COLD ROAST BEEF WITH LEMON SALAD

The roast beef you see to in advance; the salad you do just before you eat. Although, I should add, in case you’re getting nervous, it doesn’t spoil on sitting during the ordinary course of the evening (or indeed, lunch). And I love this salad either with the beef as it is or when hot; either way carved into tender pink slices and abundantly. I should also tell you that I make it often, in reduced form, as an easy but treaty supper for two, with a quickly grilled fillet steak, to be shared and sliced on top, tagliata-style, wafer thin and oozing its red juices over the tangy salad. This reduced form often means a lemon, peeled, sliced and chopped, left to steep in oil, salt, chilli and parsley while I’m cooking the steak and then tossed through a packet of designer leaves with some parmesan shaved off with a vegetable peeler. It follows, too, that the leaves indicated for the salad below are meant to be a suggestion only: I love the tough bitterness of radicchio alongside the juicy sourness of the lemons and toothsome saltiness of the shards of parmesan, but a plain green salad, boosted with the chilli-prinked lemon, is pretty damn fine as it is.

And whether you choose to eat the roast beef hot or cold with this, I implore you to add a pile of sweet, fluffy-tummied baked potatoes alongside. I wouldn’t provide butter to melt within, though, but bowls of cold crème fraîche or soured cream flecked with chopped chives.

2.5kg (or thereabouts) topside or contre fillet if you’re feeling extravagant (or whatever cut of beef you prefer)

5 lemons

1 teaspoon Maldon salt

3 fresh red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped

5 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 head frisée lettuce

2 heads radicchio

4 cos lettuce hearts

approx. 75g block parmesan

Preheat the oven to 210°C/gas mark 7. For rare beef, cook for 12 minutes per 500g; it will continue cooking as it cools so be prepared to take it out of the oven when it still looks underdone to you. This should give you divinely ruby-rare roast beef; obviously, though, cook for longer if you want it less red. Anyway, set aside till cold. If, however, you’re going to eat the roast beef rare and hot, then just stick it in the hottest oven you can for 15 minutes and then turn the oven down to 180°C/gas mark 4 and cook it for 15 minutes per 500g plus 15 minutes at the end. I’m hesitant about making this all sound too exact, because ovens vary enormously and the length of time it takes to roast rare roast beef in one oven can leave it either leathery and overcooked or still cold in the middle in another. Perhaps I exaggerate, but not by much. Probably the best advice is to say to go slowly and test often, though not by stabbing (you don’t want to lose all those glorious red juices) but by pressing: when the beef’s rare it will feel soft and eiderdown-bouncy to the touch; when medium rare it will feel springy; when well cooked it will have pretty much no bounce left in it. Of course, you can pierce with a knife to make really sure, but just try to leave that to the end, rather than puncture repeatedly throughout its cooking.

To make the salad, cut the tops and bottoms off the lemons. Sit them upright on a board on one end, and cut away the zest and pith from top to bottom with a sharp knife till only the juicy lemon remains. Now slice into rounds, then chop each round into about four, and place on a large plate or shallow bowl. Sprinkle the salt over them then scatter with the chopped chillies and parsley and pour over the oil. Leave to steep while you carve the beef and get on with the rest of the salad. Which simply means, tear the frisée, radicchio and cos lettuce hearts into rough pieces and mix together in a large bowl. Shave in most of the parmesan with a vegetable peeler and pour in most of the lemon chunks, and all of their oily juices. Mix together thoroughly with your fingers then decant into a couple of large, flat serving plates (I so much prefer salad on plates than in bowls), adding any more oil (or indeed lemon juice) if you think the dressing needs thus augmenting, then add the remaining lemon chunks and shave in a final few slithering curls of parmesan. I regard this as pretty well instant, all-year sunshine, so maybe here’s the place to sneak in the suggestion that you consider this (perhaps with a squeeze of Seville orange juice should this be possible) with your leftover Christmas turkey. After all, when more do you need the hit of, even artificial, sun?

Serves 10.