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managerr wrote:

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As a side note, has anyone ever tried Beef Wellington? I never ever bothered to ordered it even though I've seen it on menus--I've always thought to order the meat without the bread surrounding, but after watching the show, I'm tempted to actually try it, just because it seems ridiculously difficult to cook.

The key to the flavor is the pate. But since pate de foie gras is very controversial (mistreatment of the geese), these days it is usually made with duxelles rather than pate. Even GR does it this way. It isn't a dish that has been in vogue for a while. And in restaurants that still have it on the menu, it is often only available for two, which allows an entire Welllington to be cooked and served to a table. Cooking Wellingtons for individual service is hard; you can only do it in a place like HK where the menu is limited so you know you'll be getting many orders of it. Otherwise, if the orders are spaced far apart, what do you do with the unserved piece of a cooked Wellington? You have to keep it in a warmer, which only ensures that the pastry crust will get soggy.

The hard thing about cooking a Wellington is simply that you can only know that it's done based on timing. So you have to know your oven. Ordinarily you know if a piece of meat is done based on its firmness to the touch. It's hard to accurately touch a Wellington since it's wrapped. So if you make people cook Wellingtons with a strange oven who haven't done it before, they're just guessing about whether it's done. Every time you open the oven door you're dropping the temp and lengthening the cooking time. It virtually guarantees errors - which is what HK needs for good TV. But if you know your oven, you just cook them by the clock.