(my future book cover)

My aunt asked me to make a dish of Beef Wellington for my Grandmother’s birthday.  So because I’ve never even seen it before, I said “hell yes” plus I’ll even take some pictures as I go (for the insurance company, when I set the oven on fire again).  So here’s how it went:

Start off with a 3 pound beef tenderloin, lots of mushrooms (I had baby portabellas and a dried northwoods blend) some red wine, about 12 slices of prosciutto,  and two sheets of puff pastry.  Spices to follow along later.  SO PAY ATTENTION!

Grab your loin and rub it down with some oil.  Yep.  Ok, enough!  Just a little bit!  Now salt and pepper it, put it in the pan, (you should have preheated your oven to 400 by now) and stick it in the oven for approximately 35 minutes.  When it’s done cooking, stick it in the fridge.  Chop up the mushrooms into tiny bits.  You can use the food processor, but just make sure to pulse them so that you don’t end up with a mess.  Side note here, those dried mushrooms, you can put them in a warm pot with about half cup of  wine and half cup of water till they soak up everything, only then chop them up.  Now put all the mushrooms in a hot pan with some butter, a generous amount of thyme and a little garlic, cook for about 10 minutes.  Pour some wine in there and cook it down for another 10 minutes.  When you’re done they look like braaaaaaains…

Now you need to lay out a sheet of plastic wrap on the counter, then lay the prosciutto down on it, then the mushrooms, then the beef, then cover the loin with the rest of the mushrooms, and roll the whole log of it up in the plastic wrap again.  Kinda like this, but with more mushrooms on top of it.

After that chilled for a while, you can flatten out the puff pastry sheets, and roll out the log onto them.  Wrap it all up so that it’s like a burrito, and then put it in the pan and back in the oven for another 30-35 minutes.  Whenever that pastry looks good.  OK PARTY PEOPLE, LET’S EAT THIS MEAT CAKE!