Pastry – 好心人

Gordon Ramsay’s Beef Wellington

November 26, 2014 by Ho Lang

Gordon Ramsay’s Beef Wellington

A friend of mine posed me the challenge of trying out something new; a new recipe. Gordon Ramsay’s Beef Wellington. As if it isn’t difficult enough already to prepare for Christmas dinner, but to re-create a classic like the Beef Wellington in my home kitchen is going to be a challenge, and in a sense, I like the challenge. But preparing it would mean inviting an army to help me finish it.

Gordon does it in classic style and there is always that intensity in the way he does his cooking, hoping around like a monkey. As for me, I like to take my time and make my cooking easy and on my own terms. I think cooking shouldn’t be so intense. But I guess it depends on who is running the kitchen and who’s the slave driver.

I am following Gordon’s fantastic and easy to follow YouTube video on making this classic Christmas Roast – Beef Wellington. You can also do likewise. A caveat though, I have a feeling there could be some “special steps” that were snipped off the video so that he could squeeze it into a short 8 minute video. And we all know that nobody cooks in double that time either.

Equipment List

I always start with a mandatory stock check of inventory when it comes to equipment needed to make something that requires more than a pot and a wooden spoon. Of course, I always try to reduce my equipment list to a pot and a wooden spoon, but I have a feeling that this recipe is going to require a lot more than just that.

Items needed

Food processor – to mince the brown mushrooms.

Clingwrap – this one can easily get it at NTUC.

Brush – Phoon Huat sells a nice brush.

Oven – if you don’t already have one, don’t bother trying to cook this dish, and don’t bother buying one of those cheap ovens at some hypermart because I assure you the experience and the technical compliance of the equipment is equivalent to the price you pay for the item.

Recipe – I gleaned this off Gordon’s recipe. I think the best form of flattery is imitation. That said, if not nice, don’t blame me, I only follow.

Ingredients

For the Beef Wellington:

900 grams piece of Beef Fillet of even thickness (from the centre cut) – the problem I have with that is that I usually shop at the wet market, and the butcher only sells one variety of meat – beef. The specialty stores are usually far away from where I live, so I guess I will have to buy this off at Cold Storage.

Sea Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper

2 tbsp Olive Oil

English Mustard, to brush meat

For the Mushroom Duxelles: don’t worry about the name, it just means mushrooms paste.

700g Chestnut Mushrooms, cleaned and stalks removed – I can only find and use Brown Mushrooms or White Mushrooms, essentially they are all the same.

handful of cooked Chestnuts – this is the gao-lat that we usually buy by the roadside where the uncle usually shouts “gao-lat!” at the top of his voice.

1 Garlic Clove, peeled and chopped

2 Thyme sprigs, leaves only

For the assembly:

8 slices of Parma Ham

500 grams ready-made all-butter Puff Pastry

plain Flour, to dust

2 Egg Yolks, lightly beaten with 1 tbsp water (eggwash)

Method

1. To make this Gordon Ramsay Beef Wellington recipe, trim the beef of any sinew and season well with salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a high heat, add the fillet and quickly sear the outside all over for about 5 minutes until evenly browned, turning as necessary. Transfer to a plate and while still hot, brush all over with mustard. Set aside to rest.

2. For the duxelles, put the mushrooms, chestnuts and garlic in a food processor with a little salt and pepper and blend to a fine paste, stopping to scrape down the sides a few times. Heat a dry large frying pan. Scrape the mushroom paste into the pan and add the thyme leaves. Cook over a high heat, stirring occasionally, to drive off the moisture and intensify the flavour. The duxelles must be sufficiently dry otherwise it will make the pastry soggy; the mixture should adhere easily. Spread out on a tray to cool.

3. Place a large piece of cling film on a clean surface. Lay the Parma ham slices on top, overlapping them slightly, to form a rough rectangle large enough to envelop the beef fillet, making sure there are no gaps. Season the ham with a few twists of pepper then, with a palette knife, spread the duxelles on top, leaving a 2.5cm margin along the edges.

4. Lay the beef fillet along the middle of the mushroom layer. Keeping a tight hold of the cling film from the outside edges, neatly roll the Parma ham and duxelles over the beef into a tight barrel shape. Twist the ends of the cling film to secure. Refrigerate for 15 minutes to firm up.

5. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to a large rectangle, the thickness of a £1 coin and brush with some of the eggwash. Unwrap the beef from the cling film and place it in the middle. Leaving a large enough rectangle to wrap around the beef, trim off the excess pastry. Roll the pastry around the beef to envelop it and then press the edges to seal. Pinch the pastry at the ends to seal and trim off the excess. Wrap the log tightly in cling film and chill for 10 minutes, or overnight if you are preparing ahead.

6. Preheat the oven to 190°C/Gas 5. Remove the cling film and brush the parcel all over with egg wash. Lightly score the pastry at 1cm intervals with the back of a small knife for a decorative effect, if you wish. Place on a baking tray, sprinkle with salt and bake for about 35 minutes; if the pastry appears to be browning too quickly, lower the setting slightly. Leave to rest in a warm place for about 15 minutes before cutting into thick slices to serve, with the accompaniments.

Bon Appetit!

Pineapple Tarts

April 7, 2014 by Ho Lang

I wrote this recipe out of boredom one fine day in I can’t remember when, and I decided that I would endeavour to make the best Pineapple Tarts in the world. At least the best according to my taste buds, and I am one to not easily like Pineapple Tarts. To be honest, I hate eating Pineapple Tarts that I buy from outside, they are just not to my liking for some reason.

There was always something wrong with it. Either there was some strange after taste of oil which makes my teeth “siap-siap” or the jam was just too sweet. I simply hated it.

As Chinese New Year was around the corner then, I thought it would be great if I can make my own Pineapple Tarts instead of buying them this year. This is an all time favourite for many, and for me it’s also one of those must do; must try recipes. And trust me, it’s true what they say about doing Pineapple Tarts the traditional way. It’s nothing short of tedious. But nothing ventured; nothing gained. So let’s try it!

If you want to learn how to do anything well the first time, you got to do everything from scratch, that means – no shortcuts!

So I bought a pineapple, one whole, from NTUC named “Sweet 16” – please don’t ask me why it’s called that – apparently it’s supposed to be a sweeter variety of pineapple. Alright, whatever.

I started scouring Google as well as asking around for the best Pineapple Tart recipe. There were many who ranted and raved about their recipes, and some even swore by their great-grandmother’s grave, but like they all say, the prove of the pudding is in the tasting, isn’t it? And after all that reading, I decided that if the pastry has enough butter, it will melt in your mouth; not in your hands. And if it has enough egg yolks, it will be soft and creamy as well. A little sugar for tasting and salted butter would give it that added savory flavour.

The difficulty in making Pineapple Tarts the traditional way is the grating of the pineapple – I did that by hand – and then afterwards cooking it in the saucepan till the sugars in the pineapple caramelised. This is a slow and tender process of stirring the mixture over a medium heat to allow the water content within to evaporate while preventing the sugars in the pineapple from caramelising too quickly. This whole painstaking process of cooking the pineapple filling took me about 45 minutes. And mind you, this is just for one pineapple. I don’t know how some people manage four pineapples at one go?!

As you can see in the picture, one whole pineapple weighs about 700 grams (minus the metal bowl), quite a lot of pineapple if you think about it. I grated the whole pineapple including the centre of the fruit and that’s how you get the stringy texture in the fillings.

I added 5 teaspoons of Castor Sugar into the pineapple mixture noting that this is not your garden variety of pineapple as it is already sweeter to begin with. Adjust the sweetness accordingly. I chose 5 teaspoons because 5 is the number of grace. You can also do likewise.

As the water content in the mixture dries, you can see (literally) the sugars starting to caramelise and the pineapple mixture starts to brown. This is the critical part because if you let up your concentration now, the mixture will burn and you will have to start all over again. Thank God mine turned out perfect.

For the pastry, I decided that I wanted a soft buttery and yet not too overwhelming feeling in the mouth – in other words – I can pop 5-6 Pineapple Tarts and still have an appetite for other yummy new year goodies. I decided to use 300g of Plain Flour combined with 45g of Castor Sugar and mixed in a whole slab of salted Butter – 250g (room temperature) and using the tip of a metal fork, I pressed in the Butter into the Flour and continued pressing until the Flour, Sugar and Butter was well-combined.

I decided that I wanted my Pineapple Tarts to be soft and creamy and that basically calls for more Egg Yolks. This is not your typical Lisa Leong Healthy Recipe. It’s sinful to say the least. I added 4 Egg Yolks (no whites!) and continued with the “Fork Technique” of pressing the dough instead of kneading immediately. The whole idea behind the “Fork Technique” is so as not to stress the dough with too much hard-hitting tension.

When it is fairly combined, dust the table with some flour, and massage the dough mixture a little more. And then leaving it to “breathe” for about half an hour. This is to allow the dough to “rest a little” (from all that tension from the kneading).

Then roll out whatever amount you want to bake, into whatever shape you want. I decided that I wanted to do them in the shape of rounded pillow cushions. You may prefer the Pyramids of Giza. Whatever. So I literally hand-moulded each one of these beauties, glazed the tops of each with egg yolk and water batter so that they will all glisten gloriously after baking.

I baked them in 160 Degress Celsius in the oven for about 20 minutes and then allowing them to brown a little in the oven for 5 more minutes with the power turned off. The oven that I am using is a Dual-Heating Element type (top and bottom) and with the tray placed in the middle, so that the temperature will be evenly distributed. Remember to pre-heat the oven for at least 10 minutes before putting in the tray. Then you get on your knees and pray that they turn out ok.

Once they are done, take out the tray to let the pineapple tarts cool. They turned out ok! Thank God. Technically speaking, they aren’t really tarts, more like Kisses. Well whatever, you should get the idea, right? And it’s ready to eat.

Melts in your mouth, not in your hands, filling is not too sweet, blends in perfectly with the pastry and the pastry is not too overwhelming, soft and crumbly. Perfect.

Here’s the ingredients list if you didn’t know what in the world I was saying just now.

Recipe

Ingredients:

Pineapple Filling:

1 Whole Pineapple (sweet type or honey pineapple) – if you choose the not-so-sweet type, you might have to tweak the sugars by taste.
5 teaspoons of Castor Sugar – remember 5 is the number of grace!

Method:
1. Hand-grate the whole pineapple including the core of the fruit. Do not short-cut the process and use a blender, although it would definitely make the whole process easier. Doing so would change the texture of your pineapple filling.
2. Cook the pineapple mixture over medium heat, and make sure it doesn’t burn. Note: Don’t be tempted to use high heat as it will make it harder for you to estimate when exactly the sugars will caramelised.
3. Keep stirring, and tossing, and turning the mixture with a wooden spoon till it is fully caramelised into a pulpy sticky mixture. Don’t let it dry up or brown too much. For one whole pineapple, this should take about 45 minutes.

Pastry:

300g Plain Flour
45g Castor Sugar
250g Salted Butter (room temperature) – Please don’t short-cut the process by melting it in the microwave or oven. You don’t want to end up inadvertently cooking the flour while mixing the dough.

Method:
1. Weigh the flour on a digital kitchen scale, make sure it is exact. Add in the Sugar and mix with a fork, so that the sugars are evenly distributed. Then add the Butter and continue to press the dough in using the tip of the fork.
2. Add 3 egg yolks (no whites) and continue to use the “Fork Technique” to press in the egg yolks until they are well-combined. Remember to knead the dough and then let it rest (or breathe) for 30 minutes before rolling them into shape.

All the best, and Happy Chinese New Year folks, even if it is not Chinese New Year, you also can make Pineapple Tarts.

Bon Appetit!