Question ID: 1000-3781-2-3-4-5

Recipe Description

There is a lot of preparation for this dish but well worth the effort. You will need: Ground meat - hamburger, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, fish, tofu, soy, soylent green... Pate - I really never had truffles nor real foie gras so I can't really tell you about fine pate, but I do like a good liverwurst sandwich on deli rye with mustard. Go with sliced liverwurst. Mushrooms - use fresh or canned. Plain button mushrooms, exotic or other varieties should work, use what you like. An onion, need only a part of it Puff Pastry - you can make it fresh or just get the prepared shtuff from the grocer's freezer or refrigerated section. Bacon - yeah, everything goes better with bacon...and/or butter. Seasonings for the hamburger - salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, soy sauce, beef boullion or soup mix, etc...

This is a take on the traditional Beef Wellington. Gather your ingredients. Prep for an assembly line, just in case you happen to be catering. Get a few slices of bacon. Chop the bacon into small pieces. You could leave them in strips but that would make it hard to cut into the Wellington. Finely chop the onion and mushrooms. The meat is usually a piece of beef Filet Mignon but we are substituting hamburger for the expensive cut of meat. Form you hamburger patties. I guess mine are maybe the size of quarter pounders, royales in metric.

In a skillet or whatever, crisp up the bacon bits and render out the fat. When cooked, scoop out of the pan. Brown the hamburger patties on each side. Do not cook through or the most bloody rare. You only want to get a good sear and crust on the meat. It will finish cooking in oven when assembled. Put aside, you can even throw them into the fridge to cool and rest so they will still be rare when it goes back into the oven later. Throw the chopped mushrooms and onions into the pan. This is the "duxelles" part. Keep cooking until the mushroom liquid dries out and the onions start to brown which may take a few minutes. Keep stirring to get all of the accumulated brown bits of flavor goodness incorporated into the mix. You can season to taste.

Break out the puff pastry dough. OK, you got me here, only thing I had in the fridge was a can of croissant roll dough. Should work though. Beat an egg with a little water in a bowl or cup. Use a brush to apply this as a glaze and glue for the dough. Roll out a piece of dough and cut into a circle a bit larger than the size of your hamburger patty. On a greased sheet pan, notice I am making this in my toaster convection oven, put the dough in the center of the pan. No need to fire up the big oven. Brush the dough with the egg wash. This helps the meat juices from making the dough too soggy on the bottom. Place the hamburger patty on top. Place a slice of liverwurst on top of the hamburger patty. Next, spoon on some of the duxelles, mushroom and onions. Finally, top with some crumbled bacon bits if you did not finish snacking on them from before.

Take another round of dough and cover the entire assembly. Press and seal around the edges. Leave excess dough around to form the ears. Cut pieces of dough with a sharp knife to form the details. Eyes, eyeglasses, hair, nose, mouth, pens in pocket and the signature bowtie. Do something random with the leftover pieces of dough. Glaze all over with the egg wash.

Bake in an oven at 350-375 F for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye on it so it does not burn. Turn down the temp a bit if it does brown too fast because of the egg wash. It needs to heat through. Let rest for about 5 minutes before cutting into to let the internal juices redistribute. Use your weapons of mass extraction to get the Wellington from the cookie sheet to a serving plate. You can make a sauce or gravy to go along with this or even serve it with ligonberries a la IKEA. or you might be able to put this on a stick. Enjoy the mighty pub fare. Maybe with a fine chianti and some fava beans...