Baby Moo

I haven’t tucked into a Beef Wellington for ages and it’s something I really fancy whipping up for a spot of Sunday lunch today. Waitrose occasionally sell individual ones but I haven’t seen one there for a while and I’d rather make my own anyway. I have some puff pastry and Brussels pâté already so I just need a little hunk of beef fillet. When D and I made a large Beef Wellington for everyone early last year I think, we’d been trying to decide how to decorate the top of the plump beefy pastry parcel. I was going to fashion a pastry cow but the first attempt just looked odd, distinctly un-bovine and was abandoned so we had a change of heart and instead opted for an ‘M’ and a couple of O’s. This seemed to do the trick much better and certainly the Beef Wellington disappeared awfully quickly aided by the ministrations of LLcT and the one known as fluffy!

This time I only wanted a mini Wellington and accordingly a miniature M and a couple of diminutive O’s. I’m not sure why the combination of beef, smooth pâté and pastry is so irresistible, but it is. I could have added a layer of mushroom duxelles on top of the fillet but instead I served the chestnut mushrooms sprinkled with a soupçon of nutmeg with the Wellington, a few sautéed in duck fat potatoes and crunchy salad.Mmmm – oo!