BEEF CARPACCIO "CAESAR"
My favourite beer snack yet, a stellar new record and a TV show to smash this weekend.
Hey team!
Welcome back to How I Cook+, weekly recipes and food thoughts from me to you. This is the paid issue, so if you want the full recipe, and the TV writing, become a paying subscriber! It’s less than the cost of a pint a month and you’ll be supporting me and my work directly.
This week I’m writing the recipe for my beef carpaccio “caesar”. It’s a plate that was sitting in my head for a long time, and in my head, it really worked! Raw beef with rosemary, black pepper, parmesan, lemony shallots and caesar dressing… Why not, right? Sometimes, these brain waves only work in your head, but luckily, when this one hit the plate, it was a hit. I’ve made it a lot since its debut at an event earlier in the Autumn and have fine tuned the recipe ready to share with you lucky bunch.
We’re kicking off with the album of the week, for a change. Give it a spin, it’s one of my favourite for a while. After that you’ll find the carpaccio recipe and then a few musings on The Day Of The Jackal.
Cheers,
B x
As promised, kicking things off with some music…
by Father John Misty
There are two types of people in this world. Those who love Josh Tillman’s alto ego Father John Misty, and those who think he’s a self-obsessed wanker. To be totally honest, I’m almost embarrassed at how hard I fall into the first camp, and I reckon the whole self-obsessed-wanker bit is kind of the secret to his success. A man of many influences and most of them are on display here. Tillman is constantly borrowing from the back pockets of Big Lenny Cohen, Van Morrison (“put on Astral Weeks/ said ‘I love jazz’”) and Dylan are smiling down on this record, with Tillman putting his own himbo swing on things.
It’s not been a completely smooth sailing for FJM since his breakout second record, I Love You Honeybear. Amongst the home runs, he’s had a few misses (see: most of Pure Comedy), but this new outing is, for me at least, is up there with his best work. This new record stands on the shoulders of 2022’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century, with it’s soaring arrangements and big band energy. The title track is a triumph, with a rumbling introduction, spine-tingling climaxes, lyrical highs and lows and a few subtle easter egg callbacks to his early work for the true heads. Beyond number one, the whole album is packed with delicious melodies, sharp writing and plenty of songs to repeat. I say plenty, it’s a 50 minute record and there are only 8 tracks…
Despite the longer run times, there’s not a bar of boring, with every measure cleverly crafted. The confident swagger of “She Cleans Up” is infectious and includes a sly reference to having a bad trip and watching Jonathon Glazer’s Under The Skin (“What is the one about the female alien / Scarlett drives the scottish countryside inside of a white van”), a movie based on a book we’ve chatted about before in this issue from last year.
“I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All” is just dead fun, with one of the best drum breaks I’ve heard for a little while. Looks like FJM is invading my spotify wrapped at the last minute.
Album Highlights: Mahashmashana, She Cleans Up, I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All
NOW, TO THE FOOD…
BEEF CARPACCIO
There are some dishes in the world that if you stumble across them on a menu, you have no choice but to order them. For some people, it’s a cheeseburger, others it’s lemon meringue pie, for me it’s raw things, predominantly fish and meat, and especially beef. I love all things tartar, carpaccio and crudo. I’m hard pressed to go to Paris and not have a plate of tartar with fries and frisee salad. Gun to my head? I’m probably picking a tartar, but it’s a close race and there are no losers here…
While France lays claim to tartar, Italy has the carpaccio. Carpaccio was invented in 1963 by Giuseppe Cipriani from Harry’s Bar in Venice, modelled on the Piedmontese dish carne cruda all'albese (raw Alba-style meat) and once on the menu, travelled far and wide, becoming mega popular in the 70s and 80s. You’ll find it in heaps of restaurants now, from neighborhood Italian joints to 3 star halls of gastronomy. You’ll also find it made with all sorts beyond the world of beef. Octopus, veal, prawn, seabass, venison, salmon, tuna - they’ve all been carpaccio’d, for better or for worse. I once had a carrot carpaccio and that was for worse!
CUTS OF BEEF
There’s only one answer here, and it’s fillet. You can use other cuts, but they just don’t work quite as well. Fillet is ultra tender, has a slightly more subtle beef flavour and whilst you might think you want to go chewing on a very funky, beefy cut here, you don’t, trust me. With a tartar, you can definitely afford to use a slightly tougher cut (rump cap/picanha is especially good) but with a carpaccio, it’s fillet all the way. You can manipulate the way raw meat and fish eats by cutting it different ways. It’s all down to the meat’s ‘grain’ and how you alter, disrupt or celebrate it. When we talk about grain in meat, we’re referring to the direction in which the muscle fibers run.
Meat grain is much easier to identify in tougher cuts like bavette and almost invisible in cuts like tenderloin. A good rule of thumb is the more prominent the grain, the tougher the meat will be and the more attention you should pay to how you cut it.
When you slice meat “against the grain”, or perpendicular to these tough muscle fibres, you end up with a much more tender product. This is because cutting against the grain disrupts the muscle fibres.
Preparing beef for tartar offers the most opportunity to tenderise tougher cuts as you can chop and ‘break’ the grain more effectively. Some tartars even put the beef through a mincer to really break down those tougher proteins. For carpaccio, you’re taking cuts of the meat in its organic form, so it needs to be tender in the first place. Enter, fillet.
CARPACCIO TECHNIQUES
There are a handful of ways to approach making a beef carpaccio, each of them with their own merits. At a restaurant I worked at in Brighton, we started using a technique similar to the one used today. Chilling the beef until cold but not frozen, and then using a long sharp knife to shave off slices, thin, but not wafer thin. You then use the flat of your knife or a rolling pin to bash and flatten the meat further. As the restaurant took a step towards a more refined (and dull) menu style, we moved onto rolling the beef in cling film, forming perfect little logs of beef, that we would then freeze solid. The frozen meat logs were then shaved wafer thin on a meat slicer, before being shingled onto an equally cold plate. This version defied all joy, was pretty stingy (I think the total portion per plate was sub 50g) and took the rustic charm out of this dish completely.
I’ve since graduated to the rolling pin and parchment combo. I lay my parchment out over the serving plate and lay the thin (but not stupid thin) slices of fillet on top, mimicking the shape of the plate, but leaving a little room around the edge. I then lay another sheet on top and use a rolling pin to roll back and forth, flattening everything out, enlarging the carpaccio to the true size of the plate and bringing everything together. You then peel the top layer off, flip onto the plate and remove the other sheet of parchment. Genius!
TO SEAR OR NOT TO SEAR?
I’m ‘camp sear’ all the way, the whole 9 yards. I had so many people calling this roast beef, simply because the beef had been kissed with a very hot pan, whereas, I see it as building flavour. The sear on the beef is just enough to imbue some caramelised, smoky, steaky flavour to the plate but nowhere near enough to classify this as roast beef. A quick sear in a screaming hot pan gives the plate some real depth and introduces a slightly different beefy flavour. I also roll my fillet in chopped rosemary and very coarsely ground black pepper post sear, for even more flavour. Some people kicked off about that, too… Well, I think it tastes bloody great and it also creates a lovely, green marble effect through the plate so you’re able to identify the different slices of meat. Lovely.
GARNISHES
Once you’ve prepared your plate of raw beef, you can top it with just about anything you like. Start with extra virgin olive oil, flaky sea salt and lemon juice and build from there. As always, less is more, you should let the ingredients do the talking. Why not try some thinly sliced raw mushrooms with a dash of worcestershire sauce or the classic rocket, lemon and parmesan. You could try a cheeseburger style garnish, yes I’m serious. Mustard, pickles, ketchup - it would bang, and you know it.
The truth is, you can put whatever you like on top, as long as it brings some fat (fillet is very lean), acidity and savoury flavour, you’re good to go.
Today’s iteration uses my favourite emulsion (I have one of these and you should, too), caesar dressing. It’s rich with umami from anchovies, parmesan and garlic and delivers just enough fat and acidity to set things off. I also add some little soused shallots and a blanket of grated parmesan, because it looks dead chic.
SOUSED SHALLOTS
A soused shallot is a secret of weapon mine, and one that I’ll usually whip out for something raw like a fish crudo, a tartar or in this instance, a beef carpaccio. Caesar dressing, whilst funky and a little sharp, is a rich emulsion, packed with cheese, oil and mustard. These are dead easy to make and deliver a punch of savoury, allium hum alongside a neutral acidity, ticking a couple of very important boxes.
