Chef's Corner: Samuel Heredia's Top Holiday Recipe

In this Chef's Corner Spotlight, discover what makes cooking so special as we learn from the best of the best. Plus, enjoy a delightful recipe shared with us by the incredibly talented Samuel Heredia.

Q: What do you love most about cooking?

Samuel:

We are currently living in a world where time is money, and don’t stop to appreciate the small things and how fortunate we are to have what we have. This makes us see things simple things like cooking and eating as a monotonous and automated process because it’s too hard and it takes too much time which disconnect us from the true beauty behind it. For me sharing time with my family and friends and a good conversation with my wife and son while eating with no rush a good plate of food.

Another thing is to expand your palate, don’t be scared of trying new flavors and textures, who knows, you might end up liking something that you didn’t know you liked, and if at the end of it all you don’t like it, well at least you already tried it.

I started cooking basic stuff when I was a little kid but it was during high school that I started to get more and more interested in cooking and exploring new flavor profiles. I was getting tired of following the same recipes, ingredients, and cooking methods, over and over again. So I started watching videos. Then, I met my wife 12 years ago… lucky her, lucky me… who knows but she boosted my curiosity even more. My favorite cooking style is outdoor cooking, it can be anything from a portable single burner stove, grill, smoker, rotisserie grill, flat top, up to direct fire, as long as is outside.

For me, cooking is a way to share love with others and the good memories that can be made through food.

Food must be fun so enjoy it.

Mexican Beef Wellington with a Chile Poblano Cream Sauce

INGRIDIENTS

• Beef Tenderloin

• Huitlacoche

• Button Mushroom

• Shitake Mushroom

• Portobello Mushroom

• Serrano Pepper

• Flor de Calabaza

• Epazote

• Shallot

• Garlic

• Olive Oil

• Unsalted Butter

• Salt

• Pepper

• Fresh Thyme or Rosemary

• Dijon Mustard

• Parma Ham or Prosciutto

• Puff Pastry

• Egg

• Chile Poblano

• Onion

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

Duxelle

• Finely chop all your mushrooms (Button, Shitake, Portobello), Huitlacoche, Flor de Calabaza, Epazote, Shallots, Serrano pepper and Garlic.

• In a skillet or pan, over medium heat melt butter along with a bit of olive oil.

• Once completely the butter is completely melted, add your chopped mix of mushrooms and herbs, and season well with salt and pepper.

• Cook until the liquid evaporates and the mixture starts to the bottom of the skillet and a paste has formed. Then remove immediately to a bowl and let it chill in the mix.

Tip: You need to cook out as much moisture as possible to avoid a soggy pastry bottom, don’t speed up this process.

Beef Tenderloin

• A night before you have cleaned your beef tenderloin and seasoned generously with salt and pepper.

• Tightly wrap your meat in a layer of plastic or kitchen twine to set its shape, and let it rest overnight.

• On the day of the preparation, take out from the fringe and remove the plastic wrap (If kitchen twine was your wrapping method, you can leave that on).

• On a skillet or pan, coated with olive oil and on high heat when the pan is almost smoking, add your tenderloin and sear until well-browned on all sides including the ends. Reminder: Don’t cook it, just sear it.

Tip: You can leave your meat light-seared and butter-basted until well-seared, just remove your meat, add butter, and once melted add garlic cloves and fresh thyme or rosemary, add your meat and butter-baste until well-seared.

Tip x2: You can sear your cut on the grill instead of the skillet and that will add a smokiness flavor to it.

• Once seared, transfer it to a plate and let it rest until is cool enough to handle, remove the kitchen twine and then coat it with the Dijon mustard.

• Then transfer it to the fridge to let it chill.

• On a clean flat surface, lay over your plastic wrap and set your prosciutto overlapping it until you cover a rectangle-shaped area.

• Add a layer of your duxelles on top of the prosciutto until you completely covered the prosciutto and place your tenderloin.

• Then, roll the tenderloin with the prosciutto and duxelles, helping yourself with the plastic wrap so that is a very tight log.

• Transfer to the fridge for about 30 min so that it helps maintain its shape.

• Heath your oven to 425° F (220° C). On a lightly flowered surface spread out your puff pastry and roll it until you end up with a rectangle-shaped area big enough to cover your tenderloin.

• Remove the tenderloin from the plastic wrap and place it at the bottom of the puff pastry and tightly roll it in.

• Once the log is covered in the pastry and perfectly rolled transfer it to a baking sheet, give it a nice egg wash, and score lightly with a knife.

Tip: You can sprinkle with a bit of flaky salt.

• Then, into the preheated oven until the pastry is golden and you have registered an internal temperature of 125° F (50° C) for medium-rare, which should be about 45 min.

• Take it out and let it rest for at least 20 min before cutting it, the residual heat will take it to 135°F which is the perfect temperature for a medium-rare on a beef tenderloin.

Chile Poblano Cream Sauce

• While the log is in the oven, roast your chiles poblanos put them in a bag, and let them sweat for easy skin removal.

Tip: If you want to skip this step you can get the frozen bag of chile poblano rajas from Costco, very effective 10 out of 10.

• On a blender, mix your rajas with onion, and garlic and season with salt and pepper. If needed you can add a bit of chicken or beef stock to get it to the consistency of a cream.

• After blending, pass it to a pan on medium-high only to cook your cream sauce through, this will help you reduce it if you end up with a liquid sauce.

• Once your cream is cooked, and you have a nice creamy consistency, remove and set aside.

Remember: For the sauce we want to keep it simple since we have a very high flavor profile on the beef wellington itself, so we don’t want the sauce to steal the spotlight.

Presentation

• On a plate, pour a nice big spoon of your chile poblano sauce at the bottom of the plate.

• With a nice sharpened knife, slice your beef log through, about 1”, and place a slice on top of the sauce.

• Drizzle a little bit of sauce on top of the meat for presentation purposes and serve.

Tip: You can serve it with some roasted asparagus or brussels sprouts with garlic and double-backed or mashed potatoes.