Mother's Day Beef Wellington

In honour of Mother's Day my husband and I had his whole family over for dinner to celebrate. This was our first time hosting Mother's Day so we wanted to do something special. We had our famous Smoked Salmon Swirls for starters and then it was onto the main event, Beef Wellington. Let me tell you right now, this was the best meal I have had in a very long time. It was absolutely amazing. Now, I am not taking any credit here, this was a Marcus special. 

Ingredients

500g mushrooms, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped (or crushed)
1 onion, finely chopped
2kg fillet of beef
Approximately 14 slices of proscuitto (to wrap around, depending on the size of proscuitto)
2-3 sheets of puff pastry (again, depending on the size of your fillet you may need more or less).
1 egg 
dash of milk 

Method.

Place the mushrooms, garlic and onion in a pan and cook down until they form a thick paste.




Trim the fat and sinew from your beef fillet if required, otherwise just arrange it so that it forms a tight little shape that is even (not too skinny at one end), then brown the meat only in the frypan. Use the same one as the mushrooms - less washing up. 

Next lay out two layers of clingwrap/clingfilm/saran wrap/plastic wrap of your chosen country and lay out the proscuitto layers on top and make sure they will be big enough to wrap completely around your beef. It is not the end of the world if they dont, but try your best to spread them out. Then smear the mushroom mixture as far as it will go around the beef, trying to keep it in a thin layer. 

Place your seared beef in the centre like so.

You will then need to wrap the whole thing up in the proscuitto, and use your defrosted puff pastry to wrap it all up like a big delicious pastry present for Mum! It was then on with the egg wash, egg plus a little bit of milk, over the top and the pastry goes back in the fridge for around 20 minutes to set the pastry before cooking.

We then left it in the fridge until the family arrived, according to Marcus you could leave it overnight if you did it up to the proscuitto stage, without the pastry (he has heard this from a very reliable source, which I can only assume is a cooking show).

Then it was oven time, it was in an oven for around 45 minutes at 220C (428F) and this is what greets you at the other side of that beautiful oven door.

Oh my word, I want this again....

And of course, the guest of honour looking very excited for her dinner, Mumma Olive!

Slow Cooked Beef Stroganoff

The weather is cooling down for us down here in the Southern Hemisphere and that means our slow cooker is really starting to get a workout. Last weekend we popped it on for a good 8 hour shift and enjoyed a tasty beef stroganoff. It was very tasty the next day too except having it about 30 minutes before playing a game of Oztag probably wasn't the best decision of the weekend. 

Marcus was in charge of preparing this one, so it is usually a fly by the seat of his pants type recipe, but this was the combination that we used.

500g slow cook beef - chuck steak or any diced slightly fatty meat. 

500g mushrooms, sliced

1 cup beef stock

1 tablespoon of olive oil 

2 tablespoons of corn flour

1 onion , thinly sliced

2 tablespoons of tomato paste

200ml sour cream

Steps:

1. Brown the beef and the onions in a pan.

2. Combine the beef, mushrooms, stock, tomato paste and onions in the pan and cook for 6 hours on low.

3. Add the mushrooms and cook for a further 2 hours (approximate, can be as soon as 30 minutes before serving). 

4. Add the corn flour and sour cream just before serving. 

We usually serve with linguini pasta. Enjoy!

Smoked Salmon Swirls

A treat that we love to "cook up" on a regular basis is Smoked Salmon swirls, mainly because they are so tasty but also because they are ridiculously easy. So this weekend for a little pre-dinner treat we made up a batch of these in around 5 minutes.

Smoked Salmon
Cream Cheese
Red onion

Thinly slice the red onion and mix in with the cream cheese. As a guide, I use about 3-4 slices of red onion for 2 tablespoons of cream cheese to fill 100g of smoked salmon. Use a teaspoon to place a small amount of the mixture on a half a playing card sized piece of smoked salmon (is that the worst sizing use ever). Then roll it up into a little swirl and enjoy!

An afternoon in China

Having never been to China before, the weekend that I spent in Shanghai was quite the eye opener. I have spent quite a lot of time traveling around south east Asia, including Hong Kong. However, going to mainland China had a different feeling to it all together. I expected the traffic to be bad but it wasn't, it was fast! The infrastructure was built for the 23 million people that live in the city, which is how many live in the whole of Australia but just a small portion of the 1 billion in China.

I headed over to Shanghai with my boss and our head of department. We had a 2 day meeting which finished early on the Sunday and our flight didn't leave until the evening so we headed down to the Bundt part of town which is the touristy area. It is where you can oddly find some unusual things and learn a few things about those living in Shanghai;

- they will line up to buy scissors.
- they apparently like to touch blonde Australian bloggers
- They have really really really fast trains!

 

A great afternoon seeing the sights in Shanghai before heading home.

Chicken and Black Bean Quesadilla's

What a wonderful Sunday night dinner we had this week! It was super easy and really tasty!

1 cup of tasty (cheddar) cheese
2 tablespoons philidelphia cream cheese
2 cups cooked chicken, diced
2 tablespoons of lime juice
1 onion, finely chopped and cooked
1 cup of black beans, rinsed.
4 tortillas
salt and pepper
olive oil to cook

Mix together the chopped chicken, cream cheese, lime juice and onion into a large bowl and season with salt and pepper. Place mixture on half of the tortilla, sprinkle with the cheese and then place into a pan, grill for 2 minutes on each side and serve sliced with sour cream or avocado.
Optional extra - add a few sliced olives into the chicken mixture.
 

This only took around 30 minutes to prepare and it is a super tasty meal for a Sunday evening!

Hedgehog Potatoes

So I havent been around much lately, mainly because I spent the whole of March travelling for work. Which unfortunately menas limited time available and limited desire for blogging. So, last weekend I decided to at least try one new recipe and my love of blogging has been nagging at me all week to prepare at least one new recipe to share with you.

This recipe was based on a number of different ideas floating around on Pinterest and so I combined a few of them to come up with this tasty recipe.

4 potatoes
2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of rock Salt

Preheat the oven to 400F (180C) and slice the potatoes thinly without going all the way through at the bottom. Smother half a tablespoon of butter through the slices on each potato, then drizzle the olive oil over each one and sprinkle rock salt on each potato and bake for 40 minutes.

 

It was a tasty addition to chicken schnitzel and salad for a delicious dinner! Althought it is definitely not a low fat way of having potatoes.

Donate Life

It is Donate Life week down here in Australia, raising awareness for organ and tissue donation.

I support of organ and tissue donation, however I fully appreciate that some people cannot bear the thought of it and both viewpoints are completely understandable. What is important is that you make your choice heard either way. When you are faced with that horrible decision as a family member of what to do, you want to know that you are doing what that person would have wanted.

Give my heart to the woman who will use it to conquer the world.
Give my lungs to the man who will be able to kick the ball with his kids.
Give my skin to the mother who was burnt cooking dinner for her family.
Give my eyes to the father to watch his daughter get married
Give my pancreas to the young child who will no longer have to inject three times a day.
Give my liver to the person who was infected walking on the beach
Give my kidneys to the unlucky soul who got cancer in both kidneys

Remember that in Australia, the final decision is with your family, not what is recorded on your drivers licence, not what you have registered with the organ donation registry and not what is in your will. It will be your next of kin's decision.

Jump over to donatelife.com.au for more information and be sure to tell your family what you want and ask them the same.