Alphabetic Recipes V — Venison Wellington

Today we have a classic British recipe for a classic dish of venison baked in a pastry crust with pâté and mushroom duxelles. This makes an excellent dish for a Christmas or a dinner party meal.

Today's is the twenty-fifth entry of my new series of Alphabetic recipes. Each day for the next month and more, I will be adding a new recipe linked to a different letter of the alphabet. As I collect recipes from all over the globe, and have lots of Welsh recipes, I am going to use a blend of the Welsh and English alphabets:

A | B | C | D | E | F | Ff | G | H | I | J | K | L | Ll | M | N | O | P | Q | R | Rh | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

so there will be 30 entries in total. As today is the twenty-fifth day in this series I am providing a recipe starting with the letter 'V'. This is a traditional recipe from Britain for a classic dish of venison baked in a puff pastry crust.

Venison Wellington Recipe

This is a traditional British recipe for classic dish of a fillet of venison covered with mushroom duxelles and pate that's baked in a pleated puff pastry covering.

Ingredients:


1kg middle cut fillet of venison
4 tbsp thyme leaves, finely chopped
sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper
ground juniper berries
500g duxelles
150g pâté (eg foie gras, mushroom, duck liver etc)
2 tsp English mustard
500g puff pastry
1 egg, beaten with 1 tbsp milk
melted butter, to glaze

Method:


Liberally season the venison with the thyme leaves, juniper berries, sea salt and black pepper. Rub well into the meat, place on a non-reactive baking dish, cover and set aside to infuse for 30 minutes.

After this time, heat the olive oil in a pan and when almost smoking add the venison and fry to sear on each side until nicely browned. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside to cool.

Take the pastry and roll out on a lightly-floured work surface until slightly wider than the meat and just over twice as wide as the meat. Coat the pastry (leaving a 2cm rim) with the pâté. Take half the duxelles mixture and use this to cover one half of the pastry.

Cover the venison with the mustard them place on top of the pastry half covered with the duxelles. Use the remaining duxelles to cover the visible surface of the venison then lift the uncovered half of the pastry and use to cover the meat. Trim the ends of the pastry so that they're slightly longer than the venison and crimp together (use the egg mix to help seal).

Trim a piece of baking parchment so that it's the same size as the venison Wellington. Grease with butter and use a spatula to carefully lift the venison Wellington on top. Transfer to a lightly-greased baking tray then set in the refrigerator to rest for 40 minutes.

After this time, brush the surface of the pastry with melted butter, cut three slashes in the top for steam to escape then transfer to an oven pre-heated to 180ºC (350ºF) and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the pastry has puffed up and it a dark golden brown in colour.

At this point, take the venison Wellington out of the coven. Cover with kitchen foil and put in a warm place to rest for 10 minutes. When rested, slice the venison Wellington and serve with roast vegetables and creamed, mashed, potatoes or roast potatoes.

As a variation you can also make this recipe with a beef fillet or even a pork fillet.

The recipe presented here is based, with permission, on the Celtnet Venison Wellington recipe.

This recipe is brought to you in conjunction with the Celtnet Guide to Recipes Beginning with 'V'.

Find more British recipes on the Recipes from the British Isles page of this blog.

If you enjoyed this recipe, why not go over to the Celtnet site to download your completely FREE eBook of 45 Halloween recipes.