make a smashed potato to go with the beef. These are just red potatoes, sliced, toss them with some olive oil, a little bit of paprika, salt and pepper, and roasted them on a sheet pan for about 45 minutes. This are already cooked, but what you want to do is you toss them with your oil some salt and pepper, little paprika and we’re going put them in the pan along with the meat. They’re going to soak up all those juices as the meat cooks and it’ll be done at exactly the time as the meat in about half an hour.
You just want one layer. I like to roast my potatoes too like for my smashed potatoes because if you boil them, they get all soggy and waterlogged, you know it’s just kind of a pain. I mean this way, you’ve already got the oven going. You don’t need to boil any water. You just throw them in there and they dry out and they’ll accept all the flavors that you introduced better. What I do is I smashed them up with some sour cream and it will really absorb in that sour cream, and yet, it will be more flavorful. I need to make my puree of herbs which I’m going to put on top of the of the fillet. This is like a summery thing, you know, I think of like California, like I’ve got goat cheese and fresh herbs and olive oil and nice meats and like simple vegetables, fresh. That’s kind of Californian style.
Lets do it like this. I’ve got all these fresh herbs, some nice basil, you can vary whatever you want, I mean, like you could use just basil or you can use just parsley or you can use a combination, but I’m going to use three different herbs in this puree. It’s almost going to be more of like a dressing. But since it’s hot out and since it’s Vegas, I like to have kind of this tart pungent sauce that’s going to cut them richness of the meat. So you don’t have to be really too careful with these, but you don’t want any of those big giant stems in there in either. Some parsley. This, you got to make sure you wash it and drain it because usually the parsleys got a lot of dirt and stuff in it since it was grown in the dirt. So I’m going to put some of that in there.
It’s nice to make a sauce too that you don’t have to cook. You could just whip it up in a blender or you could use a food processor. I got some cilantro, you could even throw some of that mint in there too if you wanted, but that would kind of make it kind of nice for a little lamb. Like if you where having a lamb dish, you could throw in some mint in there. You could throw some rosemary in there, you could also throw some thyme in there, a little cilantro. A little bit of salt, some pepper, olive oil. You just need the juice of one or two lemons and that will kind of—you’re kind of making a little vinaigrette pretty much.
These are great. These little immersion blenders, I use these for everything in the restaurant. I’m just going to hopefully work with these. It’s kind of making a salsa verde, you smell all the oils and everything coming out. And this is going to go on top of that beef. It’s going to be like nice vivid green and it is going to give it a nice flavor too at the same time. That’s good. You can either blend it like in the blender, it will get like really thick, but I kind it like it to be a little bit more rustic like this with still some chunks of the herbs in there. Let’s see how that came out.
That’s good. I’m going to put a little more salt and pepper in there. Just give that a little—okay, boom, we got our sauce done in like two minutes. These big pieces are going to take a little longer, but when you’re cooking meat, you could tell when it’s starting to cook on the inside when the blood starts to come out. Let’s just give that a little flip. And as you can see, all these juices are coming out of the meat and these potatoes are going to take up all those juices.
I’m going to heat up these potatoes that I brought. If you’re making mashed potatoes, I don’t know if you guys ever noticed, if you let the potatoes get cold and then you try to mash them, they just turn into paste garbage. Whenever you’re working with potatoes, they got to be hot. And this is the pan that we cooked our meat in, so I’m going to put the potatoes in there so they could get some of those juices up.
Again, I had to cook these ahead just because were feeding a larger group today. I want to save a little time. So I’m going to heat these up and then we’re going to smash them up with some sour cream and some parsley. Let’s put those on there. And all I want to do is just kind of roughly smash these potatoes. Not mashed but smashed, it’s more fun. It’s just kind of a loose mashed potato. I will get some sour cream, throw that in there and that’ll kind of melt, throw some parsley in there. These potatoes have already been seasoned before they were cooked so I’m not going to throw any more salt and pepper. We’ll wait until after and see how they come out.
You just want to kind of just give it a little mash, a little chop just until they start to kind of hold together. And this is something that you want to do with the last second. It’s kind of like making a guacamole. You want some chunks in there but then you also want some kind of pureed action in there too to hold it together. Now, you’re going to know when your meat is ready just by the feel of it. When it starts to get elastic, if you check it all time you, can tell. If it gets a little rubbery, that’s about where you want it for a medium to medium-rare. Make sure that you let it rest for like 10 minutes because the center is going to be raw. If you cut into that sucker, it’s just going to remain raw. But if you let it sit there for 10 minutes, then the heat from the outside will cook into the inside.
Just give it a little mash, a quick mash. You want to cook these against the grain. I cook these in smaller pieces just because I knew that there was going to be a time issue, so they’ll cook more quickly. But if you have a larger pan or like a roasting pan, you could do like the whole fillet and that makes a really nice presentation if you keep the whole fillet with the potatoes on the side then you pull it out of the oven and it looks like a Bon Appetit Magazine cover or something kind of a dish. Okay, that looks beautiful. I’m just going to cut really nice thin slices. So always make sure you go like perpendicular to the grain on these.
Okay. So I’m going to lay some of my smashed down on the bottom you can see how you could take—you get a nice plate, and if you put it on the plate correctly, you can make some pretty simple ingredients look pretty fancy. I’m going to put just a little bit of this juice on there. So here, we’ve got our beef plate.
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