For years, Jeff's been mentioning how much he loves beef Wellington and every time I looked up a recipe, it just seemed overwhelming to me. Mushroom duxelles, beef tenderloin, moisture barrier, phyllo pastry dough or something, some more meat blah blah blah. Well, years later, I thought about how everything can be made in little bite sized pockets and started researching. It's till time consuming, but it was SO WORTH IT!!!
What I had:
What I had:
- 1/2 lb beef tenderloin, cut into bite sized pieces (I had about 1/2 inch squares)
- 1/2 lb mixed mushrooms, chopped finely (I had shiitake and portobella)
- 1 shallot, minced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- sea salt
- 1/4 cup Port wine
- 1/8 cup heavy cream
- prosciutto - as many strips as the number of bite sized beef pieces
- stone ground mustard (I had a horseradish one and it worked great)
- Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheets
- Preheat oven at 400
- Sauteed the shallots and garlic in 2 tablespoons of garlic pepper olive oil, till fragrant
- Put the mushrooms in and let them cook till soft, sprinkled 1/2 tbsp sea salt
- Poured the Port to deglaze the pan, which was useless since nothing sticks to my pan, so I used it for flavor
- Added the heavy cream and just let it cook for 5 minutes or so
- Used a blender stick to puree some - left some chunky mushrooms for texture
- Browned the beef pieces on all sides on high heat - about 2-3 minutes total and put them aside
- Unrolled a pastry sheet and cut into 9 squares
- Laid a slice of prosciutto across the square
- Placed a tablespoon of the mushroom mixture in the center
- Topped that with 1 teaspoon of the mustard
- Topped that with a piece of beef
- Rolled the prosciutto over the beef
- Folded the corners of the dough into the center and closed the seams together. Important: be heavy handed with this step. I wasn't and some of the pockets opened up
- Baked for 20 minutes
- Burned my tongue on the first one because I didn't wait long enough