Beef Wellington for 70

[Jenise]

I'm doing the main course for a large dinner party in December and have been asked to consider Beef Wellington. My head is literally swimming, trying to figure how to pull this off and I could use some help thinking it through.

Logistics: I'll be serving 70 persons at one sitting, and I'll have two ovens at home to work with pre-party and three ovens at the site. I'll need to prepare 80% of them rare and 20% med-well.

The original thought was for individual Wellies. I love that idea--so easy to serve, no last minute slicing--but have great concerns about pulling that off. For one, by my calculations, it would be almost impossible to avoid overcooking the meat to well done by the time 70 crusts bake--unless I made portions much larger than the 4-6 ounce size that is what we should serve, which I can't see doing.

I'd be more inclined to do traditional Wellingtons, even though it's more of a hassle to slice and serve.

An option that occurred to me last night is to deconstruct the classic Wellington. I could prebake, then just warm, discs or squares of puffed pastry. Filet roasts could be coated in mushroom dust and baked to the desired doneness, then held in a warm oven.

At service, a mushroom duxelle could be spooned onto the pastry and a slice of roast meat placed on top. OR, the pastry could contain a layer of pate, and a few sauteed mushrooms could be spooned on top of the meat. OR a single mushroom cap baked with a pate filling could be placed atop the meat. Maybe nestled in a small nest of fried leeks. I'll have an army of helpers to perform the assembly, so the number of tasks isn't important, only that they're easy tasks.

What would you do if you had this job?

Jenise, I like the deconstruction idea. Off the top of my head this is what comes to mind:

Make little savory Pithiviers with pate and duxelle filling to place on top of the cooked meat. The presentation would be very nice and the labor should not be more than anything you have already proposed.

Any of your other suggestions could work fine, too.

rwj

Deconstruction. Brilliant!

With traditional Beef Wellington, the damn things are almost impossible to get right even when made routinely, because you're cooking two things at once that have different characteristics and unknowns. The pastry gets steamed into roux and/or the meat ends up (quoting Matt Kramer from his Oregon dining-critic days ) USDA Steel-Belted Radial. (That, and the dish's ostentation, are why it faded from US restaurant use after a high point around 1975.)

I'd ladle duxelles over beef pieces, then perch a little hat of light puff pastry over that just before serving. Delicate, allusive to the old dish, more sensible and more predictable.

[Jenise]

With traditional Beef Wellington, the damn things are almost impossible to get right even when made routinely, because you're cooking two things at once that have different characteristics and unknowns.

Exactly my experience and why I fear trying to pull it off for this size a group. That's why I like deconstruction--it gives one control over all the elements separately.

I'd ladle duxelles over beef pieces, then perch a little hat of light puff pastry over that just before serving. Delicate, allusive to the old dish, more sensible and more predictable.

Good suggestion, but another logistic that I didn't mention: the Clubhouse tableware is snow-white Corelle. Cold and thin, and probaly barely 8 inches in diameter. They make food look cheap. I am thinking that the elevation and warm tones of the pastry blanket/pad underneath the meat would look very enriching. If I don't use pastry, I have to create opulence with something else (besides the sauce bordelaise). I think. Comments?

Background of a sauce on the plate might look good. (And you can do what every restaurant in the US now does and decorate it using some flourishes with a contrasting sauce out of a mustard-type squeeze bottle.)

I'd counsel not a Bordelaise with its Guide Culinaire associations but rather something simple that goes well with the other ingredients. A reduction sauce finished with Madeira and sweet butter? (Don't boil it after you add the Madeira.)


(Sauces on beef filet have become a sensitive point here.. At a recent latenight dinner in a promising new restaurant, our table all ordered pieces of beef filet that came with excellent sides but a ghastly sauce. It was from some cheap commercial stock base or other, dextrinated and dense -- I've tasted it before, but can't remmber the brand. Reminded two of us, apropos, of a beef Wellington served at another restaurant 15 years ago [advertised as a specialty]. Well executed but accompanied with a mushroom sauce like a condensed Campbell's soup. Canned, salty, and quivering with starch. We will remember that sauce long after all other impressions of the restaurant have faded.)

[Jenise]

Canned, salty, and quivering with starch.

Max, that's a delicious condemnation: you may have hated the sauce, but you avenged yourself well. And actually, the oh, what--cliche of it--plus again the logistics of producing a great sauce for 70, is in part why I considered the sliced mushrooms. Perhaps a blending of both our ideas, using diced shallot and mushroom to stud the reduction sauce, finished as you suggest with Madeira and butter? Would be elegant and fine, and definitely not something you'd mistake for canned goo.

On the side theme of quivering gelatinous sauces [compare H. P. Lovecraft, whose worst fictional demons invariably were "gelatinous" -- none who read it will forget the end of The Shunned House or the story with the thing in the tunnel full of eyes, with a slime trail ...].

I've read restaurant critics with interest for 35 years, but somehow the least forgettable imagery came from Matt Kramer. Verbal stilettos 30 years ago when he was the incognito critic in Portland, OR, have never left my memory.

One restaurant had a wine rack in a waiting area; idly inspecting the bottles, Kramer found them empty, the capsules replaced over the ends. "This row of empty bottles, slyly pretending to greater riches than actually lie within, captures the essence of Horst Mager's Coach Street Fish House."

Another restaurant put some fake French on the menu -- apparently too lazy to pick up a dictionary. "Like an adolescent trying to appear suave, nothing is more pitiable."

And (here comes the closed cadence) several restaurants got ribbed for fine pieces of meat "mounted on the seemingly inevitable slice of soggy bread" and/or serving it "with a sauce so heavily floured, if it were baked it might have become bread."

[Jenise]

Max, those snippets are wonderful. They remind me that around here somewhere I have an old, old English book called something like The Art of Criticism. I bought it shortly after reading several volumns of Oscar Wilde in hopes that after reading every page I would have half a clue about how to master the artful, ascerbic putdown, but alas, if one is not born snarky all you can do, really, is applaud.

but alas, if one is not born snarky all you can do, really, is applaud.

You are better than you think!

I agree with the deconstruction idea, along with everyone else. However, I would keep the sauce and the mushroom cap, but ditch the pate. If the clubhouse tableware is Corelle (and this is not a fancy enough event for them to rent China), my guess is that you will be dealing with a crowd that would have little appreciation for it.

...all you can do, really, is applaud.

That's what everyone in Portland did -- anticipating the Occam's razor of Kramer's wit as eagerly as the appealing descriptions of good food. While I was there, one restaurant -- nearly ruined by a Kramer review -- put out a WANTED advertisement offering a lavish meal (with wine -- Chateau Latour) for his picture.

As you say, some have a gift. (If you'll forgive more excursion, a famous preface* by A. E. Housman takes the prize for invective -- and it caused his first scholarly book to sell out, having "found readers among the unlearned, who heard that it contained a scurrilous preface, and hoped to obtain from it a low enjoyment." Which they did and do, lemme tellya. At Housman's death, his brother found a notebook of withering witty putdowns, with the names blank.)

*Sample (with slight food connection): "If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude; and it might be fruitlessly debated to the end of time whether Richard Bentley or Elias Stoeber was the more marvellous work of the Creator: Elias Stoeber, whose reprint of Bentley’s text, with a commentary intended to confute it, saw the light in 1767 at Strasbourg, a city still famous for its geese. This commentary is a performance in comparison with which the Aetna of Mr S. Sudhaus is a work of science and of genius. Stoeber’s mind, though that is no name to call it by, was one which turned as unswervingly to the false, the meaningless, the unmetrical, and the ungrammatical, as the needle to the pole." -- Housman, preface to Volume 1 of Manilius Astronomicon, 1903

Max, those snippets are wonderful. They remind me that around here somewhere I have an old, old English book called something like The Art of Criticism. I bought it shortly after reading several volumns of Oscar Wilde in hopes that after reading every page I would have half a clue about how to master the artful, ascerbic putdown, but alas, if one is not born snarky all you can do, really, is applaud.

You might enjoy Alan Richman's "Fork it Over" - The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater

His sarcasm is hilarious.

I just looked at the topic name, "Beef Wellington for 70," and knew immediately the author had to be Jenise.

I would be calling the nearest caterer if faced with that scenario!

[Jenise]

If the clubhouse tableware is Corelle (and this is not a fancy enough event for them to rent China), my guess is that you will be dealing with a crowd that would have little appreciation for it.

You're right in part. Many who will be there do not engage in what you and I would consider fine dining--Applebee's would be a big night out. So in my own mind, I'm never cooking for them, I'm cooking for the few who know the difference. And the Corelle's unfortunate, but at least it's plain white and doesn't have little wheat stalks or blue diamonds around the border. Let's ignore small blessings!

Hey, I just had a thought. Chanterelles are in season. I should make the mushroom duxelle now and freeze it, then whether I incorporate it into the sauce or serve it between the meat and the pastry, at least I have it.

Hey Jenise, here's a thought if you are still considering the "deconstructed" version. A chef we know makes fried shrimp that have been "coated" with finely shredded filo dough. I was wondering if there would be something you could do with that.

Make mounds and mounds of crisped and browned shredded filo, put a pile of it onto each plate, top with a filet or slice of whole roasted tenderloin (whatever works best), then top with your mushroom duxelle. Or, reverse the order if the filo would be too delicate and would break if a piece of beef were placed on it. (Actually, this might be really pretty with little filo "straws" on top...)

Not at all traditional, but it probably still could be considered Wellington in a way.