WELLINGTONS
Hello! Well last week I had a cold and so didn't feel like cooking anything in the end, let alone something unusual. But now I'm feeling acceptably human again it's time to reward my body by filling it with a load of experimental nonsense. Kill or cure, and all that.
From the title you might assume that this week I'll be eating some form of sturdy footwear. And in making that assumption you'd be quite wrong - I may make up stupid recipes, but I'm not really looking to push the boundaries of omnivorism into the realms of eating anything that I can lay my hands on. Or rather my feet, in the case of wellies.
No, this week we're tackling an issue that's vexed me for some time: why is it that beef has the monopoly on being wellingtoned?
For those who have never heard of it, beef wellington is a dish where you get a perfectly good (in fact, usually a very nice) bit of beef, smear it in an awful mushroom paste and then cover it in puff pastry and pretend it isn't just a gargantuan sausage roll with delusions of grandeur. Granted you can get vegetarian wellington, but that's just a token gesture bodge job non-meat version of the meat version (in the same way veggie bacon is supposed to be real bacon, but just tastes like a bookmark you've soaked in bovril and then left to dry on a radiator).
You might think beef wellington is named for the Duke of Wellington, but apparently that's what we in the culinary world call 'a massive pile of horse shit'. In fact, no one quite knows how the recipe got its name, but my guess would be this: someone who had it once had a bit of meat that was as tough as a boot (because what better way for a shifty chef to hide a crappy bit of offal than in a pastry overcoat?), slagged it off accordingly, and the name stuck. So just think - if that person had chosen a different type of comparative footwear this could be beef flip-flop, beef clog, or my personal favourite: beef sneaker.
Anyway, not content with just wellingtoning something different for the sake of it, I've decided to go the whole hog. Well, a figurative hog anyway, as I haven't actually covered an entire large male pig in pastry. No, I mean I've made an entire 3-course meal out of wellingtons. And in the process, discovered I am also a magician. How I do this thing? Read on...
To replicate this week's nonsense, you will need to possess, purchase or surreptitiously shoplift the following:
Some garlic bread
Some chocolate mini rolls
Some fish fingers
Some oven chips
Some ready-made puff pastry
A (1) egg
Why ready-made puff pastry? Well unlike e.g. television's professional croquembouche nitpicker Paul "the thinking woman's crumpet if what she's thinking is 'I really fancy a slightly arrogant bloke who looks like a retired footballer gone to seed with eyes like Bruce Banner gets just before one of his funny turns'" Hollywood, I have a life and can't be arsed spending all Sunday up to my knees in flour when it only costs a few pee from the shop.
In case it's not obvious and/or you're just monumentally stupid, the garlic bread will be the starter, the fish fingers & chips the main, and the mini roll the dessert.
Bit more complex this week, as a prep stage is needed!
1. First, get all the filling except for the mini rolls, and shove them on your favourite baking tray thus:
By happy coincidence, everything took roughly the same length of time (10-15 mins) at the same temperature (210 C). Once cooked, let everything cool down - including the baking tray, which I thoroughly suggest you don't absent-mindedly try and move away from a fish-detecting cat while it's still hot without having an oven glove on. Not that I speak from recently singed experience, you understand.
2. Once cool, you can begin the pastry mummification that is wellingtoning (the cooling by the way is to stop the butter in the pastry melting out before you've even put it together - see, I actually do know some real cooking stuff!).
Then, it's back on the baking tray, on with a bit of eggy wash, and in the oven again for around 20 mins or so at 200 C - have a look, and when everything is going brown you're good to take it out. That's everything in the oven going brown, I mean. If literally everything is going brown you've either developed a horrific rapid-onset eye disorder or you've made far, far too much gravy and should probably open a window.
Well, dear readers, I'm terribly sorry but here I have to confess I should probably change the name of the blog. Because far from being crap, everything was genuinely delicious and I think I have undoubtably proved the point that beef having an iron grip on being wellingtoned is a national disgrace. Observe the golden brown excellence of the following:
Oh, and that magic I mentioned? Well, I cut into the starter one, and bit it...and there was the taste of garlic and cheese, but no bread. None. Not even a crusty bit at the end. Now I don't know about you but previously in my experience if you apply heat to bread you get toast, and if you apply heat to toast you either get browner toast or burnt toast - it doesn't usually just evaporate, as I have it on good authority that bread isn't a liquid. And yet that's exactly what happened here - clearly the magic of wellingtoning is too much for mere garlic bread to cope with, and what I was left with was essentially an underfilled cheese & onion pastie. Perfectly nice though!
After that magician-style bewilderment I was half expecting to cut open the main course and find a silk hankie or a signed playing card, but thankfully I got largely what I was expecting: a cross-section of fish/chippage.
This worked best and most authentically with the addition of a lovely 'jus de tomate et vinaigrette', or as I and pretty much everyone else like to call it, tomato sauce.
And finally, the dessert. Now here, I did 2 because I had a feeling one might explode in the oven. And to avoid you being in a state of suspense, this happened: one of them exploded in the oven. See:
The other one though came out like something you'd buy in a shop. A competent food-selling shop, at that!
This was probably the best of an unexpectedly nice bunch - it tasted bit like pain au chocolat, but also cakeier. I mainly put that down to it containing cake. Continuing the inexplicable disappearing ingredients theme though, the cream filling had completely buggered off.
All in all, I can heartily and quite unexpectedly recommend you taking your favourite food and encasing it in pastry - at worst it seems it'll just disappear, and at best it'll be delicious. With the possible exception of soup, should that be your favourite food. At best that's going to leak, and at worst look like something's died in your oven (or been horribly stabbed and then died, if you happen to choose tomato soup).
But I think that that exception just proves the rule, so get out there and get wellingtoning, and of course if your favourite food is beef wellington, then why not do a beef wellington wellington and get (wait for it...) a pair of wellingtons! And on that joke, which I've honestly not been leading up to right from the very start of thinking about doing this as a recipe, I'll see you next week.
Next week: 'JAFFA' CAKES.
From the title you might assume that this week I'll be eating some form of sturdy footwear. And in making that assumption you'd be quite wrong - I may make up stupid recipes, but I'm not really looking to push the boundaries of omnivorism into the realms of eating anything that I can lay my hands on. Or rather my feet, in the case of wellies.
No, this week we're tackling an issue that's vexed me for some time: why is it that beef has the monopoly on being wellingtoned?
For those who have never heard of it, beef wellington is a dish where you get a perfectly good (in fact, usually a very nice) bit of beef, smear it in an awful mushroom paste and then cover it in puff pastry and pretend it isn't just a gargantuan sausage roll with delusions of grandeur. Granted you can get vegetarian wellington, but that's just a token gesture bodge job non-meat version of the meat version (in the same way veggie bacon is supposed to be real bacon, but just tastes like a bookmark you've soaked in bovril and then left to dry on a radiator).
You might think beef wellington is named for the Duke of Wellington, but apparently that's what we in the culinary world call 'a massive pile of horse shit'. In fact, no one quite knows how the recipe got its name, but my guess would be this: someone who had it once had a bit of meat that was as tough as a boot (because what better way for a shifty chef to hide a crappy bit of offal than in a pastry overcoat?), slagged it off accordingly, and the name stuck. So just think - if that person had chosen a different type of comparative footwear this could be beef flip-flop, beef clog, or my personal favourite: beef sneaker.
Anyway, not content with just wellingtoning something different for the sake of it, I've decided to go the whole hog. Well, a figurative hog anyway, as I haven't actually covered an entire large male pig in pastry. No, I mean I've made an entire 3-course meal out of wellingtons. And in the process, discovered I am also a magician. How I do this thing? Read on...
Ingredients:
 |
| Obligatory 'Garlic bread? GARLIC BREAD?!?' etc. reference. |
To replicate this week's nonsense, you will need to possess, purchase or surreptitiously shoplift the following:
Some garlic bread
Some chocolate mini rolls
Some fish fingers
Some oven chips
Some ready-made puff pastry
A (1) egg
Why ready-made puff pastry? Well unlike e.g. television's professional croquembouche nitpicker Paul "the thinking woman's crumpet if what she's thinking is 'I really fancy a slightly arrogant bloke who looks like a retired footballer gone to seed with eyes like Bruce Banner gets just before one of his funny turns'" Hollywood, I have a life and can't be arsed spending all Sunday up to my knees in flour when it only costs a few pee from the shop.
In case it's not obvious and/or you're just monumentally stupid, the garlic bread will be the starter, the fish fingers & chips the main, and the mini roll the dessert.
Cooking instructions:
Bit more complex this week, as a prep stage is needed!
1. First, get all the filling except for the mini rolls, and shove them on your favourite baking tray thus:
 |
| I went for crinkle cut chips because I'm a massive ponce, but straight ones will work just as well (i.e. badly). |
By happy coincidence, everything took roughly the same length of time (10-15 mins) at the same temperature (210 C). Once cooked, let everything cool down - including the baking tray, which I thoroughly suggest you don't absent-mindedly try and move away from a fish-detecting cat while it's still hot without having an oven glove on. Not that I speak from recently singed experience, you understand.
 |
| This would actually be a perfectly acceptable meal on its own, which for this blog is probably a first. |
2. Once cool, you can begin the pastry mummification that is wellingtoning (the cooling by the way is to stop the butter in the pastry melting out before you've even put it together - see, I actually do know some real cooking stuff!).
 |
| I did want to have a few more 'in process' pics, but my pastry started warming up and it was all going to pieces so you'll have to just extrapolate. Imagine wrapping an awkwardly-shaped birthday present in clingfilm in a strong breeze against the clock and you'd not be far off the level of panic I was in. |
Then, it's back on the baking tray, on with a bit of eggy wash, and in the oven again for around 20 mins or so at 200 C - have a look, and when everything is going brown you're good to take it out. That's everything in the oven going brown, I mean. If literally everything is going brown you've either developed a horrific rapid-onset eye disorder or you've made far, far too much gravy and should probably open a window.
The results:
Well, dear readers, I'm terribly sorry but here I have to confess I should probably change the name of the blog. Because far from being crap, everything was genuinely delicious and I think I have undoubtably proved the point that beef having an iron grip on being wellingtoned is a national disgrace. Observe the golden brown excellence of the following:
 |
| You'll have to ignore the strange lump on the side of the fish finger & chip one - it's not a stray chip, I just had to make a running repair after I accidentally made a massive hole in the pastry. It worked though, which makes you wonder why they didn't just have a load of dough ready to go on the Titanic. Could have saved a lot of lives, and spared us that bloody awful film too. Idiots. |
Oh, and that magic I mentioned? Well, I cut into the starter one, and bit it...and there was the taste of garlic and cheese, but no bread. None. Not even a crusty bit at the end. Now I don't know about you but previously in my experience if you apply heat to bread you get toast, and if you apply heat to toast you either get browner toast or burnt toast - it doesn't usually just evaporate, as I have it on good authority that bread isn't a liquid. And yet that's exactly what happened here - clearly the magic of wellingtoning is too much for mere garlic bread to cope with, and what I was left with was essentially an underfilled cheese & onion pastie. Perfectly nice though!
 |
| Bread status: missing. |
After that magician-style bewilderment I was half expecting to cut open the main course and find a silk hankie or a signed playing card, but thankfully I got largely what I was expecting: a cross-section of fish/chippage.
 |
| I've not gone all Jamie Oliver serving stuff on wooden boards, I just couldn't be arsed using 3 plates. |
This worked best and most authentically with the addition of a lovely 'jus de tomate et vinaigrette', or as I and pretty much everyone else like to call it, tomato sauce.
 |
| I'm classy me. Specifically: lower class. |
And finally, the dessert. Now here, I did 2 because I had a feeling one might explode in the oven. And to avoid you being in a state of suspense, this happened: one of them exploded in the oven. See:
 |
| I think I've just invented a new recipe: 'roll in the hole'. Which sounds a lot more lewd than is probably palatable. |
The other one though came out like something you'd buy in a shop. A competent food-selling shop, at that!
 |
| The only downside here is that in the photo it looks a bit like a fig roll. And as we all know, fig rolls are awful. |
This was probably the best of an unexpectedly nice bunch - it tasted bit like pain au chocolat, but also cakeier. I mainly put that down to it containing cake. Continuing the inexplicable disappearing ingredients theme though, the cream filling had completely buggered off.
The verdict:
All in all, I can heartily and quite unexpectedly recommend you taking your favourite food and encasing it in pastry - at worst it seems it'll just disappear, and at best it'll be delicious. With the possible exception of soup, should that be your favourite food. At best that's going to leak, and at worst look like something's died in your oven (or been horribly stabbed and then died, if you happen to choose tomato soup).
But I think that that exception just proves the rule, so get out there and get wellingtoning, and of course if your favourite food is beef wellington, then why not do a beef wellington wellington and get (wait for it...) a pair of wellingtons! And on that joke, which I've honestly not been leading up to right from the very start of thinking about doing this as a recipe, I'll see you next week.
Next week: 'JAFFA' CAKES.
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