winter beef tagliata recipe

Tagliata is one of my favourite winter dishes - a warm beef fillet salad with lots of excellent, peppery winter salad leaves. You can either stick with the original Italian flavours, marinating the beef in chopped rosemary, lemon, garlic and olive oil, or give it an oriental twist, with plenty of ginger and chilli, as here. I like both. You can use sirloin steaks, which are less expensive than fillet - cut them into strips after very brief cooking.

For 8

• about 1.3kg beef fillet, trimmed
• 5 or 6 large handfuls of mixed peppery winter leaves, eg. Salad Rocket, Mustard 'Red Giant', Chicory 'Variegata del Castelfranco', all refreshed in cold water and dried

For the marinade 200ml soy sauce (or juice of 2 lemons) 1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped 3 garlic cloves, chopped 100ml sunflower oil For the oriental dressing 6 tablespoons soy sauce 1 heaped tablespoon chopped fresh ginger 1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped lemon juice, to taste 1 small tablespoon Thai fish sauce 1 small tablespoon light brown sugar 2 garlic cloves good handful of fresh coriander sunflower oil sea salt and black pepper

For the marinade, put the soy sauce, chilli, garlic and sunflower oil in a blender and process until smooth. Spread over the beef fillet and leave for several hours (or overnight) in the fridge, turning from time to time.

Bring the fillet to room temperature and preheat the oven to 220c/gas mark 7.

Brown the fillet quickly on a griddle or in a frying pan over a high heat, and then on a griddle or in a roasting pan roast it for 15-20 minutes (depending whether you like rare or medium) in the preheated oven. Allow to cool a little. Combine all the dressing ingredients with half of the coriander.

Thinly slice the fillet and arrange the slices on a bed of salad leaves. Drizzle the dressing and scatter the rest of the coriander over the top, adding sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

This recipe appears on p160 of Sarah Raven's Complete Christmas Food & Flowers.