Herbed Fillet of Beef with Tomato Madeira Confit

A very well-written recipe, almost entirely do ahead, that produces a very good end result. Because the timing is so precise, it's very easy to do the planning of the rest of a holiday meal around this.

It is important to finely chop the ingredients for the herb rub as the recipe indicates. My husband would have preferred slightly less of the rub -- he doesn't like much to distract him from the flavor of the beef itself -- but the women at the table went back for seconds.

The tomato confit, which is quite tasty although not really a necessary element, can also be done the day before, although the recipe doesn't indicate this.

Side note -- this special issue of Gourmet is probably going to be on my counter for a while -- there are a lot of very good-looking things in here for winter meals in the coming months.