Place the beef on the platter in which it is to be served, and pour the sauce around it. Garnish with parsley.
Fillet of Beef.
I will be very specific about the fillet of beef, as it is easily managed at home, and is very expensive ordered from the restaurateur. His price is generally ten dollars for a dressed and cooked fillet of beef for a dinner for ten or twelve persons. To buy it from the butcher costs a dollar a pound when dressed; three pounds are quite sufficient for ten or twelve persons. To lard it (an affair of ten minutes) would cost ten cents more; a box of French canned mushrooms, an additional forty cents; a little stock, five cents.
One sees a fillet of beef at almost every dinner party. “That same fillet, with mushrooms,” a frequent diner-out will say. I hope to see it continued, for among the substantials there is nothing more satisfactory.
A good butcher will always deliver a fillet of beef already dressed; if, however, it is necessary to have it dressed at home, the modus operandi is as follows:
To Trim a Fillet of Beef.
The fillet is the under side of the loin of beef. The steaks cut from this part are called porter-house-steaks. This under side, or fillet, is covered with skin and fat. “All the skin and fat must be removed from the top of the fillet, from one end to the other; then the rib-bones are disengaged. The fat adhering to the side opposite the ribs is only partially removed. Now the sinewy skin covering the upper meat of the fillet must be removed in strips, proceeding by slipping the blade of the knife between the skin and the meat. This operation is very simple; yet it requires great precision. The upper part of a trimmed fillet must be smooth, i. e., must not be furrowed by hollows occasioned by wrong movements of the knife. The skin being removed, both extremities of the fillet are rounded. The fat inside the rib is the only portion of fat allowed to adhere to the meat. The larding of the meat is applied to its upper surface.”
To Cook a Fillet of Beef.
After it is trimmed and larded, put it into a small baking-pan, in the bottom of which are some chopped pieces of pork and beef-suet; sprinkle some salt and pepper over it, and put a large ladleful of hot stock into the bottom of the pan, or it may be simply basted with boiling water. Half an hour (if the oven is very hot, as it should be) before dinner, put it into the oven. Baste it often, supplying a little hot stock, if necessary.
French cooks often braise a fillet of beef. I do not like it as well as baking or roasting, as the vegetables and wine destroy the beef’s own flavor.