Rightio! Finally I get around to the challenge. Good thing we didn't do this last weekend, because the beef fillet we bought was $40! Still, its bigger than I thought, if I make this again I might make individual wellingtons, they would look so cute on a plate too.
As I mentioned previously, I chose John Torode's Beef Wellington recipe, mainly because I know he is a meat man, he understands the welli, and knows it can go very very wrong.
Heres the recipe:
15g dried ceps
1-1.4kg beef fillet, trimmed
50g butter
2 shallots
2 garlic cloves, chopped
225g flat mushrooms, finely chopped
2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
170g chicken liver pate
160g parma ham, sliced
375g puff pastry
1 egg, beaten
Put the ceps (porcini mushrooms) into a bowl and cover with 100ml boiling water. Leave to rehydrate for 30 mins, drain reserving the liquid (liquor). Chop the mushrooms and set aside.
Season beef, melt half the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat. When foaming, chuck the beef in and brown all over without burning the butter. Set the beef aside to cool.
Either clean the pan, or use a new pan, melt rest of butter and add chopped shallots and cook for about a minute before adding garlic and rehydrated ceps, and the thyme. Then add rest of the flat mushroom and liquor, cook until mushrooms are dry.
Beat pate with a mixer until smooth then add mushrooms to the mix. Season to taste.
Place the cold beef fillet on a board and smother half the mushroom mix all over it. Lay out some cling wrap, place half the parma ham overlapping on to the cling film, then place the beef mushroom side down onto the ham. Smear the rest of the mushroom mix on the beef, and the remaining parma ham (again, overlapping), before wrapping in cling film. Chuck it in the fridge to chill.
Heat oven to 220°C. Cut a third of the pasty (if not using prerolled) and roll out to a sheet 3mm thick and 2.5cm larger than the base of the beef. Transfer to a baking sheet, prick with a fork and bake for 12 mins until brown and crisp. Cool, then trim to size of the beef.
Get the beef out of the fridge, brush with some of the beaten egg and place on cooked pastry. Roll out remaining pastry, cover the beef with it tucking the ends under and sealing edges. Brush with rest of egg, chuck it on a baking sheet and cook for 40mins for rare to medium rare.
Remove the welli from the oven and stand for 10 minutes before carving.
Now, this is where I varied.... Firstly, I adjusted the amount used because I don't need to feed 8 people! Also, I found dried ceps int he supermarket but they were $5 for a small bag! Plus they didn't have flat mushrooms in the supermarket, so I went with some brown Swiss style mushrooms, delicious. I found it hard to find chicken liver pate that wasn't flavoured, so I went with a plain chicken and pork. I contemplated making my own but remember the nightmare Mel went through to make those delicious little puffs for Emma's wedding party, so decided against it.
I used prerolled puff pastry, and the proscuitto I used was really thickly cut so difficult to 'wrap' such a large hunk of meat. Other than that I followed it to a tee. Except JT doesn't mention anything about drinking bubbly while making it, I think I need to write to him to amend the recipe method to suit.
JT suggests to serve with honey roasted parsnips, and without any other inspiration I went with that, and glad I did. The meat man really knows his stuff.
And the verdict? It was a HUGE effort although not difficult at all. Very glad I had a glass of bubbles at hand through the process, cos it took aaaaages, over 2.5 hours. But... oh my. When my husband has a bite and gasps and says 'HOW ARE YOU NOT A CHEF?!' this is the scorecard for me! It was amazing. Beyond amazing. John Torode got it right hands down, and even though I made adjustments, it was bloody awesome.
I also made a side salad, but once again we didn't touch it, the meat was enough!
We paired it with a tasty Malbec, I wanted a heavier red because we used beef fillet. And it was lush. If you have the time to drink and prepare a dinner for 2 hours, and you love love love beef, please try this. I will make it again. And again. And again. Beautiful.
