Beef Wellington



This is a traditional recipe which requests a fair amount of attention. One of the tricks is to make sure that the mushroom mixture is very dry. Very often people end up with soggy pastry and that spoils the quality of this dish. Well prepared you should end up with a crispy pastry and a moist and tender piece of meat.

Ingredients
1 Fillet of beef (approx 750-900g) “silver trimmed”
350g of button mushrooms
350g shallots chopped finely
2 garlic cloves chopped
60g of chopped parsley
300g puff pastry
75g butter
1 bay leaf
3 sprigs of thyme
1 egg yolk
salt & pepper for seasoning

Instructions
Prepare the "duxcel"(mushroom mixture).
Melt the butter and cook the chopped mushrooms and chopped shallots.
Add the bay leaf, thyme and garlic.
Cook this mixture until all water has evaporated.
Season with salt and pepper, then set it aside to cool down.
Season the fillet generously with salt and pepper, then seal it for 3 to 4 minutes on every side in a very warm pan (allow more time if you want the finished product to be well done).
Set the fillet aside to cool down.

Roll the puff pastry making sure you will have an overlap of 3cm around the fillet.
Add the chopped parsley to the mushroom mixture, then spread the mixture on the puff pastry in the shape of a band large enough to sit the beef fillet on.
To finish drape the fillet with the pastry.
Use the egg yolk mixed with two tablespoons of water to seal the pastry and as a colouring agent.
Bake for 20 minutes at 180 degrees or until pastry cooked.

Serve with baked vegetables.

Compliments of your friendly Independent Butcher shop