Guest chef this week: Tiffany Hwang
This week the talented and beautiful Tiffany Hwang was my guest chef and made an amazing Beef Wellington. This dish requires an ridiculous amount of prep, so be prepared to lose at least half of your day if you plan on making this. However, the end result is a beautifully baked dish that wraps steak, mushrooms, and prosciutto with a beautifully crisp and browned pastry that really screams to the world you’re not about that barbaric seared slab of steak peasant life anymore.
Dry Aged Prime Beef Tenderloin
Searing the Tenderloin
Adding a Mustard & Horseradish coat
A tenderloin is a naturally not very tasty, but extremely tender cut of beef. Thus, our chef complimented it with the finest savory ingredients money can buy. She used dry-aged prime beef tenderloin (also known as a Châteubriand to non-peasants), porcini mushrooms, iberico ham, and foie gras to create a luxuriously decadent roast.
Cooking the water out of porcini and shiitake mushrooms
The mushrooms become a duxelle
Searing the Foie Gras
The mushrooms are cooked into a custom duxelle: a mixture of mushrooms, butter, shallots, and Jameson, cooked on low heat until it turned into a savory paste, ready to be spread over the tenderloin. Foie gras was seared then chopped and mixed into the duxelle. Even the delicious foie gras fat went into the duxelle.
Furthermore, she layered on prosciutto AND Jamón Ibérico Ham, the finest fucking acorn-fed pure-breed ham in the world. No peasantry allowed here.
Jamón Ibérico Ham
She even employed an ingenious technique to prevent too much mositure from the accompaniments from turning the pastry soggy - a sheet of fillo dough wrapped inbetween the pastry and the duxelle. The entire log of beef is wrapped and allowed to rest for a little before it’s stuck in the oven to roast.
Duxelle on Prosciutto
Adding Foie Gras and Ibérico ham
Laying Tenderloin on top
After roasting, our chef allowed the roast to rest for a little as we admired the beautiful crisp char and the aesthetic notches made in the puff pastry. After cutting, the beautiful medium rare came on full display - wrapped in a rich layer of umami ready to be served.
What a fucking beauty, Chef Hwang - time to ask Gordon Ramsay what he thinks!
