Valentine's Day happened!  One cool thing that happens around Valentine's Day is that my sister-in-law hosts a Valentine's Tea Party - which is get-together with family where we bring snacks, drink tea and catch up on what's happening with eachother. It's actually a great concept! It's also a great event to think outside the box on what a 'snack' is and conceptualize some kind of experiment to test out on the family. Last year I put together some chicken souvlaki sliders that were really tasty! I need to replicate that sandwich some day and document that!

This year, I have been haunted by a recipe by Cole Wagoner for a sous vide beef wellington - (link here) and while I planned on doing the full recipe, I wanted to use it as inspiration for my offering for the Tea Party!

Remember these little beef tenderloin snacklets I cut from my previous post?

Those went into the freezer to firm up so I could sear both sides, and still leave the inside with just a little pink. They were small, so drying them out would have been an absolute major offense.

While they were firming up, I put together my duxelles, which is a fancy word for a mixture of finely diced mushrooms, garlic and shallots. I did one shallot, 4 cloves of garlic and a container of shrooms, and instead of hand-dicing, I put them in the ninja food processor.

A little salt and pepper and we are looking DICED!

In the pan it went for a good sizzle until it was getting nice and browned. I threw some butter and red wine in there to help with the cooking and add some tartness to the stuff.

Look at that garlicy umami bomb zone - that is raw flavor!

I plucked a mini-steak from the freezer and went for the sear - just a quick sear on both sides! Ideally I would love to see a tiny bit of pink on the inside, but this snack is meant to eat in one bite.

I transferred my freshly seared mini tender bit onto a plate and topped it with a small pile of Prosciutto..

Then the duxelles:

The piece was looking a little red/brown, so I wanted to add a pop of color into the mix, so I went with some pea shoot micro greens:

I stabbed it with a skewer, and gave it a try:

It was everything I wanted, but I knew I missing the bread element to really tie in the Wellington concept. However, some of the people attending the party are trying to avoid bread, so I went with a Keto Fathead Roll recipe, but substituted rosemary for garlic in the recipe (link here) I also opted to make the balls about the size of a nickel so the rolls would be about the same size as my steak bits. I would cut the rolls in half so as to not overpower the flavors of the meat and duxelles...  I also decided it needed a little more tart character, so I made a red wine reduction out of some of my home-made wine that I'm not in love with and decided to use aggressively in my cooking. (it happens, sometimes you make wine or beer that sucks.. you just gotta deal with it)

So - the results: amazing!

Super pumped with the way they turned out - the red wine reduction added the punch I was looking for, and the half cheesy bread was just enough to give it that Wellington experience without overpowering. I also topped each piece with a little shake of 21 seasoning salute from Trader Joe's just to add some more 'wtf is this' factor...  successful!

Was this 24 pack of snacks a labor of love? yes.. was it fun to make? of course! was it a hit? yuuuuuup!

Think outside the snack box, get some wild ingredients and conceptualize!