Last week I cut into a picture-perfect eggplant and the inside was all brown and rotten. I savaged the dinner and ended up making lasagna that was the best one I ever made.
Last night I was going to try making individual beef wellingtons. I wanted to feature it in my series of old-school favorite dishes. I got all the ingredients I needed, including gluten-free puff pastry, I wasn’t sure if it would even work.
The mistake that I made was being a cheapskate and buying low-end filet mignons or what I thought was a filet mignon. I didn’t want to spend a lot on the steak just in case the puff pastry failed.
Beef Wellington is a filet mignon covered in mushroom duxelles, wrapped in parma ham or prosciutto then wrapped in puff pastry and baked until the pastry is golden brown and the filet is medium-rare.
The actual making of the beef wellington was much easier than I expected. I was also making fondant potatoes, another dish I wanted to feature in a different blog post, and a bleu cheese & bacon salad. Fondant potatoes intimated me until I made them for the first time, they are easier than mashed potatoes to make.
I put the individual beef wellingtons in the oven and watched them carefully taking their temperature making sure they weren’t raw in the middle. You can’t see or press on the meat to tell if it’s done.
When they came out I was so pleased with how great they looked. They looked perfect. I plated up our food, when I cut into it the meat didn’t look right. It was tough to cut. It wasn’t the color of any degree of doneness for a steak. I finally wrestled a piece into my mouth, gnawed on it, and spit it out. I said to Marty this must be hippopotamus meat. Yuck. Marty’s piece was the same way and he spit his out as well.
Needless to say, I was pissed. I spent all this time and effort and wound up with some shitty ass steak that ruined the dish. I wanted to scrape everything into the garbage but didn’t. We unwrapped the steaks and ate the puff pastry and the mushroom duxelles. The fondant potatoes were good, so was the salad. Now my featured dish would be scrapped and I’ll have to do it again. At least next time I will know that all the other components would work.
I deleted all the demo and plated photos off my phone (Which I was able to recover for this blog post.) That was that. This morning I started to think about how that rotten eggplant and beef wellington were like life. Last night my dinner looked amazing, but the inside was bad. Isn’t that how get ourselves into trouble when we view people like that? They look great on the outside but are rotten inside. Or the opposite saying you can’t judge a book by its cover.
I kept thinking about this metaphor and how I thought the entire plate of food was ruined and wanted to trash it. The pastry, potatoes, mushrooms, and salad were still good. Sometimes we have to unwrap the good parts of ourselves to get rid of the rotten parts. We have to look at other strengths and things that are amazing and not think everything on our plate or life is shit. Unwrapping for me is like peeling away all from all the hurt and disappointment to salvage a new stronger me. A healed me. A true me.
Finally, I thought about how I wanted this dish to be a lesson for myself, to challenge myself and try something new. While it appeared to be picture perfect it wasn’t, but at least I knew what went wrong and how to correct it next time. In life when you skimp or cheat yourself of things you deserve like good meat, respect, or honesty you know it like I knew when I bought that disgusting hippopotamus meat. You know what you could have done to have a different outcome, but you didn’t do it and failed.
The whole thing taught me more than if the dish did come out perfect. It showed me that you can always salvage something even after you think you totally fucked up. If the beef was perfect would the potatoes have even been noticed or important? Not getting something that you think want or need may be a good thing sometimes, it will help you notice other things we didn’t think were important but are.
I believe we are all here to learn some life lessons. We can’t move forward until we learn these lessons. If we continue to fail, we are presented with the same lesson over and over just with different people and circumstances. I know I keep failing at my current lesson of expecting things from people and end up disappointed and/or hurt. Two very wise and important people in my life always tell me to go into everything with zero expectations then I won’t be disappointed. I have to learn this lesson so I can move on. I also have to not be a cheapskate buy good quality meat!