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Strips of fillet or sirloin sear hard in a hot pan and lift out so they don't overcook. Onion and mushrooms cook in the same pan with butter; brandy or wine deglazes; mustard, stock and soured cream make the sauce. The beef returns at the end to warm through, off the heat to keep it pink.
A wide shallow pot is brushed with beef fat, the warishita sauce (soy-mirin-sake-sugar) is poured in, then thinly sliced beef and a colourful array of vegetables, tofu and shirataki noodles are added in batches as people eat. Each piece dips in raw egg yolk before going in the mouth. A portable hob at the table is traditional but not required.
The defining British dinner-party showpiece, somewhere between French haute cuisine and English roast tradition, made famous in the modern era by Gordon Ramsay even if the Iron Duke himself probably never ate it. You sear a centre-cut beef fillet hard for colour, smear it with English mustard, wrap it in a tight blanket of mushroom duxelles and prosciutto, then encase the lot in all-butter puff pastry and roast at high heat. The pastry insulates the beef so it cooks gently to medium-rare while the crust crisps to deep mahogany above. The one technical trick the recipe insists on is drying the duxelles thoroughly so the pastry stays crisp underneath rather than going soggy from leaking mushroom water. Sliced at the table into thick rosy rounds, with a red-wine jus and roasted root vegetables on the side, the kind of plate that makes the evening feel like a special occasion before anyone says it.
Each vegetable cooks separately and gets dressed with sesame oil, garlic and soy. They arrange in colourful piles around a mound of rice; an egg fries on top. Gochujang sauce on the side. Diners mix vigorously before eating.
Bread is soaked in milk; mince is browned with onions; curry powder, turmeric and Cape Malay spices bloom. Apricot jam, mango chutney, vinegar and lemon balance the spice with sweet-sour notes. Raisins, toasted almonds and the soaked bread are folded through. The mixture is pressed into a baking dish; eggs are whisked with the leftover milk and poured over; bay leaves are stuck into the surface; the lot is baked until the topping is just-set with a faint wobble.
The defining British pub pie, the dish you order when the weather is foul and you want the gravy to do something to your evening. You brown cubed chuck steak and ox kidney hard for colour, then braise the lot slowly with onions, mushrooms, a bottle of stout and beef stock until the meat is fork-tender and the gravy has reduced down to a glossy mahogany. The filling cools completely (essential; hot gravy in a pastry case is the surest way to a soggy bottom), goes into a pie dish, gets a shortcrust top crimped sharp at the edge, and bakes until the pastry is deep gold and the gravy bubbles up around the edges. Eaten with mashed potato, peas and a pint, the gravy spooned generously over.