I finally cooked up my last batch of Jamaican beef patties. They came out a lot better this time.
And maybe it was because the beef spent a lot of time just sitting and aging in the fridge, but the meat filling tasted better this time around.
Now, I'm wondering whether I can use this sort of pie dough to make a halfway decent Beef Wellington (or a "Pork Wellington" with pork tenderloin). I know that Wellingtons are made with puff pastry, but this dough recipe is so amazingly flaky that I think I wouldn't have to alter it much to create a "cheat" version of puff pastry, i.e., add more butter, roll and fold and fridge the thing a few extra times, et voilà...
Have you ever actually had Beef Wellington? I only ask because I haven't, nor have I ever seen it on a menu, as far as I can remember. It strikes me as one of those really fancy dishes--or at least fancy-looking dishes--that no one actually eats. The only thing I know about the dish is that Gordon Ramsay used to like to chew out contestants over screwing it up on Hell's Kitchen.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen vids of Gordon Ramsay going apeshit about that dish, but I've seen two different Ramsay vids of him making Beef Wellington for the holidays. The process involves several steps, but it doesn't look impossible.
ReplyDeleteI ate some Wellington years and years ago, before I ever became a discerning eater and had the palate to appreciate what I was eating. My recollection is that it tasted fine, although I thought the weird combination of puff pastry and thick tenderloin didn't quite go together, texturally speaking. Then I saw those Ramsay vids years later, and I thought the dish looked succulent and gorgeous, which rekindled my interest in it. I suspect that, in the end, I'd probably prefer a steak-and-kidney pie to a Wellington, and that's mainly because I'm a lazy bastard who doesn't like to work when he eats—and sawing through a thick slab of beef isn't my ideal way of experiencing beef. I much prefer my meat thinly sliced or finely cubed and easily chewable. Which brings us back to steak-and-kidney pie.