Us Pitcharelloes have always been great fans of Beef Wellington and a number of years ago we decided to give it a go and make it for ourselves. We had a few that didn’t come out as well as intended but have eventually found we have a winning recipe in this variation of the classic Beef Wellington
Ingredients
- 1.2 – 1.5 kg good quality fillet of beef
- a roll of ready made puff pastry
- 400g mixed mushrooms
- a few sprigs of fresh thyme or 2tsp dried thyme
- 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp of crushed garlic
- 1tsp mustard seeds (optional)
- 170g tub Pitcharelloes Chicken Liver and Mushroom Paté
- 100g pack Blue Cheese
- 1 whole egg
- a splash of olive oil
Give it a whirl!
Pre-heat your oven to 180ºC.
Prepare your fillet by removing the excess sinew from the cut of meat. Generously season with salt and pepper. Place a griddle pan over high heat and sear the fillet to get good colour and caramelization on the outer crust of the beef – probably needs about 3-4 mintues on either side. Set aside to rest.
Next move onto the mushrooms. Take your mushrooms and finely chop them with a knife (not a food processor as this would be too fine). Then take the olive oil into a cool pan and add the tablespoon of crushed garlic. I find it’s important to place the garlic into cool oil as this way it doesn’t burn and thus flavours the oil further. Once the oil starts to heat and the garlic is agitated, place the mushrooms in the pan and add the thyme. The idea here is not to cook the mushrooms but to get enough heat through them to allow the moisture within them to release. Once this starts to happen, add the mustard seeds and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Remove from the pan and place in a colander to drain the excess juices.
Now take some tinfoil and lay a large piece on the counter. Remove the puff pastry from the packaging and roll it out slightly thinner than what is provided and make sure that is as wide or slightly wider than your fillet creating a square of sorts. If you have a large/long fillet then you may need two rolls of puff pastry and you use half the second roll but make sure you get a fair bit of overlapping taking place so that it helps to ‘seal’ the fillet while cooking. Take your mushrooms from the colander and spread thinly over the pastry, the same width as the fillet creating a ‘bed’ for the beef to rest on.
Take a butter knife and literally coat the top of the fillet completely with liver pate, much like icing a cake! Then grab your blue cheese and crumble this over the paté and sprinkle half the chopped rosemary.
Then you want to wrap the fillet like a Christmas present! Press down onto the join of the pastry to seal it tight. Then take it off the foil and place upside down into a baking tray so that the seal is on the underside and you have a perfect pastry on top. Beat the egg and then brush over the whole pastry with the egg wash. Sprinkle the remaining rosemary over the pastry. Place the Wellington into the oven and cook for 30-35 minutes for medium rare.
Take it out the oven and allow to rest for at least 10 minutes before serving.
Slice, serve and enjoy!
