Pork Wellington

A wellington type dish is anything wrapped in pastry, whether beef or some other meat, or which contains a savoury filling.

Apparently no connection with the famous Wellington, and the name does not appear in any recipe book from the nineteenth century, despite the fact that wrapping things in pastry was in vogue from the beginning of the century.

Strips of a cooked pork meatloaf, made with 500g of finely ground sausagemeat, diced onion (two small),  a cupful of porridge oats, and half of a Bramley apple, cored and diced, with the skin left on, and one beaten egg (search on the tag  'meatloaf' for further details).

I made duxelles in an omelette pan with diced red onion (one) and diced mushrooms (three), cooked in butter with a generous pinch of thyme. Duxelles were invented in the eighteenth century in France as a filling for savoury pastries which, owing to the reduced water content, were less likely to cause pastries to explode in the oven.

I rolled the puff pastry to a half centimetre thickness, and added the duxelles mixture, and some of the sausagemeat.strips. The pastry was then wrapped around the contents, and ends were crimped together. The pastry parcels were brushed on both sides with sunflower oil.

Cooked on the middle shelf of an oven preheated to 180 deg C for an hour (watch progress carefully in the final fifteen minutes).

Served here with a four leaf salad, and two dessert spoonfuls of mayonnaise. Fabulous!