Recipe Seventeen - Ground Beef Wellington

Last night I flipped open my Food Revolution cookbook to page 156 - Ground Beef Wellington. My husband took one look at the photos and asked me if this was a "weird British food thing." I had already bought all the stuff to make it though, so I was not deterred. This was to be supper!

There is a LOT of chopping involved at the very beginning, but it's not too bad. I substituted extra lean ground turkey because raw ground beef grosses me out something fierce. I also added an extra glove of garlic because I think everything tastes better with more garlic. I'd also like to note that this is the first time I've ever bought puff pastry. It smells weird.

You have to saute all the veggies together before adding them to the meat and cooking it in the oven. It smells SO GOOD at this point.

Thank goodness for the Kitchen Aid, so I didn't have to "scrunch" it up with my hands, as the directions put it. Yuck.

This thing was HUGE. I took a photo of it next to a ruler so you could see just how massive it was. I wasn't expecting it to be so big, because most of the other recipes in this book have made 2-3 servings. Even the curries only make enough for two meals! This thing will feed us for several days. That makes me think it would be awesome for a potluck.

The verdict - although it's not the prettiest food on Earth, it was quite tasty. The portobello mushrooms gave off a LOT of liquid during cooking and when I pulled it out of the oven it was sitting in a pool of juices. There was also a lot more trying to escape out the side. I took a knife, pierced the pastry and lifted the whole thing up with two spatulas to try and allow it to drain before setting it on a fresh baking sheet. If I had let it just sit there it would have ended up terribly soggy.

We served this with plain old mashed potatoes and it was perfect. It reminded me a lot of a pot pie. I think if I were to make this again I would definitely freeze half of the meat mixture for later use and only use one of the puff pastry sheets. It was just too much food for my little family of three.