R2R: Beef Wellington

This months host is Mz Kitchen of Madame Chow's Kitchen. She is helping us launch our new website and celebrate our 1 yr Anniversary with this great recipe! Beef Wellington! This is one of those fancy smancy dishes that was on my I'll never be able to make list. Guess what I was wrong :) Here is the official post Beef Wellington also check out the wonderful pictures here Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. If that doesn't convince you to make your own nothing will.

Beef Wellington

Ingredients
For the Duxelles:

3 pints (1 1/2 pounds) white button mushrooms
2 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
2 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves only
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the Beef:

1 (3-pound) center cut beef tenderloin (filet mignon), trimmed
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves only
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
Flour, for rolling out puff pastry
1 pound puff pastry, thawed if using frozen (follow directions on the package)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
8 ounces mousse pate, available in specialty cheese and appetizer cases of larger markets (optional)

Directions

To make the Duxelles:

Add mushrooms, shallots, garlic, and thyme to a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add butter and olive oil to a large saute pan and set over medium heat. Add the shallot and mushroom mixture and saute for 8 to 10 minutes until most of the liquid has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper and set aside to cool completely.

To prepare the beef:

Tie the tenderloin in 4 places so it holds its cylindrical shape while cooking. Drizzle with olive oil, then season with salt and pepper and sear all over, including the ends, in a hot, heavy-based skillet lightly coated with olive oil - about 2 to 3 minutes.

Using a rubber spatula cover evenly with a thin layer of duxelles. Season the surface of the duxelles with salt and pepper and sprinkle with fresh thyme leaves. When the beef is seared, remove from heat, cut off twine and smear lightly all over with Dijon mustard. Allow to cool completely.

I made the duxelles and seared the tenderloin about 10 hours in advance, and refrigerated both of them. It is important that these items are cold because you will be working with puff pastry, and if they're warm, they may cause the dough to melt before you get it in the oven.

About an hour before you plan to serve the Beef Wellington,preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the puff pastry out to about a 1/4-inch thickness. Depending on the size of your sheets you may have to overlap 2 sheets and press them together.

Spread the duxelles mixture down in a column down the middle of the rolled out puff pastry. Thinly slice the mousse and cover the duxelles with it - every square millimeter doesn't have to be covered, but you're trying to make sure that every serving gets beef, duxelle, and mousse.

Remove beef from refrigerator. Set the beef in the center of the pastry and brush all the edges of the pastry with egg wash. Fold the longer sides over the beef, and seal. Trim ends if necessary then brush with egg wash and fold over to completely seal the beef - saving ends to use as a decoration on top if desired. Place the beef seam side down on a baking sheet.

Brush the top of the pastry with egg wash then make a couple of slits in the top of the pastry using the tip of a paring knife - this creates vents that will allow the steam to escape when cooking. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until pastry is golden brown and beef registers 125 degrees F (rare) on an instant-read thermometer. Remove from oven and rest before cutting into 3/4-inch thick slices

Temper's Take:
Being on a budget I made my own mousse with chicken livers, bacon and butter. I would do it differently if I did it again, more bacon grease for starters and cook the liver in smaller batches for quality control, but it wasn't have bad for liver paste.

The puff pastry crust was lovely and something I will be playing with in the future. But other than that I had a few issues. The biggest issues is I did not get the duxelles dry enough and so ended up with soup on the bottom of my pan. No biggy, next time I will know better, and there will be a next time my little mushroom friends, muhahahaha. Sorry about that, it had to be said.

The last issue was the biggest for me, Dijon mustard, blech! I hated what it did to the flavor! It had worked fine with the Steak Diane but here it was a total flop! I think I need to invest in a mustard I will actually eat and leave the emiril stuff alone.

This recipe definitely needs a redo, fortunately with a slightly cheaper cut of meat, and making my own pate I can afford it.