Beef Wellington, for one or two!

I have been wanting to try doing Beef Wellington for some time now, but most recipes I have seen have been to cook a big lump of meat, which means having a few people over and then I would worry that it wouldn’t turn out too good etc etc

Anyway today I happened across a blog which inspired tonight’s dinner, Individual Beef Wellingtons!  Wished I had thought of that, but no matter I have been inspired by other’s ideas before today!  Whilst the blog I read had a recipe, I thought it needed a bit more than what was listed, so I took the meat and mushrooms from it and then made my own version from there and it worked out not too bad, made a bigger meal than I intended but it was full of great flavour and yummy crispy pastry on the outside, teamed with a gravy packed full of flavours, some mash potato and green beans, we were in Jo’s idea of heaven!

If you want to have a go at my version, here’s how I went about it.

Ingredients

2 Scotch fillet steaks, about 130 grams would be good

2 sheets puff pasty

300 grams field mushrooms

1 tbsp lemon thyme

1 clove garlic, sliced

30 gram butter
1 cup red wine

2 tbsp fresh parsley

1 cup stock

2 shallots, sliced
2tbsp mustard, I used Australian mustard, but think Hot English would be better had I been able to get it, you could use either Dijon or horseradish cream also, whatever you prefer.

1 tbsp gravox

1 egg

Preheat oven to 220C (200 fan forced)

Melt butter in a pan over medium heat, cook the mushrooms with the shallots, garlic and thyme for a few minutes, then add ½ cup of the red wine, continue to cook until wine has reduced or evaporated.  Transfer mushrooms to a bowl, lined with a few sheets of paper towel, bundle up and squeeze as much juice out as possible, reserve juice and put mushrooms into a food processor with the parsley and blitz for a couple of minutes to form a loose paste.

Reheat the pan and brown the steaks all over on a high heat, just enough to seal the meat, remove from pan and set aside to cool.

Lay a sheet of pastry out on a cutting board and spread ¼ of the mushroom mix over the centre, about the size of the steak.  Spread mustard of one side of a steak and turn over and place on top of mushies.  Now spread mustard over the top, then the other ¼ of the mushie mix. Wrap the steak up with the pastry, trim away the excess and seal the ends well.  Use the left over pastry to put a little motif on the top, I did a leaf design, which turned out to look like a mull leaf!! (now there’s a thought) , brush the pastry with beaten egg and place in oven on middle shelf, cook for 20 minutes or until pastry is golden brown.

Meanwhile, pour the mushroom juices back into the pan and add the other ½ cup of red wine and the stock, cook over high heat until reduced by half, thicken with gravox, add more water if required as needed, I used the water from the green beans to add further flavour.  (You could use plain flour or cornflour instead of gravox as there is enough flavour as it is, gravox made it a lot richer)

Serve immediately, with vegetables or salad