Category: recipe

Beef Wellington Notes

Writ­ten 12/18/23

Non-Mushroom Duxelles

Dic­ing tofu and bacon
  • Diced onion and gar­lic
  • Diced bacon (used 4 slices)
  • Diced tofu (half car­ton)
  • Soy sauce, mild salt, pep­per, a dash of mus­tard, worces­ter­shire, red wine, veg­an oys­ter sauce, hoisin sauce
  • Any herbs you’d like (I used a pinch of herbs de provence)
  • Make in same skil­let as seared beef
  • Make sure it has time to cool

Beef

Brown­ing in cast iron skil­let
  • Make sure to use actu­al ten­der­loin (think pork ten­der­loin) or if using anoth­er cut then cut­ting it to about 10in x 3in
  • Can also use steaks or small bites of anoth­er cut
  • Set out 30min pri­or to sear­ing
  • Tie up if nec­es­sary
  • Soy sauce, red wine
  • Salt, pep­per, gar­lic pow­der, what­ev­er dry sea­son­ing on all sides, press­ing into meat
  • Let sit for a bit
  • Heat up skil­let, then brown all sides for about 1 min on each side
  • Set into sep­a­rate dish and smear mus­tard on it. Let sit to cool down

Puff Pastry/Compiling

Looks like mush­rooms! But they’re not!
  • Make sure Puff pas­try is thawed
  • Lay out plas­tic wrap and then puff pas­try on top
  • Roll it out to make it thin
  • Pack the dux­elles onto it, leav­ing a lit­tle side space
  • Then place the beef towards the bot­tom and use the plas­tic wrap to roll it up being care­ful not to make it too thick (or it will have trou­ble cook­ing prop­er­ly) by trim­ming excess
  • When it’s rolled up in the plas­tic wrap, smooth out the seams then put it in the fridge for about 20ish min­utes

Cooking

Used the left­over pas­try to make a quick apple turnover
  • Pre­heat oven to 425F
  • Unroll and place welling­ton on a foil lined bak­ing sheet
  • Care­ful­ly cut slits in the top. You can be cre­ative here or not
  • Use a wash (egg or veg­an) for the top
  • Sprin­kle salt over that
  • Bake about 20 to 35 min­utes to desired done­ness, 125F for medi­um rare
  • Puff pas­try should be a nice gold­en brown
  • Let sit for at least 10 min­utes
  • Cut into 1inch pieces

Notes

12/18/23: used eye round beef which was MUCH too large and would not cook through quick­ly. Puff pas­try was too thick and did­n’t cook through. End­ed burn­ing and smok­ing some­thing awful. Placed mon­i­tor­ing probe in the side which caused a leak in the welling­ton. Rec maybe just an instant read ther­mome­ter in the top for the future. Took 1 hour and a half because too large. Taste was good, done­ness typ­i­cal for Beef Welling­ton, dux­elle was good! Puff pas­try too burnt and undone to be eat­en. Bot­tom line: beef too big, too much pas­try and too thick. Would opt for a more ten­der meat cut and if large then cut small­er.

Old Fashioned Apple Dumplings

writ­ten 10/15/2023

What

Old-Fash­ioned Apple Dumplings: Peeled and Cored apples wrapped in dough and baked

Ingredients

Main: Apples, Brown Sug­ar, Gran­u­lat­ed Sug­ar, Apple Pie Sea­son­ings (cin­na­mon, nut­meg, all­spice, or what­ev­er you’d like), But­ter (reg­u­lar or veg­an), Dough (hand­made or bought pie crust), water/apple juice

Sup­plies: Peel­er, Cor­er, Bak­ing Dish, Roller, Work Sur­face, Saucepan, Bast­ing Brush

Option­al: Ice Cream

Time

1 hour (peel, core, roll, wrap, and make sauce) + 1 hour (bake) = 2 hours Total

Making

  • Choose your apples
  • Peel and core them
  • Pre­heat the oven to 375F (190C)
  • Acquire and roll out the dough (whether you make it or buy pie crust)
  • Place the apple in the mid­dle, and then cut a rough­ly cross shape
  • Using a 2:1 Brown Sug­ar to White Sug­ar mix + apple pie spices, put a bit inside the cored-out area, plus a dol­lop of but­ter (I topped mine off with some more sug­ar)
  • Add some around the base of the apple
  • Wet­ting the pieces so they stick (I used apple juice), wrap the apple up
  • If you’d like, this is where you can get cre­ative with hid­ing the seams or using them to your dec­o­ra­tive advan­tage (I used some dough to make fun shapes)
  • Put apples on a bak­ing dish
  • In the saucepan, add but­ter + brown sug­ar + apple juice (I used the apple juice from wet­ting the dough and the sug­ar mix­ture)
  • Stir it fre­quent­ly until it becomes a syrupy sauce
  • Using a bast­ing brush, brush it onto the sur­face of the apples
  • Bake for 50–55 min­utes
  • Take it out, and use remain­ing sauce to drizzle/brush over­top

EAT with ice cream

Notes

I had to bake mine for 1 hour and 30 min­utes because I made the mis­take of using ALL of the sauce over­top the apples which then cre­at­ed a pool at the bot­tom of the dish. AVOID THIS. I spec­u­late that’s why it took so long to bake. That’s why I rec­om­mend just brush­ing it over­top and not pour­ing over the top like most recipes call for

Over­bak­ing caus­es the apples to dry out and the tops to get super hard espe­cial­ly with the sauce over top

If you don’t like crust (like me), make that dough THIN

I don’t think I’d do this again, instead opt­ing for cut apples in a bak­ing dish and a lay­er of dough over­top that with fun shapes. I’m not a mas­sive fan of crust

If I were to do it again, though, I’d roll the crust thin­ner, and maybe add some liq­uid to the inside of the apple (con­tem­plate leav­ing the bot­tom of the apple or mak­ing the crust thick­er there). It just felt dry even if I did over­bake it

Be care­ful of the seams that will bust open and release any sauce inside