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After six years as head chef at London’s premier Japanese restaurant, Nobu, and five years at the Mirai restaurant in Dubai, Scott Hallsworth turned his attention to Japanese “junk food”, launching Kurobuta in London as an ode to the Japanese izakaya (Japanese gastropub). Now wildly popular, he is committing some of his favourite recipes to paper with his new book Junk Food Japan.
Beef fillet tataki
When I first came up with beef fillet tataki as a special at Nobu, I was hungry for steak and chips. (I still am, nothing’s changed, it’s my number 1 comfort food, I reckon I’d be able to happily eat it every day, forever.) So, it’s not quite steak and chips, but as far as steak sashimi goes, it’s great. How could you go wrong? Easily… It’s a cold dish so bump up the seasoning on your beef.
When I say sear it on a scorching hot surface, I mean so hot it’s about to combust! Don’t burn your garlic, keep the colour light. Get it right and you’ll wonder why you’d ever bother cooking beef fillet.
SERVES 2 AS PART OF A MULTI-COURSE MENU
- 1 x 100g beef fillet, any suspicious sinew removed
- grapeseed oil, to drizzle
- 2 spring onions, chopped, to serve
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the onion ponzu
- ½ small white onion, finely diced
- ¼ teaspoon garlic purée
- 35ml ponzu sauce (see page 247)
- 40ml grapeseed oil
For the garlic crisps
- 5 garlic cloves
- cold milk, enough to cover the cloves in the pan
- rapeseed oil, for deep-frying
Method
1. To make the onion ponzu, combine the onion, garlic and ponzu. Mix well with a fork and then slowly pour in the oil. Keep in the fridge, where it will be good for a few days and lack-lustre for a further 2–3 days. After that, feed it to that imaginary dog that keeps on howling outside your window late at night.
2. To make the garlic crisps, take the nice plump cloves of garlic and slice them thinly, lengthways, on a mandoline. When you have a nice big pile of them, place in a pan, cover with the milk, then place on the hob and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat immediately, strain away the milk and gently rinse the garlic slices under cold running water until all of the milk is washed away. Allow the slices to dry off completely on kitchen paper.
3. In a large pan, add enough oil for deep-frying. Heat the oil to 140°C/275°F, and fry the garlic in small batches for around 2 minutes until golden. Drain well and leave in a warm, dry place to keep them crunchy.
4. Next, move onto the beef. Tataki is all about searing the beef as fast and hot as you can before the heat starts to cook the internal flesh. You want a smoky, barbecue scorching to happen.
5. Heat a cast-iron barbecue plate, heavy-based frying pan or even your prized cake rack over a very high flame – as hot as you can get it. This may also cause you some frustration: the cake rack will buckle, it will burn and change colour and you will hate me on baking day, but today you will relish the flame!
6. Season the beef with plenty of salt and pepper, press it in – don’t be shy – give it a good push. Drizzle with a bit of grapeseed oil, then let it feel the flame – or the cast-iron surface for all you cake lovin’ safe-ies. Get a nice dark brown colour on your beef, all over, then set aside to cool down. (Don’t plunge it into water to stop the cooking, which is a common method in professional kitchens. The trouble with that is that it washes away all the flavour. Not cool.)
7. Slice the beef as thinly as you like, then lay the slices on a plate that has a bit of rim – otherwise you’ll have runny ponzu dripping all over the joint. Do a nice big line of the onion ponzu right over the top and another line of chopped spring onion, give a rather large lashing of those crunchy garlic bastards over the top, and then finish it off with a big squirt of ponzu.
Recipe taken from Junk Food Japan by Scott Hallsworth, publishing by Absolute Press, £26. Photography © David Loftus
If Scott’s recipe left you hungry for Japan, how about a 13-night Gastronomic Adventure in Japan? Roll your own sushi in Kyoto, dine at an izakaya, and find Scott-style Japanese junk food in Osaka. Email us at [email protected] or call 0117 370 9751 for more information.
