The culinary history of Beef Wellington is a bit of a mystery. Many theories exist as to its origin–all of them lacking hard evidence–but none support invention any earlier than the 20th Century. The earliest recipe found titled “Beef Wellington” was published in 1940 in The Palmer House Cook Book and is a much simpler version than the classic which came to prominence in the 1960s. Beef Wellington was the premier party dish of the time: it was rich, dramatic, expensive, and seemed difficult and time-consuming to prepare. As couples started engaging in culinarily keeping up with the Jones, dinner parties became elaborate as complicated recipes were prepared more frequently. Beef Wellington was considered difficult and expensive because it required puff pastry and pate de foie gras. It defined what a gourmet dish should be.

While it is not known exactly who invented Beef Wellington, there is a long Anglo-Irish-French tradition of meat cooked in pastry. The Wellington steak of England, the steig Wellington of Ireland, and the French dish known as Filet de Boeuf en Croute could all claim influence. Whether the English, the Irish, or the French first baked filet of beef in a crust we may never know, but I think we can be fairly sure the French would not have named it after Wellington.

The classic Beef Wellington is a fillet of beef tenderloin coated with pate de foie gras and a duxelles of mushrooms that are then all wrapped in a puff pastry crust. “Wellington” is sometimes informally used to describe other dishes in which meat is baked in a puff pastry; the most common variations use sausage, lamb, or salmon.

While watching the finale of The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs, Chef Elizabeth Falkner chose Beef Wellington as one of her dishes. Both Renée and I thought it looked great and although I’d seen it before and knew of the dish, I couldn’t remember ever ordering it in a restaurant and I’d never prepared it before. A quiet Christmas Eve dinner with my bride seemed like the perfect time give it a go as part of the celebration.

Chef Falkner wrapped her tenderloin with prosciutto instead of pate and I liked that idea, so I decided to do the same.

Duxelles is made with any cultivated or wild mushroom, depending on the recipe. Wild porcini mushrooms provide a much stronger flavored than white or brown mushrooms. Fresh is best but reconstituted dried varieties work, too. Leftover duxelles can be spread on toasted slices of baguette to make a crostini or can also be filled into a pocket of raw pastry and baked as a savory tart.

To make duxelles, add mushrooms, shallots, garlic, and thyme to a food processor and pulse until you get a finely chopped mixture. Add butter and olive oil to a large saute pan and set over medium heat. Add the mushroom and shallot mixture and saute for 8 to 10 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated. You want a paste-like consistency. Season with salt and pepper and set aside to cool.

If you choose to make your own puff pastry, there are plenty of recipes out there, but  many of the frozen varieties are quite good and easy to work with. Depending on the tenderloin you get, you may have to tie the tenderloin in 4 places so it holds its cylindrical shape while cooking. Mine was pretty solid, so I didn’t tie it. Drizzle it with olive oil, then season with salt and pepper and sear all over, including the ends, in a hot, heavy-based skillet lightly coated with olive oil – about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Meanwhile set out your prosciutto on a sheet of plastic wrap on top of your cutting board. Make sure the plastic is about a foot and a half in length so you can wrap and tie the roast up in it. Lay the prosciutto in overlapping layers so it forms a rectangle that is big enough to encompass the entire filet of beef. Use a rubber spatula to cover the prosciutto evenly with a thin layer of duxelles. Season the surface of the duxelles with salt and pepper and sprinkle with fresh thyme leaves. When the beef is seared, remove from the heat, cut off the twine if you tied it and coat lightly all over with Dijon mustard. Allow to cool slightly, then roll up in the duxelles covered prosciutto using the plastic wrap to tie it up nice and tight. Tuck in the ends of the prosciutto as you roll to completely encompass the beef. Roll it up tightly in plastic wrap and twist the ends to seal it completely and hold it in a nice log shape. Set in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to ensure it maintains its shape.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. (See below for Fingerling Potatoes.)

On a lightly floured surface, roll the puff pastry out to about a 1/4-inch thickness. Depending on the size of your sheets you may have to overlap 2 sheets and press them together. Remove beef from refrigerator and unwrap the plastic. Set the beef in the center of the pastry and fold over the longer sides, brushing with egg wash to seal. Trim ends if necessary then brush with egg wash and fold over to completely seal the beef – saving ends to use as a decoration on top if desired. Top with coarse sea salt. Place the beef seam side down on a baking sheet.

Brush the top of the pastry with egg wash then make a couple of slits in the top of the pastry using the tip of a paring knife – this creates vents that will allow the steam to escape when cooking. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes OR until pastry is golden brown and beef registers 125 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer. Remove from oven and rest before cutting into thick slices. Garnish with minced chives, and serve with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F and place a baking sheet inside to heat.

Add potatoes, rosemary, sage, thyme, and garlic to a medium bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Remove sheet pan from oven, lightly coat with olive oil, and pour potatoes onto pan. Place potatoes in oven and reduce heat to 425 degrees F. Roast for 20 minutes, or until crispy on outside and tender on inside.

I preheated the oven to 500 F then lowered it to 425 F before putting the beef in. I planned to cook the beef for 15-20 minutes, then put the potatoes in until the beef reached the proper temperature. My tenderloin cooked in only about 25 minutes, so I put it in the microwave to rest until the potatoes were finished.

Renée and I really liked this dish. It was rich, flavorful, and complex. Besides the obvious upside of a nice beef tenderloin, this dish does have a certain elegance to it. I can appreciate why it was such a popular choice among dinner party hosts. Regardless of its reputation, this is not difficult to make. If does take some time, but good cooking is worth it. If nothing else, I think I found a new tradition for Christmas Eve at our house.

Yesterday while I was making pies, Renée made the off-hand comment that I should do a video with some tips. The next thing I knew she was standing in front of me with her phone asking me questions. In light of this video ambush, I thought I might elaborate further in the tips I shared in the video.

Making great pie crust takes practice, but it’s not impossible. If you haven’t tried it, here are some tips that may prove useful.

1. As with other cooking, mise en place is essential. Be sure to have everything prepped, measured, and ready to go before you begin.

2. After you’ve prepped and measured, chill EVERYTHING, including dry ingredients and your pie plates or tins. Flaky pie crust comes from well-distributed pockets of fat in the dough. Working with cold ingredients keeps some of the fat in solid little chunks which melt when heated and act as steam pockets for the moisture that evaporates from the dough leaving a layered, flaky crust. If you’re using shortening, you may have to put in in the freezer for a few minutes; it just doesn’t get hard enough in the refrigerator.

3. Work quickly. This is why mise en place is your friend. It eliminates wasted time. The warmer your dough gets, the less flaky it will be.

4. Don’t over mix. You want to coat the fat with the flour, not blend them together like you would a cookie dough. When cutting the fat in to the dry ingredients you can use a food processor (pulse, don’t let it run!), a pastry cutter, or a fork. As soon as you have pea-sized pieces and a mealy texture, stop! You’re ready to add the moisture that will bind the dough.

5. Add the liquid slowly and stop sooner than you think you should. Add your liquid one tablespoon at a time. You may not use all the liquid specified in the recipe, and that’s okay! Each batch is different. At this point, rely on your eyes, not the recipe. If you’ve used a food processor to mix the flour and fat, this is a good time to dump the mixture into a mixing bowl and do the rest by hand. Use a fork to mix; don’t mash or stir. Mashing or stirring blends the fat and flour together so that is can’t absorb enough water, which means that little or no steam can form to expand the layers. If your dough crumbles as you try to gather it into a ball, add more water a few drops at a time until it becomes more cohesive.

6. Chill the dough at least 30 minutes. Most recipes call for forming the dough into a disk before chilling. I prefer to roll it out inside of a 64 ounce Zip-lock bag or two sheets of parchment before chilling. It makes the dough easier to work with after it’s chilled. Plus, then all you have to do is place it in the pan and form the edges.

7. Blind bake the crust. If your recipe calls for a blind or per-baked crust, as many custard pie recipes do, put your dough-lined pie plate in the freezer for about 10 minutes. This prevents the crust from slipping down the sides while baking. When the crust is chilled, line the pie crust with parchment paper, wax paper, or aluminum foil. Fill at least two-thirds full with pie weights – dry beans, rice, or stainless-steel pie weights. Bake with weights for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from oven, cool a few minutes and remove the pie weights. Poke small holes in the bottom of the pie crust with a fork and return to oven (without the weights) and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Be sure to cool it completely before filling. You may need to tent the edges of the pie with aluminum foil when you bake your pie, to keep the edges from burning.

What are your pie making secrets?

Proper grammar notwithstanding, I know you’re thinking, ” Hey, Paul is dead right; there AREN’T enough songs about squash!” But before you waste a portion of your day trying to scratch out some lyrics for “The  Crookneck Squash Blues”, you might want to take a listen to this song by Australian singer/songwriter Darren Hanlon. Sadly, it’s about the other type of squash, the one that involves a racquet. Maybe if I send Darren some new lyrics he’ll do a version honoring the vegetable. One can only hope.

As for the cooking with squash, I’ve written about acorn and pattypan squash, and pumpkins before but with the wide variety of squash available year round and a plethora of great recipes for them, you can easily see the versatility of the squash family of vegetables.

It was our turn to host dinner club last night and the theme was “Fall Harvest”, so I decided to call on the acorn squash once again as our main dish and prepared Sausage and Apple Stuffed Acorn Squash.  I liked this recipe because I thought the sweetness of the squash would pair very well with the spicy sausage. It was easy to prepare and was enjoyed by all. I tripled the recipe for dinner club, but here’s what you’ll need to prepare 4 servings:

Start your oven at least 15 minutes before you intend to use it and set it to 15 degrees below your intended temperature. This ensures that the interior of the oven will reach a uniform temperature. After you put your ingredients in the oven, turn it up to the proper temperature. Since you lose heat when you open the door, you can be sure that the oven will get up to temp quickly by jump starting the heating cycle yourself.

Combine the melted butter, garlic salt, and ground sage and brush it over the cut sides and cavity of the squash. Add salt and pepper to taste and bake in a large roasting pan, cut side up, at 400 degrees F for 1 hour or until squash is tender yet still holds its shape.

While the squash is baking, fry the pork until light brown then remove it to a strainer to drain. Keep 2 tablespoons of drippings in the pan and add the onions, celery, and mushrooms. Sauté about 4 minutes or until tender. Stir in the apples and sauté 2 more minutes.

Combine the pork, onions, celery, mushrooms, and apples with the breadcrumbs in a large bowl. Taste and season with the fresh sage, salt and pepper, then stir in the egg and 2 T fresh parsley.

Fill the squash halves with stuffing until slightly mounded. Return the squash to the over and bake, covered, for 20 more minutes, until the egg is set.  Top with shredded Romano cheese and garnish with the remainder of the parsley.

You may, like I did, have extra stuffing left over from this recipe. It goes really well in an egg scramble for breakfast and also would make a great filling for a savory breakfast pastry. I think it would also be delicious in turkey, chicken, or peppers.

Give it a try and let me know what you think! I’ll look for your music videos on YouTube.

Rub your temples, immerse yourself in thought, and marinate on this: The best way to impart amazing flavor to your food is to do stuff to it before you cook it.  The list of stuff you can do includes three of the most common methods to boost flavor: marinating, rubs, and brining. While you can marinate with a brine, you can’t brine with a marinade. If that rubs you the wrong way, break out your spices and rub that confusion into submission. Capisce?

Let Me Marinade You

Most of us have marinated food before cooking at one time or another, usually in the refrigerator, and your local supermarket likely contains many varieties from which to choose. In recent years many salad dressing makers have branched out into the marinade category after realizing that their dressings were being used as marinades.

In addition to imparting flavor, most marinades claim to tenderize as well. And while most marinades contain some acid ingredients–usually vinegar, wine, or citrus juice–that can dissolve proteins, they don’t do much beyond the surface of the food. (Most wet and dry tenderizers are based on enzymes of the papaya and are grandchildren of the late 1940′s commercial tenderizers that used papaya enzyme.) They do help add salty, sweet, acidic, and spicy flavors which contribute very well to overall enjoyment.

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

Rubs get flavors onto meats quickly. Meats with lots of surface area like flank steak, chicken breasts, and tuna steaks are good candidates. Rubs are fast and don’t add much rep time when cooking, so if you get a little last minute inspiration, you can use a pre-packaged rub or mix up one of your own if you have the right spices handy.

Rubs, as the name implies, are not simply sprinkled on top like seasonings. They’re meant to be worked into the meat thoroughly. Remember the scrub you used to get from mom after playing in the mud? You’ve got to get into all those nooks and crannies if your rub is going to do its job. Because most commercial rubs contain salt, your initial application of a rub, when left to rest for a few minutes, will pull moisture to the surface, enabling you to apply a second, third, or fourth layer.

Rubs are food-specific in flavor and texture; you wouldn’t use the same rub on chicken as you would on pork or tuna. Take a look at some commercial rubs to get ideas for what to include in your homemade versions. As always, your palate may vary.

Brine, Women, and Song

In I’m Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0, Alton Brown nails it: “Had Shakespeare chosen to reach for a culinary metaphor in his love sonnets, brining would have been the one. Brining is a wonderful thing because it’s invisible. You brine a piece of meat, cook it, cut it, serve it, and everybody tastes it and exclaims in disbelief, “Man, this is great meat. You’re a genius!” Learn to brine pork and poultry and soon you’ll be clearing room on your mantle for that Nobel Prize in cooking.” My mantle awaits.

Brines are mostly salt and sugar dissolved in water.  Add a few herbs and spices and you’ve got a magic elixir that will amaze your taste buds and change the way you cook forever.

The effectiveness of brines is simple, really. Chemistry tells us that osmotic forces enable water to flow with relative ease throughout meat. Salt a steak before cooking and you’ll see how it pulls water from the cells to the surface. Because the cells in the meat are always seeking balance, the salt on the surface needs to be balanced with the salt inside, so water is pumped out. We can use that to our advantage to pump water in, too.  If our brine is on the salty side(about 5% solution), the cells will seek to balance the salt content on the inside and will pull the salty water into the interior of the meat. The result is nicely seasoned meat that is also plump full of water. And because other flavorings are water-soluble (sugar, herbs, and spices), they’ll tag along with our salt water to add even more flavor. The salt solution traps water and flavorings in the meat and retains it during cooking resulting in juicier meats that are also harder to overcook.

The Basic Brine

I’ve used several brines with great effectiveness. A basic all-purpose brine recommended by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn in Charcuterie consists of the following:

When brining a whole turkey, I added the following to the basic brine:

The roasted turkey was so juicy and flavorful it was hard to tell the white meat from the dark meat. It was even better the next day. I was floored by the difference brining made in the flavor, texture, and moisture that permeated the turkey. Even after resting for 30 minutes, the breast meat slices were dripping as I carved. I took some to my mom’s house and made everyone taste it. What can I say; I was excited!

For a pork roast, I used one of Alton’s brines:

The roast had just a hint of citrus flavor and was buttery in texture all the way through. I never tasted a pork roast like it. Like the turkey, the pork was extremely juicy and the flavors and textures were surprising with every bite.

Brining Times

Leave a piece of meat in a brine for too long and it will be too salty, so when in doubt, cut brining time short. Make sure you give the brine time to work and the brined meat time to rest before cooking or all your effort will be lost. Here, from Charcuterie, is a general guideline on brining times:

Some general brining tips:

WHY stand we gazing on the sparkling Brine,
with wonder smit by its transparency,
And all-enraptured with its purity?
Because the unstained, the clear, the crystalline,
Have ever in them something of benign;
Whether in gem, in water, or in sky,
A sleeping infant’s brow, or wakeful eye
Of a young maiden, only not divine.
Scarcely the hand forbears to dip its palm
For beverage drawn as from a mountain-well;
Temptation centres in the liquid Calm;
Our daily raiment seems no obstacle
To instantaneous plunging in, deep Sea!
And revelling in long embrace with thee.
~William Wordsworth – 1833

Tradition is a big part of cooking. Cultures are defined by cuisine, especially where food traditions run deep and food is linked to family, social, and seasonal events.

As we approach Halloween, Fall clam bakes are in full swing (like the one we attended yesterday – thanks Jon and Suzanna!) and pumpkin carving not only creates scary looking jack-o-lanterns, it creates another opportunity to continue or start a tradition of roasting pumpkin seeds. It’s easy, fun, and it gives you something to do while the kids are working on their pumpkins.

Pumpkin guts are gooey, but you’ve got to get in there and get them out anyway, so you might as well get over it and make a tasty snack while you’re at it. Just separate the seeds from the pumpkin flesh and strings. To wash the seeds, put them in a bowl of water and rub them between your hands to get the rest of the goo, flesh, and strings off. Put them in a strainer to drain for about 30 minutes, then spread them out on a baking sheet. Let them air dry or use a hair dryer to dry them more quickly.

In the meantime, set your oven to 300 degrees. In a pan big enough to hold your seeds, melt 4 tablespoons of butter and add 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon salt,  and 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice. Add the seeds and toss to coat, then spread them in a single layer on the baking sheet. For milder, more traditional flavor, omit the cinnamon, ginger, and allspice.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Check every few minutes and stir about every 5 minutes. Sprinkle with salt to taste and serve hot or cold.

Roasting pumpkin seeds can be another family tradition that everyone will look forward to. What kind of Fall food traditions do you enjoy?