Instead of going out on the town, she wanted a special home cooked meal.
So I spent part of the the day preparing Beef Wellington and Pavlova.
The former is fillet steak topped with a herb and mushroom mix which is wrapped up in puff pastry and baked in the oven.
Pavlova is a meringue based dessert with crisp crust and a light and soft inside usually topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. It was named after the Russian Ballet dancer Anna Pavlova.
Both Australia and New Zealand claim to have created this dessert in the 1920s during the dancer's visit to those countries.
While it is always a good source of argument (together with each country's prowess at rugby, cricket, netball as well as the respective populations' IQ), evidence is that the Kiwis are correct.
These days you can buy the bases already prepared (yuk!) or as a pre mix (just add water) but ours were made from scratch.
The fruit topping was fresh passionfruit, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries.
Wine selection was a McWilliams 'Anne' Hunter Valley Semillon 2006 and a very special bottle of Katnook Estate 'Odyssey' Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 which we picked up on our trip through South Australia's Coonawarra wine region in 2010.
All in all a great meal......even if I do say so myself!
Recipes for the many variations of Beef Wellington are here.
The recipe for individual Pavlovas can be found here.
4 comments:
The meal was delicious! I am truly spoiled. Thank you Mr. W.
Looks yummy! Keep spoiling our girl.
Ps. the last photo is a good one of you!
Yum yum. You're cooking next time you visit my kitchen. I want to be spoiled too!
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