Beef Wellington Smith

Wellington Smith is my favorite player on this year's stellar WVU basketball team. I refer to him as Beef Wellington Smith, and in his honor, I decided to make Beef Wellington for dinner last evening.

About 10 years ago, I had a part time job as a bartender at a very small, very private club in the mountains of western Pennsylvania. The job was all right, but it was not quite what I was looking for so I did not spend a whole lot of time there. On the bright side, the club's stereotypically surly chef was quite adept, and he opened my eyes to several dishes, Beef Wellington being one of them.

Wellingtons begin with beef, of course, in the form of two chunks of filet mignon that I purchased at the downtown Curb Market. This beef is top-notch, local beef from Climax, NC, fed on grass for its meaningful life. The flavor was outstanding. I liberally Salted and Peppered the beef, and then I seared it in my skillet. So far so good. As the boeuf rested, I began the duxelle, a cooking term that was new to me, which consisted mostly of white mushrooms with a couple trumpets and shiitakes thrown in for good measure.

I processorized the mushrooms and then squeezed the water out of them through a kitchen towel. Into the pan they went, and here's where I made a mistake: I did not let the remaining water cook out of the mushrooms, but instead added butter and began sauteing. I think the duxelle is supposed to be a little bit dry, and mine was not, as I also added some Chardonnay and more butter. Salt and Pepper and a little bit of cream, and it is becoming something good. I let it cook for a while to get some more of the moisture out.

Next I unfolded a sheet of puff pastry and cut a few flaps to accommodate wrapping the beef and duxelle. I mounded the duxelle in the center of the pastry and placed a filet on top. Then I
wrapped, using a bit of egg wash to bind the dough together. Into the oven they went for about 40 minutes. The pastry browned nicely, but the beef cooked well. That is fine with me as this meat would never have the opportunity to be too dry or flavorless. But the conventional wisdom, which I do not always find to be so wise, states that medium is always better. Whatever.

A small amount of sauce in the pan composed of a little more Chardonnay and Worcestershire initially. I reduced that a lot and then mounted it with butter just before I was ready to eat. Regarding this sauce, I was moved enough to exclaim loudly to no one but The Walrus, “Dangit, boy!” or something similar.

Awhile back, the HT was selling 10-pound bags of carrots cheap, so I bought a bag. Ten pounds of carrots is a lot of carrots, so I decided to make use of them--carrot frites, and I must say it was a good idea. Of course, carrot frites require a lot of carrot chopping, but it's worth it, so I made at least a thousand carrot sticks and parfried them in the deep fryer. Right before I was ready to eat, I finished frying the carrots. When they came out of the hot oil, I dusted them with a mixture of salt, brown sugar, powdered ginger, cinnamon, and a little chili powder. Good, good, good.

In retrospect, the next time I make Beef Wellington, I will roll the dough a bit thinner than it is out of the box and halve the beef to make smaller Wellingtons. The facade was great, but the interior was just a little too moist. I think a thinner pastry and a drier duxelle will make this dish slightly better, even though the result this time was very acceptable and very tasty.

Brockway Avenue Ghosts

Nearby is a splendid little pizza place called “The Spring Garden Pizzeria.” They do not deliver, but they have a pizza special so grand that it's worth the trip down Holden. One large pizza, and it really is large, with one topping for $7.99. That is a bargain, and that is why I like it, aside from its thin crust, ample cheese, and good taste. I like jalapenos on mine, so I stopped down there this evening and ordered me a big ol' pie.

A problem exists with SGP, unfortunately, and it is that the cookers there never allow the pie enough oven time for my taste. I like the cheese to brown some, and they always pull the pie before this can happen. I could tell them I wanted it well done, but then they would probably burn it, so what I usually do is throw a slab on the PIZZAZZ and crisp it up a bit. The PIZZAZZ machine will make crispy anything you want it to.

SGP is not my very favorite pizzeria, however. The very best pizza in this town can be had at Mario's, but the same pie there would cost you around $18! Ridiculous. It is good, though; New York style thin crust, light sauce deliciousness. Before Mario's came to town, another place had the best pie. I ordered pie from there exclusively until I had a few disagreements with their business practices.

I think we were made of pizza in Morgantown. Always with the pizza. One summer, the Dominoes delivery guy was so familiar with us that he would stop at the drive-through store on his way to our house and pick up smokes or snuff or soda pop or really whatever you wanted him to get for you. Nice guy.

Some of the absolute worst pizza I ever ate was from a place called Plus One Pizza. Their gimmick was that if you bought one pizza, you would get another exactly like it for free. And then, if you ordered 20 pizzas or something like that, you'd get free pizzas! What a deal. The pie was crap, but pizza, like a very few other things in life, is great even when it's terrible.

The Plus One shop was maybe a half of a mile down the hill from one of the places we lived in Morgantown, a huge, drafty, dilapidated beast of a structure that housed five 19-20-year-old guys, quite a few raucous and enjoyable keg parties, and some other sordid events better left unwritten here. It was so cold in that house during the winter that you had stay upstairs.

Well, old Lumpy was a housemate at the time, and on a particularly cold and dreary Morgantown evening so snowy the delivery man was not delivering, I persuaded Lumpy to walk down that hill to Plus One to get our free pizzas that we had earned by eating so many terrible meals from them. A small victory, but a victory is a victory, nonetheless.

Of course, Colasante's was a great place for pizza. Their pans had seasoned over years and thousands of pizzas that made their thicker crusts quite crispy. One of the best perks about working there was free pizza. C$ worked there, and he would occasionally stop by the house after the shop closed with a pie and some beer, and we'd sit and have a hootenanny. Good times.

Fat Udon

Well, after work yesterday, the wife and I decided to have an early supper at a sushi place nearby. I ordered udon with chicken, gyoza, and vegetable tempura. The gyoza and tempura we shared. The wife had sushi, though I do not remember which roll, and I drank a can of Sapporo. I considered ordering saki, but did not.

I don't want to go into too much detail about the meal because it was good, but not great, and we left the restaurant well fed and happy for the moment. Soon after I arrived home, Kenny B. came and we sat and played music for a couple hours until the snow fell and the Mounties came on the TV. I think I saw most of the first half, and then I fell asleep in my recliner. Sometime during the second overtime, I woke up with the intention of finishing watching the game. I promptly fell back asleep, saving myself an amount of aggravation at watching the Mounties lose to Pitt.

Pizza and Profanity

Pizza. I calls it “pizzer” (peet-zer). I calls it “pie.” I do not calls it “'za,” and I never will. When I worked at the pizza shop in Morgantown with C$ and a few other Spencerians, C$ and I wrote “Tastee Pies” on one of those little boards with interchangeable letters usually used for stating price, menu, etc., so all of the customers could read it when they entered the shop for pick-up. It lasted a good while until a troglodyte, I think his name was Mike, took it down since his sense of humor was very short to nonexistent. Nice work, Mike. You don't deserve any pizza.

Has any other food been created that is more perfect than pizza? I doubt it. Dairy group, check. Vegetables, check. Proteins, check. Breads, check. I like mine as thin as possible, crispy on the bottom with a little chew to the crust. Put some sauce on it. I prefer a nice, even saucing while others prefer a dearth. Give me some sauce. Mozzarella on top, and that's it. Fresh mozzarella is great. Shredded mozzarella of good quality in a bag is all right, especially when it's on sale. I think making your own mozzarella is a pretty straightforward task, one which I will someday tackle, but I have not arrived there yet. Oh, sometimes I top with pepperoni or a make a Margherita pizza, but usually I like a simple cheese. I sprinkle hot pepper flakes on my pizza when I have them, which is usually.

Speaking of sauce, I was able to use the remainder of my Bolognese on one of the pizzas I cooked last night. I like taking what I have left and creating something else with it. It makes me happy. I used quite a bit of the sauce, and atop that I placed some nice and fresh pineapple that had been ripening on the counter for the last several days. I am troubled that most of the fruit I eat is not allowed to ripen completely on the vine, but not too troubled. Cheese, of course, and that was one pizza. I thought it was pretty good, even though my wife poo-pooed the pineapple idea initially. Pineapples and banana chilis are a great juxtaposition, also, if you can tolerate a few Scovilles.

Keep in mind that these pizzas are rather small, 10 by 10 inches at the most, and certainly not perfectly round. I was practicing my dough tossing yesterday. I did pretty good. The dough never hit the floor, and I tossed a couple spirals. Nice. So on the second pie, I had some onions and mushrooms that I sauted on high heat, which I usually avoid, but I was pressed for time since the Mounties were playing Pitt in just a few minutes hence. While they were sauteing, I had the dough in the oven cooking a little bit. Cooking the dough first without toppings is the best thing to do, and I had to learn this the hard way from eating several soggy-bottomed pizzas that did not make me proud. Remember I do not have a pizza oven. In any context, I think, soggy bottomed should be avoided.

After my onyons and mushrooms cooked, I olive-oiled that crust and spread the mix. Topped that with cheese and threw it back into the oven until my cheese browned some. If only I had a pizza oven in the kitchen.

And then I ate pizza and watched WVU win this version of the Backyard Brawl. I was curious how the students would react during the game since I read two or three articles about how the Administration at the University, as well as the man himself, Huggy Bear, had asked the students to tone down their profane language during the contest. I don't know if I expected not to hear profanity from the students (This is WVU, not Harvard, after all), but I was a bit surprised when I heard the students chanting, “Suck my Dixon.” Now, I don't know if this chant was aimed at Coach Dixon or at one of the Pitt players named Dixon. That is as irrelevant as the wrinkles on my hands. Huggins grabbed the mic at one point and told the students it was stupid for them to throw things onto the court as it could hurt the players or officials. Shortly after that, a Pitt coach was struck in the face with an object. I was not proud to be a Mountaineer at this point (one that is becoming an old man), and a raucous bunch at a basketball game is no excuse for throwing things haphazardly, pizza night or no.