Recipe: Beef Carpaccio With Heritage Beetroots, Horseradish And Crème Fraîche

Co-Founder of Petersham Nurseries’ Gael Boglioni makes beetroots the star of her beef carpaccio

Beetroots have a reputation as a winter vegetable, often only appearing on summer tables when they have been preserved.  We prefer to use them in the spring and summer when they are still small and soft-skinned and bursting with flavour. This dish is still delicious if using full-sized beetroot, however – simply reduce the quantity to one of each variety and boil for longer.

Recipe: Gael Boglioni’s Beef Carpaccio With Heritage Beetroots, Horseradish And Crème Fraîche

Serves 4

Try with: fonterutoli chianti classico, castello di fonterutoli

Ingredients:

• 4 baby golden beetroots
• 4 baby red beetroots
• 4 baby chioggia beetroots
• 360–480g beef fillet
• (ask your butcher for centre cut)
• ½  lemon
• 50ml crème fraîche
• 1 thumb- sized piece of fresh horseradish  (approximately  10g)
• olive oil
• salt and black pepper

Method

Wash and scrub the beetroot, then boil each variety in separate pans of salted water for around 15 minutes, or until tender. Cooking each variety separately means they will hold their colour. Once cooked, peel and halve or quarter (depending on their size) and set aside.

Season the fillet of beef with salt and pepper and rub with olive oil. In a heavy based, very hot pan, sear quickly on each side and put to one side. To assemble the dish, slice the beef very finely, then season with olive oil and lemon juice. Scatter the beetroot over the top and season. Top with little dollops of crème fraîche and then, using a microplane or fine grater, grate on as much or as little of the horseradish as you like.

MORE RECIPES:

Gordon Ramsay’s Borlotti Bean Minestrone  /  Anna Jones’ One-Pot Orzo With Beetroot, Orange and Thyme

  Julie Montagu’s Foraged Nettle Chips