flash roast beef with garlic, rosemary & girolles (schiacciata di manzo con aglio, rosmarino e funghi)

Ingredients

500 g quality beef fillet, sinews removed, cut into 1cm slices

extra virgin olive oil

a few drops truffle oil, optional

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves picked

1 clove garlic, peeled and finely sliced

3 handfuls rocket

1 large handful mixed salad leaves, including radicchio di Treviso or salad radicchio

1 handful really firm mushrooms, such as girolles, chanterelles, field or uovoli (Caesar)

balsamic vinegar

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

1 block Parmesan cheese

Method

OK, first things first – whack your oven on to its highest heat. For this dish we're going to cook the meat on the platter it will be served on, so ideally use one of those classic cheap old metal flats or trays. Or you can use regular serving plates instead, if you know they're heatproof. Rub them with extra virgin olive oil or truffle oil. And now you're going to prepare the meat. Work with one piece at a time, and put it on a 30cm piece of bin-liner with another piece on top. Using a rolling pin, evenly slap the meat until it's 4 times the width you started with, but a quarter of the thickness.

Lay the meat on your tray, platter or plate right to the edges – you can let it hang over a tiny bit. Put your rosemary leaves into a sieve and run hot water over them to get the oils and flavours going. Put them into a little bowl, pour 3 or 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil on top and massage the leaves with your fingers to get more flavour out of them. Stir the garlic into the rosemary oil, then pat everything evenly all over the meat. The meat can be prepared to this point a few hours in advance, then cling-filmed and kept in the fridge.

Now all you've got to do is get a little salad together. Tear your rocket and radicchio into a large bowl. Slice your mushrooms as thinly as possible and add them to the bowl.

This dish is best put together really quickly at the last minute. All you need to do is put the meat in the preheated oven for 1 to 3 minutes (depending on your oven). By the time you've dressed the salad, with a little extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and put your block of Parmesan on the table with a speed peeler for shaving pieces off it, you can take the meat out of the oven – it should be paler in colour now. The idea is not to cook the meat, it's simply to warm it through. Scatter the salad over and serve it straight away. Shave over some Parmesan and have a nice glass of wine with it. Tasty, tasty and very gorgeous!