Beef Wellington

Tesco sell bags of vacuum packed steaks, and quite often they turn up in the reduced section of the chilled aisles. They are usually a pretty good bargain, who can argue with half price British fillet steak?! As a bonus, the fact they are well sealed in the vacuum pack means you can beat them with a rolling pin for extra tenderness without getting steak juice all over the kitchen.

Since they were bargainous I figured I would try my hand at beef wellington, it was unlikely to be completely inedible, but at least if it was I would not have ruined expensive steak (see how much faith I have in my cooking skills?). It turned out very tasty, so I am sharing it here, it is maybe not the official way, but I pieced it together from ones I have seen on TV, yes I could have looked the recipe up, but never mind.

Ingredients:

Fillet steak, either one bit per person for individual ones or a bit big enough to share

Farmhouse pate, it has mushrooms in there so saves time/faffing

Puff pastry

Egg, beaten in a jug for sealing/egg wash

Anything you would like to serve with your beef wellington, I added new potatoes, peas and sweetcorn

Set the oven warming up to about 200 degrees C.

Put the steak into a hot frying pan pan to seal it on all sides, make it nicely brown then take it off the heat, leave it to sit while you do the next bit.

Roll out the pastry, you want to make a rectangle that is quite a bit more than twice the size of your chunk of steak.

Spread some pate on the pastry sheet, just off centre, covering an area the same size as the steak, then sit your nicely browned steak on top, it will look a bit like this:

Spread beaten egg around the edges of the steak

Fold the other half of the pastry over the top and fold all the edges in, give then a good squeeze to seal them (for some reason this photo has rotated 180 degrees, logically the folds would be at the bottom). Optionally egg wash the top of the parcel if you have a lot of egg leftover.

Put the parcel of tastiness onto a non stick sheet on a baking tray and into the oven until the pastry is a lovely golden brown, it will probably be fifteen to twenty minutes.

Serve up with your choice of tasty sides, enjoy eating.

As you can see I accidentally made HUGE parcels. When the steaks came out of the bag they looked a bit small and feeble so I did one each. This is deceptive as we could have comfortably shared one parcel between two people.

What mincer?

After much faffing around the half pig is ordered (more on that in another post), it will be ready on Friday afternoon, which left me with a bit of a problem as I had not got my mincer/sausage stuffer combo organised.

I have done quite a lot of research, originally I was going to buy a sausage starter kit with the classic bolts to a table cast iron type, like the ones they sell here, most likely as part of a kit with skins and rusk.

I would have preferred a stainless steel one though as it would be easier to maintain, they can be found here, but were a little out of my price range.

During my research I had seen various plastic mincers, but written them off as flimsy, until I came across this one on the Lakeland website. It had excellent reviews apart from people having issues with the suction fitting. Since time was short and there is a Lakeland shop nearby (ish, its in Nottingham) I rang them to check there was one in stock and went to collect it yesterday.

It is variously called a meat mincer (the shop and website) a health mincer (the instructions) and a pasta maker (??!! the box).

It does have three pasta attachments, but I would say it is a mincer that does pasta, rather than a pasta maker that does mince (does that make sense to you?). It also comes with two grades of mincing blade, a chopping blade, a meat tray, meat poker/suction cup key and a sausage nozzle. The nozzle is not overly long, but the skins I have come in short lengths so that is fine.

I picked up some beef to give it a trial run, just in case it was a disaster I didn't want huge amount of pork sat waiting while I frantically tried to find an alternative.

It was not a disaster, and so far I am very impressed, a huge advantage over the alternatives being that it comes apart completely and being made of plastic and stainless steel (the blades) it washes easily, no worries about stuck bits of meat in the machine.

The suction worked perfectly on the granite slab, but also seem ok on my slightly textured worktop.

The only slight problem is that the crank handle is longer than the machine so it has to hang over the side of the work surface, but I guess that does give more leverage and it was not an issue.

It will get its real test when the pork arrives, but so far it has a big thumbs up.

Loughborough Farmer's Market June 2011

Today was the Farmer's Market in Loughbrough, it was a lucky find because despite knowing that it is the second Wednesday of the month I always forget and miss it. I went into town to post a parcel and there it was.

In fact, this month's market was a good one as there were extra stalls on a "Green and ethical" theme. This meant lots of crafty things to look at and a few environmental stalls. I even found a lady selling wool but none that took my fancy today.

I would have taken my camera if I had realised but I have a photo of my purchases instead.

I picked up six free range eggs, three duck eggs, some black pudding, faggots and casserole steak.

There are quite a few meat stalls to choose from with a range of meats- chicken, beef lamb, pork, even ostrich. The three meaty purchases were all from the Woodhouse Farm stall as we tried their beef last month and found it very tasty.

Duck eggs had been recommended to us for boiled eggs. We gave some supermarket ones a try but really couldn't tell the difference so not worth the extra, they are not even much bigger. These on the other hand are HUGE compared to the chicken eggs so we shall see how they taste.

Next time I am going to have a look at the free range chickens available. I have my suspicions that Tesco have put their prices up as the approximately £8.50 bird I usually buy seems smaller and had a shorter cooking time. This might make the £/kg more competitive with the added bonus of local.

There were also a choice of veg sellers and baked goodies, but it was all about the meat and eggs for me today. I am never totally sold on the provenance of veg at some of the markets, I suspect they are just the same as at a typical market or from a supermarket in terms of sourcing and quality. I may investigate this next month.

Recipe- Beef bourguignon

This might seem like a strange choice for a first post considering how much I bang on about the best of British, but it is not the name of the dish or the origin of the recipe that makes the food, it is the ingredients.

An early warning- there are a lot of pictures as I did this step by step.

I did not plan to make this for the blog, so the ingredients are as they came from the fridge/cupboard, I thought I would see how well I did making this out of British produce and try to do better next time.

Ingredients (In the order you need them):

1 leek (UK)

3 cloves of garlic (unknown, no label)

2 large carrots (British)

1 tsp olive oil (Non specified EU origin)

400g pack of casserole beef, chopped into chunks (British)

1 large glass of red wine (French)

1 stock cube (No idea, not labelled on the box)

2 large glasses of water (UK, from the tap)

1 tsp olive oil (Non specified EU origin)

4 rashers of bacon (British)

6 large chestnut mushrooms (Ireland), or other variety if you prefer

8 shallots (British)

1 tbsp corn flour (Non specified EU)

1/3 mug cold water (UK, from the tap)

Set the oven to 180 degrees C

Wash and slice the leeks. Peel and slice the carrots. Peel and crush the garlic.

Heat the oil in a large casserole dish or pan and brown the beef.

Take the browned beef out of the pan (the lid is a good place to store it). Add the leeks and garlic and lightly fry until the leeks look a little see through, you will need to keep stirring them to avoid burning.
Add the sliced carrots, browned meat and stir
Add the red wine, stock cube and one glass of water. Stir well.
Put the lid on and place in the oven at 180 degrees C for two hours. Check occasionally and add a little more water if it is looking dry.

After two hours prepare the shallots (peel) and mushrooms (quarter).

Finely chop the bacon and fry in 1 tsp of oil.

Once the bacon is crispy add the mushrooms and shallots. Fry until the mushrooms are soft, the shallots should be lightly browned where they have been touching the pan.

Take the casserole dish out of the oven. Stir in the bacon, shallots and mushrooms. Put back in the oven for another hour.

About five minutes before serving mix the cornflour with cold water in a jug, stir into the casserole and return to the oven for a few minutes.

Serve with potatoes and veggies and what is left of the bottle of wine. Enjoy!