beef Wellington on the brain

All the cooking channels I watch are doing beef Wellingtons now.  I didn't realize this was a seasonal dish; I thought we'd be seeing more recipes for Christmas goose* and figgy (a.k.a. plum**) pudding, at least among those leaning in a British direction.

Here's a quick tour of the various beef Wellington videos I've watched—many of them recent—followed by the one video to rule them all—that of Gordon Ramsay, to whom the hosts in the other videos tend to refer with varying degrees of reverence.  I've also included Sam the Cooking Guy's joke videos:  his Tomahawk Ribeye Wellington and his ridiculous (but strangely tempting) Meatball Wellington.  Enjoy this culinary tour.

Joshua Weissman's regular Wellington:

Weissman's cheaper version:

Chef John's rather unorthodox beef Wellington:

Babish's Wellington:

Jun from Jun's Kitchen with what I thought was an overcooked Wellington (too little pink in the center):

Sorted Food's "Italian" Wellington (actually from several years ago, and also looking rather medium-well instead of medium-rare):

Sam the Cooking Guy's Tomahawk Ribeye Wellington:

Sam's utterly ridiculous Meatball Wellington:

And finally, Gordon Ramsay's official, orthodox take on beef Wellington:

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*Google "traditional English Christmas dinner," however, and you'll be surprised to discover that at least one site, British Study Centres, claims that a typically English Christmas dinner has a lot in common with what Americans now consider a standard Thanksgiving feast, with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce being among the elements in common.  (The original Thanksgiving feast was more likely heavy on duck, venison, and seafood.)  The English also put some emphasis on Brussels sprouts, Yorkshire puddings, and pigs in blankets, which are bacon-wrapped sausages, not bread-wrapped hot dogs.  The English feast will also include mince pies (here again, the Brits play fast and loose with their terminology:  mince normally refers to ground meat, but in this case, a mince pie has a filling that is a mixture of dried and fresh fruit combined with beef suet), all of which makes an English Christmas dinner as carby and bad-for-you as an American Thanksgiving meal.

**The Brits misname everything.  The word plum was apparently a generic reference to dried fruit, and the name stuck.  The term pudding, in British English, applies to all sorts of food items that don't qualify as puddings in America:  a Yorkshire pudding is more of a bread than something approaching a chocolate mousse; the same goes for a figgy pudding, which is cake-y; the same also goes for black pudding, which is little more than congealed blood in sausage form.  An American pudding is simply a sweet dessert of soft, mushy, spoonable consistency:  think chocolate pudding, tapioca pudding, or even bread pudding, which is indeed soft, mushy, and spoonable.  What unifies the various puddings in the United Kingdom?  As far as I can tell, nothing.  Dictionary.com notes that the Brits also use the term pudding to refer to any dessert course.  Given how much I know about the British hatred of commas, I can't trust the Brits when it comes to matters of language.  Not anymore, anyway.