Fillet Steak with Port Reduction: Simple but Sophisticated

When I like a dish at a restaurant, I almost always try to copy it at home afterwards. That's the case with fillet steak with Port. I tried it at La Penyora restaurant in Girona about 5 years ago, and I've been making it at home ever since, to the point where, in my opinion (and my wife's), I've improved on it.

I won't give a recipe with every single step, because it's very simple to make; I'll just give a few guidelines and ideas.

Fillet steak with Port

Ingredients

• Beef fillet (you can also make it with pork tenderloin)
• Port
• Mashed potato

Method

The secret of this dish is undoubtedly the Port reduction: its sweet-and-sour taste gives the dish a wonderful flavour. You need plenty of Port for the reduction because, as the name says, it "reduces". For 4 people I recommend using at least half a litre of Port.

The procedure is quite simple: put the Port in a frying pan or a wide pan and reduce it over a low heat. It takes quite a while, but you have to keep an eye on it, because once it reaches a certain thickness it goes too far very quickly. To get it just right, bear in mind that it thickens a little more as it cools, so it's best to turn off the heat and stir a little before it reaches the consistency you want. It's also best to make it at the last minute and serve it hot.

The rest of the ingredients are simple: good-quality mashed potato, which you can buy, and meat cooked rare if you use beef — cooking it well done I consider a sin.

To serve, put a base of fairly runny mashed potato in the bottom of the plate, the fillet on top, and pour the Port reduction over everything. It works just as well with beef fillet as with pork tenderloin.

A curious fact: when I was looking for a photo to brighten up the post, I typed "copa oporto" (Port glass) into Google and, logically enough, everything that came up was about football.

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