Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Okay, I have no idea how this popped into my head. I woke up yesterday morning and declared, "I've never made Beef Wellington. Today's the day." No idea if I had been dreaming about it...or how those two words surfaced in my mind. But I decided to do some reading and take a stab at it. I read four different recipes. Two had pâté; two didn't. One used mustard. All mentioned mushroom duxelles - what is that?!!? And all included prosciutto and puff pastry wrapped around a beef tenderloin. This is my own version, an amalgamation of Tyler Florence's Ultimate Beef Wellington , Chow.com's Classic Beef Wellington , BBC's Beef Wellington , and the version from Simply Recipes . Not sure this is anything close to what a traditional Beef Wellington is...but it was the perfect end to my 2014 Mothers' Day celebration. Ingredients puff pastry (mine was not homemade) beef tenderloin (mine was 2 pounds) duxelles   (mushroom paste) prosciutto 1 t fre...

'What the heck is duxelles ?!' I asked myself when I read a recipe for Beef Wellington. After reading several different versions, I made my own - non-traditional. I'm just warning you, if you're looking for a usual duxelles recipe, this is not it. But mine is tasty! What it is not is photogenic...it looks a little like...well, not appetizing. Ingredients 8 oz mixed mushrooms (the mix I bought had Maitake frondosa, forest nameko, velvet pioppini, and Buna-Shimeji) 3 T butter splash of olive oil 1 shallot, diced 3 cloves black garlic (read my intro to black garlic ) 3 stems of fresh thyme 1 C wild arugula (remember, I did say non-traditional)    Procedure Soften the black garlic and shallots in butter. Cook until the shallots begin to turn translucent. Add in the mushrooms. Cook until they are softened. Place the mushroom mixture in a blender with 1 C wild arugula and a splash of olive oil. Blend until a paste forms. You'll see th...