Mid Summer Dinner for 8

• Pea, mint and avocado salad
• Fillet of beef with red wine, anchovies, garlic and thyme, or tagliata
• Jersey royals, warm spinach and lemon
• Strawberries in dark syrup with Proust’s madeleines

This, to me, is the perfect dinner: simple, impeccable, beautiful. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a June dinner, or even eaten in summer: I cook the beef all through the year and I’m such a fan of the frozen pea that I’ve got no reason to ration the unfashionable but deeply pleasurable salad, either. But when all the food comes together like this it works at its best. I’ve given two choices for the beef simply because fillet for 8 is not always going to be a practical suggestion. If you want to make this a more formal dinner, then try the wine and anchovy braised fillet. The tagliata, a fat slab of meat cut all along the rump, marinated, cooked briefly, then carved in squat, juicy slices on the diagonal, is the best thing you can do with your outside grill, pace, perhaps, the butterflied lamb of the menu preceding this. But if you’re kitchen-bound, a gas mark 7/210°C oven is absolutely fine.