Beef Wellington

Its been a while since ive had the opportunity to log on and post so here is a wee cracker i throw together every festive period. At christmas i always make a little beef Wellington on St Stephens day….  (Boxing Day).

I personally use sliced pork that is the same cut as pancetta which is smoked in the Czech republic and adds a real deep flavour to the Wellington. If you don’t like Smoked pancetta just use prosciutto crudo instead as its cheaper than Parma ham.

This helps to retain moisture and prevents the crispy pastry from going soggy!

Ingredients

400g           Chestnut mushrooms

4                 Shallots

1                 Clove garlic

1                 Knob of butter

1                 Sprig of thyme chopped

10               Slices, smoked pancetta

1                 Egg

1kg             Scottish beef fillet (my preferred choice), rubbed with a little rapeseed oil.

                   Ready to roll puff pastry

                   Rapeseed oil

                   Flour for dusting

Method

Pre heat oven to 200oc

Make a Mushroom duxell by putting your mushrooms in a food processor and pulsing until in very small pieces, set aside.  In a frying pan Sweat off your shallots, thyme and garlic in the knob of butter. Season with salt and pepper, chuck in your pulsed mushrooms and cook out until the whole mixture becomes dry paste. Set aside to cool or place in the fridge.

Heat a frying pan until almost smoking, place your meat in the pan, season with salt and pepper and seal all around to help keep the juices inside when cooking. Set aside.

Place a layer of cling film on your bench and layer with pancetta. enough to cover your length of beef!

Now take your duxell and spread over the pancetta, place a layer of cling film on top and roll with a rolling-pin until it totally covers the pancetta. This helps give a nice even layers of meat and duxell and looks great when cooked.

Remove the top layer of cling film and set your beef on top of the duxell and pancetta. This is the difficult part, take your time! Lift up the bottom piece of cling film and pull over the top of the beef.

Dust your bench with a little flour. Take a third of the ready to roll puff pastry and roll out at about 1/2cm. Set your beef on top and roll. Brush with egg yolk to seal and then brush the whole of the pastry with the remainder of yolk and rest on a tray in the fridge for 30 minutes. Gently score with a knife without breaking through the pastry into the meat!

Cook in the pre heated oven for 20-25 minutes for medium rare. Allow to rest for 15 minutes before slicing into generous slices and serving.

I clearly didn’t allow this to rest enough as you can see there is a little leakage but my parents were simply starving and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do!

An added bonus was that we had some amazing Czech wine to wash it down, I don’t normally drink white wine with red meat but this is an exception. This wine is classified as a fresh wine. This particular wine is called Muskat Moravsky and is from the moravia region. If you are in the Moravia region of Czech republic, visit this vineyard, they simply have some of the best wines ive ever tasted!

Have fun, Big Al