![]() In the morning, the filets are wrapped in puff pastry. The mushroom mixture is spread on the prosciutto, and the prosciutto wrapped around the chilled beef.Īfter it's wrapped up, it's chilled again. Lieb uses La Quercia prosciutto, which adds a cured, salty flavor to the dish, and keeps the meat juices from making the pastry soggy. It's pureed and mixed with foie gras, so that it's spreadable. ![]() They make duxelles with shallots, garlic, thyme, cognac, madeira, port and diced mushrooms. "It works much better than using a saute pan, where it can end up sort of boiling and steaming," said Lieb. This gets it caramelized well without cooking it through. The filet is seared on a plancha, a hellishly hot griddle in the Boca kitchen. He tried wrapping the filet in spinach for awhile, since that was how he'd first learned the dish. ![]() One version Lieb came up with was to make something of a sandwich or a napoleon, with a slice of foie gras between two slices of filet. So they settled on a single serving version, based on a 5-0unce barrel-cut filet. But that's a harder sell, for two diners to want the same thing. They did try for awhile making a size that would serve two. That method doesn't really work in a restaurant unless a large party orders one. The original, classic form of a Beef Wellington is an entire wrapped tenderloin, sliced after cooking. "I tried countless ways of putting it together," said Lieb. The Boca chefs worked on the dish for a year before opening the restaurant. And how do you wrap them around the meat and keep them from sliding off? Those ingredients are there to add deeper flavor than a filet can provide, but they can also overwhelm. There are several options that can all be considered classic: mushroom duxelles (finely chopped sauteed mushrooms), chicken livers or foie gras or pate, brioche or puff pastry, ham wrapped around the meat, or spinach, or even crepes. The meat and the pastry don't necessarily take the same amount of time to cook correctly and the pastry can get soggy from the meat leaking into it. Not that he had to talk anyone into keeping it on the menu, but that they had to keep working on it to make it perfect.īeef Wellington has some intrinsic difficulties. Falk said this dish was the one on the Boca menu he fought hardest for. For awhile, it's been OK to wrap something up in pastry and call it Wellington.īut Falk and Lieb wanted not only to take it back to the original, but to make it fabulous enough to show it was worth reviving. But, like all simple dishes that became classics, it has existed in degraded fashion for a long time. True, there aren't so many elements to it. These kinds of classic dishes are why we're all here, where we all came from." ![]() "I can make food that's more cerebral," said Lieb, " but this is more soulful to me. When I first became interested in the world of food, that was what entranced me, just like young people today are intrigued by sous-vide cooking or authentic ramen.īoca's owner David Falk and Executive Jeremy Lieb have the same affection for those old luxurious dishes. Pleased because, for the same reasons, that kind of dish holds so much romance for me. Boca is not in general an old-fashioned restaurant. Surprised because it's such an old-fashioned dish a relic of old-time kitchens with brigades of chefs who could fuss with duxelles and pate and meat wrapped in puff pastry. I was a little surprised but very pleased, for instance, to see Beef Wellington on the menu at trendy Boca. Looking back on the good dishes I ate in restaurants this year, I couldn't help but notice how many things that delighted me were not new dishes, but classics with a long history behind them. ![]()
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