Mini beef wellingtons

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:

• 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

What I did:

• 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

I made 18, they were all gone by the time we went to bed last night.