Sometimes you just want to go classic, make something festive, that would combine a bunch of great tastes in a totally old fashioned way. We all have these moments, after having too much sushi, steamed fish, farm to family, veggies, kale etc. (I like all these! but sometimes you just crave that piece of meat…). So yesterday night, when I was looking at the 2lb piece of dry aged rib eye lying in my fridge thinking about what to do with it, I had a Beef Wellington moment. Beef Wellington is a dish originally designed to add flavors to a fillet mignon, which is the most tender part of the beef, but lacks a bit of “meatyness” in comparison to other parts, some would even mention the word bland in this context, not sure I would go as far, if you get the right filet. The classic Wellington consists of wrapping a whole filet in puff pastry, with mushroom duxelles, prosciutto and sometimes even foie gras. The motivation for me to make Beef Wellington last night was driven by a piece of ribeye that was lying in my fridge, looking at me with its one eye and reminding me that unfortunately I haven’t yet bought an aging refrigerator for my home, and that it wouldn’t last forever there. Given that my ribeye was on the leaner side (for ribeyes), I decided to do a small surgery on it making it a “mock fillet”. The result was a lot of fun, obviously, the ribeye has much more flavor than a fillet, and the combination of it with puff pasty, mushroom duxelles, and nicely concentrated jus that I made from the ribeye bone with some onion, carrot and celery, was divine. Sometimes, it’s fun taking something that is already very rich in taste, and making it just tiny bit richer… As in the quote from the famous cult film Operation Grandma “how to win a race? you start at full speed and slowly slowly accelerate”… bon appetit!

Beef Wellington Tante Esther version

Ingredients:

2 lbs of ribeye, trimmed from fat (requires a bit of skill and a sharp knife but not rocket science).

1 sheet of butter based puff pastry

1 lb mushrooms (whatever you find in the market is cool, I used shitake as that’s what I found, you can go fancy with chanterelles or even porcini, if you find fresh ones)

3-4 shallots

two tablespoons of butter

some olive oil

one egg yolk

For the jus:

some bones and beef meat trimmings

1 carrot

half onion

half a celery root

a couple of celery leaves

2-3 cups of water

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 425F. Given that you’d want to chill the beef and duxelles before putting it inside the puff pastry (to avoid the beef from getting overcooked while the puff pastry is still not cooked) you’d want to start with lightly browning the beef from all sides, on high heat with some of the fat you trimmed before, once done, put in the freezer so that it chills quickly. In parallel, put chop the mushrooms and shallots in a food processor. Then put the chopped mushrooms and shallots with half the butter in a frying pan and sauté and stir for 10 minutes making sure a lot of the mushroom liquids evaporate, once done, spread on a plate and put in the freezer to chill. Once you set the mushrooms to start sauteing, put all the beef trimmings and bones with some olive oil in a pan, brown them well, and then add the vegetables for 2-3 minutes on medium heat, add 2-3 cups of water and let simmer for ~45 minutes (basically till you serve, the more time the better, and you can make the jus ahead of time, or just reduce a good beef stock you already have). After the beef and duxelles had 10-15 mins to chill in the freezer, it’s time to put together the dish. Lay the puff pastry sheet on a small cooking pan, spread half of the duxelles onto a thick circular layer that is roughly the size of the ribeye, then place the ribeye on top of it, and spread the rest of the duxelles on top of the ribeye. Then pull the puff pastry sheet to cover the whole thing, making sure the thickness of the puff pastry is similar from all sides. Brush the puff pastry with egg yolk from all accessible sides (not from the bottom of it…) and make a small chimney at the top to let vapor escape prevent the pastry from getting soggy. Put in the oven for 20 mins (or until browning of the puff pasty). Take out of the oven, let it rest for 5 minutes, slice, throw the remaining butter into the reduced jus, pour the jus on top, and serve.

4 lbs (2KGs) of beef short rib or any other type of fatty meat for slow cooking (shoulder could work too but it has to be a fatty part!). The “good” fat is in the marbling and in between meat layers, if there is bulk fat on the sides you can trim it out.

3 carrots

5-10 garlic cloves

10 shallots

1 bottle of wine

1/4 glass of brandy

3-4 potatoes.

Thyme/rosmary 

Salt pepper to taste.

Brown the meat well in a heavy cast iron pot, on medium heat till it’s nice and brown on all sides, salt and pepper the meat. Take out of the pot. Make sure you don’t have any burnt remainders of the meat at the bottom of the pot, just the nice brown caramels – hence medium and not high heat.

Fry the veggies lightly (not the garlic) for 2-3 minutes in the same pot with the remaining fat and extract the caramels from the bottom of the pot, add a bit of water if needed.

Put everything back in the pot (including the garlic and the thyme/rosemary).

Bring to boiling and remove any foam.

Add the potatoes sliced into 4 or 8 on top. They can be outside the broth, they will cook well in the steam.

Close the lid and put in the oven for 3 hours at 170 celsius, if the sauce gets too evaporated, add some water; if the sauce doesn’t thicken enough, reduce it on the stove after cooking so that it is nice and concentrated (it depends on the sealing of the pot and on how much it allows evaporation in the oven).

“De-grease” the floating fat with a spoon.

Important to use a cast iron pot (Le-Creuset or similar).

Bon appétit!