Jamie Oliver's Minced Beef Wellington - my version thereof!

I have been promising you all that I'd blog this one - and since all the excitement of the photograph being shown to Jamie on Zoe Ball's programme on BBC Radio 2 today, I thought there might never be a better time!

It had been a while since I'd made this recipe and I'd forgotten the finer details.  However, just a quick look at the blog post from the last time (which is here) and it all came back to me.  So I put the mince back in the fridge, as I wouldn't be needing that until later!

Just the sheer fact that this is, quite probably, around the fourth or fifth time I've made this one should tell you that it is well worth doing.  In the last couple of days, with all the Radio 2 thing going on, I've received a couple of comments along the lines of "it just looks like a big pastie".  Well, I suppose you could think of it in that way, but in truth, it is a lot more than that.

For starters, there's an awful lot more meat than vegetable (which in your average pastie, is exactly the opposite), there's an awful lot more filling than pastry (which again, in your average pastie is exactly the opposite) and I've yet to find a pastie that can feed 3 people for a main course dinner, then three people for lunch the day after!


Yes, it does involve two cooking instalments - one to make the vegetables for the filling, then another to finish the Wellington and cook it - but neither of those instalments are particularly taxing.  As a great mid-week dinner, you just can't beat it.

With this particular incarnation, I made a couple of changes from a) Jamie's original and b) my last blogged version.  I added some leftover Celeriac that had been diced finely, used mushroom ketchup instead of Worcester Sauce and had run out of frozen peas, so substituted sweetcorn instead.

The end result was just as good, just as tasty - and well worth doing!.

MINCED BEEF WELLINGTON (serves 4 with leftovers)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp rapeseed oil

1 medium onion, chopped finely

1 carrot, peeled & cut into fine dice

1 stick of celery, washed, trimmed and cut into fine dice

1 potato, peeled & cut into fine dice

a large chunk of celeriac, peeled and cut into fine dice

1 clove of garlic, minced or grated

2 large chestnut mushrooms, chopped finely

4 sprigs fresh rosemary, removed from the stalks and chopped finely

2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce or Mushroom Ketchup

a big handful of peas or sweetcorn niblets (frozen is fine)

500g good quality minced beef

sea salt & black pepper

500g puff pastry

1 large egg, lightly whisked.

Method :

1.  In a frying pan, heat the rapeseed oil over a medium heat and add the onion. Fry until light golden brown, then add the remainder of the vegetables and the garlic and continue to fry until the veggies are showing signs of softening.

2.  Add the rosemary and the Worcester sauce or Mushroom ketchup and stir to combine.

3.  Add the frozen peas or sweetcorn and cook for another couple of minutes until thoroughly defrosted and mixed in.

4.  Decant the vegetables into a large bowl to cool completely.  I find that if I smooth them as far up the sides of the bowl as possible, it allows them to cool more quickly than leaving them in a lump.

5.  When cool, preheat oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4.

6.  Add the minced beef to the bowl with salt and pepper and half the egg.  With your hands, scrunch everything together until thoroughly mixed.

7.  On a clean worktop, roll out the pastry to the size of small tea towel and place the mince mix along one long side, in a sausage shape, but leaving a small area of pastry, so that you have something to start the rolling with.

 

8.  Brush edges of pastry with egg and roll pastry to cover mince completely.  Tuck any escapees into either end, then fold the ends together and squeeze the joins so that they hold.

 

9.  Flip the Wellington over so that the pastry join is underneath and transfer to a baking tray that has been lined with either non-stick silver foil or baking parchment.  

 

10.  Use a knife to cut a couple of holes in the top to let any steam escape, then brush with egg.

 

11.  Bake for approximately one hour (I'd check it after 30 minutes and turn it to ensure an even bake) until golden.

 

Serve with steamed vegetables and gravy.

 

Printable version

 

 

Back in the comfort zone - this week's menu plan

For all that I'm always very glad to get into salad weather, I will admit to finding it difficult to ring sufficient changes where salad is concerned.  We do tend to get pretty darned bored with it.  I've tried warm salads, fruity salads, green salads, mayonnaise salads (such as pasta or potato), but it seems as though when the weather starts to take a turn for the autumnal I breathe a sigh of relief as I start thinking casserole and stew.

Autumn always has been my favourite time of year.  When I still had the horses, I loved those mornings when the sun came up across the dew-laden field and the horses, still bare-backed and rugless but just starting to grow their thick winter coat, would leave trails as they brushed through the grass on their way in to breakfast.  The spiders webs would be jewelled with dew and everything smelled freshly washed.  Such a relief from the baked and parched dustiness of the mid-summer field.

Just this morning, son & heir commented on a spider's web that we passed on the way to school.  On any other morning you would never notice it, but the sun had caught its threads and turned them silver and there it was, in all its complex and fragile beauty.

Sounds a bit like me, "complex and fragile" - especially in the morning.

So Autumn is ordinarily a time of bounty.  A time when the plants and trees are putting out their best seeds and fruits.  However, I wonder how much damage has been done by the weird summer we had, as I've already noticed a Blue Tit checking out our seed feeder on several occasions.  I'd have thought that, ordinarily, there'd be plenty of natural feed for the likes of him - but perhaps not, if he's already looking to augment his diet.  Perhaps a hint of food shortages to come for all of us!

Anyway, for this week's menus, I've taken a large step away from the salads and into more robust - but hopefully still fairly healthy (on the whole) - foods.  Here's what's on the list :

Tues : Smoked Haddock Chowder and crusty rolls

Weds : Chipotle meatballs in tomato sauce, with pasta

Thurs : Steak pie with broccoli, parsnips & carrots

Fri : Pulled pork rolls with BBQ sauce and curly fries

Sat : Minced Beef Wellington with savoy cabbage, turnip and carrots

Sun : Slow cooker beef cobbler, with roast parsnips, broad beans, savoy cabbage and celeriac

Mon : Sausage casserole, with mashed potato and peas.

I doubt that there's anything on that list that would stop the culinary world in its tracks (is there ever?), but its all food that we'll enjoy eating and I have no doubts about.

Tonight's Smoked Haddock Chowder is a family favourite that we haven't had since the winter.  I've refined the recipe a little over the years, to make it suitable for hubby's dislike of potato (I used Canellini beans instead) and dislike of thin soups (I make sure it is considerably thicker than most Chowders appear to be, from their pictures).  The soup is now a perfect candidate for a main course soup, as by the time you've eaten an entire bowlful you definitely are warm from the inside out - and certainly aren't hungry any more!

Tomorrow's Chipotle meatballs and pasta are an opportunity to use some of the Sainsbury's Speciality Ingredients' chipotle paste.  Son & heir loves his meatballs in tomato sauce and we haven't had those for ages, so he'll be happy and I'll get to try out the chipotle paste.  Seems like a done deal, to me!

Me, by the time I get home  :)

Thursday's Steak Pie will be a shop-bought pie, as there is every possibility that we'll be taking a drive to Southampton to visit the Apple Store there (think computers, not fruit).  We'll need something that doesn't involve lots of cooking processes after that sort of drive.  It's not a difficult drive, but I certainly know I've done it by the end of it!

I'm looking forward to Friday's Pulled pork rolls, as I've seen so many recipes go by for pulled pork and they have - to a man - made my mouth water.  I just need to find a roll that is robust enough to cope with the pork without dissolving.  I'll be serving them with some of Mic's Chilli's El Loco BBQ sauce and have a yen for some apple sauce, too.  Of course there'll be curly fries served alongside, it just wouldn't be right without them!

Om nom nom!  No wonder we like it!

There's another blast from the past scheduled for Saturday - Jamie Oliver's Minced Beef Wellington.  I've made this on a couple of occasions and it always went down very well with the family throng.  It's a good hearty meal that contains lots of "hidden" veggies - not to mention the veggies that I'll be serving alongside - and is a good excuse for some more gravy made with Knorr's extra beefy stock pots.

There's another excuse for rich beefy gravy on Sunday, too!  Yay!  I remembered a recipe that I'd seen in Clarissa Dickson-Wright's "Potty" (a cook book of one-pot dishes) for a Beef Cobbler made with ale and walnuts.  I'll be cooking the beef in the slow cooker, only adding the cobbler scones for the last couple of hours - so it should be absolutely gorgeous.  We'll have roast parsnips, savoy cabbage and celeriac with it - and some broad beans if I think it needs them.  The cobbler will have lovely slow cooked carrots in it, so it's very definitely a good autumnal warmer.

Next one up on the schedule is a good old Sausage casserole, which is just perfect for soaking up all the little bits of leftover vegetables and clearing your fridge out.  Being on Monday, if we're a bit light on bits of leftover vegetables, a quick stop at the supermarket will soon furnish us with a few to bolster the numbers.  I don't think that there is a definitive "Sausage Casserole" recipe, it seems to me to be a "brown the sausages, cook onion, add in chunks of whatever you like, add gravy, cook in oven until tender" job.  Add to the plate some lovely fluffy white mashed potato and a few peas and the job's done.  Perfect!

I should open a "British Comfort Food" restaurant.  I bet it'd do well as there has to be more than just me out there who loves this type of food!

Now, a couple of little points of interest for you - or I hope they'll be points of interest for you!  Firstly, Jenny Eatwell's Rhubarb & Ginger has just passed its second birthday!  It happened on the 22nd August, while I was busy thinking about other things.  So happy belated birthday, blog - here's to many more!

Secondly, another bit of good news is that I looked on the Alldishes rankings this morning, to see whether things had improved since getting back in the blogging saddle after my illness - and we're up to number 10!  Yay!  So thank you all for sticking with me while I was being extremely slow in updating - here's to next year, when hopefully I won't be struck down by some nasty August virus!

Minced Beef Wellington - a Jamie Oliver favourite.

You can see my gravy boat that I got for Christmas!
Is it cute, or what?

It seems like aeons since I last broke out this Jamie Oliver recipe.  (I think it came from his "Ministry of Food" cook book).  I'm not really sure why, because it is absolutely scrumptious and a complete family favourite.  There aren't many recipes that result in clean plates all round - but this one is almost guaranteed, so long as I cook the vegetables right!

I'd love to be able to afford a nice piece of beef with which to make your classic Beef Wellington, but I doubt that's ever going to happen.  As such, this recipe isn't the "poor man's version", because apart from the fact that it's cooked in puff pastry and the end product looks similar, there the similarity ends.  In fact, it's more like a cross between a Cornish Pasty and a Minced Meat Pie, but whatever it is - it's really satisfying to make and to eat.

The vegetables softening.

I usually leave it until a Saturday to make it, because of the time involved in cooking the melange of vegetables and leaving them to cool, before mixing the mince in and getting it in the oven.  It just fits better on a Saturday.

I had a pack of frozen puff pastry sheets in the freezer and this recipe was included as a way of using them up.  I had originally thought I'd make two small Wellingtons, but then when I looked at how tiddly each sheet was, I decided to make one big monster Wellington by joining the two together.  I did so by brushing the pastry with beaten egg and it stuck together perfectly.  As you can see, it only just fitted onto the tray!

With some lovely tasty gravy, green beans, carrots and baby potatoes, it made a great meal.

Jamie Oliver’s MINCED BEEF WELLINGTON (serves 4)

Ingredients :

1 medium onion

1 carrot

1 stick of celery

1 potato

2 cloves of garlic

2 large field mushrooms

olive oil

4 sprigs fresh rosemary

1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce

a big handful of frozen peas

1 large egg

500g good quality minced beef

sea salt & black pepper

500g puff pastry

Method :

Peel and chop the onion, carrot, celery and potato into 1cm sized dice and finely chop the garlic.

Clean and roughly chop the mushrooms so they’re about 1cm dice and place all vegetables into a frying pan with olive oil.

Pick the rosemary leaves off the woody stalks, chop and add to the pan with the Worcestershire sauce.  Fry and stir for about 8 mins or until the vegetables soften and colour.

Ready for cooling

 Add frozen peas and cook for another minute, then put vegetables into large bowl to cool completely.

When cool, preheat oven to 180 deg C/Gas 4.  Whisk the egg lightly in a cup.

All combined and ready to go into pastry.

 Add the minced beef to the bowl with salt and pepper and half the egg.  Scrunch together.

Roll out pastry to size of small tea towel and place mince mix along one long side, in a sausage shape.

Well, it LOOKS like a Beef Wellington!

Brush edges of pastry with egg and roll pastry to cover mince completely.  Squeeze ends together.  Put onto baking tray, brush with egg.  Bake for 1hr until golden.

Delicious!

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