Beef Wellington

Usually, Curt and I spend Thanksgiving with my family in Virginia.  This year, we spent Thanksgiving in Myrtle Beach with Curt's Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Andy.  Since there were only 4 of us, it didn't really make sense to roast a whole turkey.  Instead, I decided to make something that I'd been wanting to make for a while!  It's not exactly paleo, but it was really yummy... Beef Wellington!  I modified the recipe, of course, because, although I haven't had pate, the idea of eating mushed up livers freaks me out a bit... here's my rendition of :

Individual Beef Wellington

* 4 (8 oz) filet mignon

* 1 package of puff pastry, thawed

* 1 shallot, minced

* 2 cloves garlic, minced

* 1 container of mushrooms

* 4 oz goat cheese

* 2 Tbs cooking sherry

First, I minced up the garlic and shallot and sauteed it in a bit of bacon fat.  I know it sounds gross, but bacon fat is actually very much paleo and better for you than that crap margarine stuff that's pretty much all chemicals.... Anyway, while the shallots and garlic were getting soft, I started chopping up the mushrooms.  Then I added them into the pan with the garlic and shallots.

While everything was cooking, I added in the sherry.  You have to let the sherry cook off so that it's not a "hit you in the nose" amount of sherry.  You just want a small little hint of it, really.  Once the shallot/mushroom/sherry mixture was all cooked, I moved it to a plate to cool.

Next, I added a bit more bacon grease to the pan and let it heat up.  I then prepped each steak with a bit of salt and pepper.  You have to make sure the filets are at room temperature because then they will cook more evenly.

 

For beef wellingtons, you cook them a bit in the pan, then you wrap them in phyllo dough and then bake them so they cook the rest of the way.  Curt likes his steaks medium rare, so I only cooked the steaks for about 1 - 2 minutes on each side, then set them on a plate to rest.

These steaks were filets.  They were nicely marbled, meaning there was fat in them which gives them a lot of flavor and makes them really tender.  They started smelling really yummy!  While they were resting, I unrolled the phyllo dough and cut it into 4 strips. 

I divided the mushroom mixture evenly and placed them in the middle of the dough.  Traditionally, beef wellington has pate in it, but, like I said, the idea of pureed organs didn't really appeal too much to me.  Instead,  had some goat cheese left over from the Hot dates so I decided, waste not, want not... or something like that.  So I threw some goat cheese on top of the mushrooms.

Then, I placed each steak on top of the whole thing.  Meanwhile, I had preheated the oven to 400. 

Then, I wrapped the dough over the whole thing.  It was a little bit tricky to make sure it all looked pretty and also to make sure that everything was covered all the way so the goat cheese wouldn't melt and leak out all over the place.

 So after they were all wrapped up, I stuck them on an aluminum foil lined baking sheet and popped them in the oven for about 10-15 minutes.  I just wanted to make sure they were all nice and brown on top. 

I served it with some roasted cauliflower and also some sweet potatoes with pecans and cinnamon.  It was delicious!  The filet was cooked perfectly (for me) and the mushrooms and goat cheese tasted really yummy with the steak. 

So this meal was one of my "challenge" dishes because it was supposed to be really hard.  Honestly, it wasn't that hard at all and it was really yummy.   It's a nice, fancy dish to make for a special occasion and I'll definitely have to make it again at some point!