Beef Wellington is a dish made with a fine piece Tenderloin (‘Ossehaas’ in Dutch). It is a good piece of meat for days with festivities because part of the preparation can be done in the morning (they take about 30 min) and part of the preparation can be done approximately one hour before the dish is to be served. Since it needs to sit in the oven for about 30 min+ 5-10 min resting time. You have a time slot to prepare for your vegetables.
Early in the day.
Clarify butter.
Starts off by preparing ‘Duxelles’. A dry mixture of finely chopped shallots and mushroom.
- 500 gr finely chopped mushrooms
- 3-4 shallots finely chopped shallots
- 4 tablespoons of Madeira (you can use Port wine too)
- 4 tablespoons of cream
Fry the shallots and mushrooms in the clarified butter until all moisture has evaporated from the mix. Then add the Madeira and the cream. Keep steering until the mix occurs dry. If the mix is to wet it will interact badly with the dough in bad ways later.
Next step is to brown the beef (a Tenderloin of 1-1.5 kg). As always with beef use a heavy pan (high heat capacity), make sure you use plenty of fat (also heat capacity) and keep moving the meet around while browning it. In about 5 minutes your beef will be golden brow. Let it rest for at least 10 min (but you can allow it to cool down until the afternoon).
Timewarp
About 1 hour before serving you will need to finish the Duxelles by mixing it with about 125 gr of Pate de Foix Gras d’Oi. Then take your beef and cover the lot with the Duxelles.
Now take sufficient leaves of prefab (ouch) puff pastry and stick them together with egg-whites. You should have sufficient area to cover the whole beef. Put the Beef on top of the pastry and close the pastry. Put the lot on a piece of baking paper with the puff pastry seams down.
