A versatile sauce great on lots of meat dishes, and perfect for steak – a comforting main for a dinner party. Melt the butter in a medium recipes using beef consomme. Add the garlic, vegetables and herbs, and cook on a medium heat until they soften and begin to colour.

Heat a drop of olive oil in a frying pan. Season the beef trimmings and fry until coloured and sealed all over. Add the meat to the vegetables. Pour 1-2 glasses of wine into the frying pan in which you have cooked the meat. Bring this to the boil, scraping and lifting all the meat residue from the bottom of the pan.

Pour the liquid into the pan that contains the meat and vegetables. Let the pan’s contents bubble until the wine has reduced by three-quarters. Now add and reduce the rest of the wine, 1-2 glasses at a time. If you tip it all in at once, you wash the vegetables and meat of their roasted edge, so their flavour in the finished sauce is bland. Reduce by three-quarters, glass by glass until all the wine is used. Now add the beef jus, bring to a simmer and cook gently for 45 mins to 1 hr. Regularly skim away any impurities by weaving a small ladle in and out of the top of the sauce.