Fillet Steaks with Mushroom Topping

This is an adaptation of a Gordon Ramsey recipe. It’s very simple, much of it can be done ahead and yet is pretty sophisticated. A great dinner party dish.

Get the best quality steaks you can afford.


You will need:

4 lovely pieces of fillet steak
200g button mushrooms
2 large or 4 medium Portobello mushrooms
50g grated parmesan
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 tbsp brandy
75ml whipping cream
Small handful of chopped flat leaf parsley


And then you need to:

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Chop all the mushrooms quite small.

Heat a frying pan and put the chopped mushrooms in along with the chopped garlic and the brandy. No oil, butter etc. Fry over lowish heat until the mushroom mixture is quite dry, it’ll take about 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile whip the cream until firm. Once the mushrooms are cooked add them to the cream along with the parmesan and the parsley. Set to one side.

Lightly cover the steaks with EV olive oil and then liberally grind black pepper all over the steaks.

Using a very hot cast iron griddle (or a BBQ, or a frying pan) quickly sear the steaks on all sides. You are not cooking the steaks just searing them.

Put the steaks in an oven dish and carefully spoon the mushroom mixture equally over each of them. The mushroom mixture should be quite firm, not sloppy. You can do up to this point quite a way ahead and just stick the prepared steaks in the fridge. If you do however, take them out of the fridge for a while before going in the oven.

Please the steaks in the oven for 10 minutes until the mushroom mixture has started to bubble and brown a little.

Serve straightaway.

I served this dish last week with these yummy potatoes, green beans with a tomato sauce and carrots cooked in a little butter, orange juice, pinch of sugar and 1 tsp sesame seeds. It all went down a treat.