Friday, September 27, 2013

Beef Wellington

This week, we are offering a famous English dish that many people know about, but seldom find in our area.  Our chef has put together the classic Beef Wellington.

Named after the Duke of Wellington (the famous military general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo), this dish is named in his honor due to the fact that it was the only thing he would serve at dinner parties.  Others believe that it is named after the final dish looks like that of a wellington boot, but we'll let you be the judge of that.


Beef Wellington is a cut of filet wrapped in pate and then baked in a pastry crust.  Our own version of this is similar, but still has a few eclectic twists to make the dish something unique.  Instead of typical pate, we use imported pate (pate being a mixture of meat and liver ground with herbs, vegetables, and animal fat to create a spreadable paste).

We then mix it with freshly made duxelle and bake it until the pastry is a flaky and buttery golden brown. For those of you who are not fluent in French cuisine, duxelle are finely chopped mushrooms (in our case, portobello) with shallots and herbs that are reduced to a paste, similar to pate. It is served over our housemade béarnaise.

This hearty dish pairs perfectly with a glass of merlot or cabernet sauvignon (or for the more daring, any sherry glass of one of our many port wine offerings) and is sure to help usher in the cooler fall weather.

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