This one is inspired from the famous Chef Gordon Ramsay's signature dish Beef Wellington.
My shrimp wellington is basically shrimps (Indian red chilli achaari flavoured shrimps) with earthy mushroom & water-chestnut(cooked singhada) paste, wrapped up in a shortcrust puff pastry and baked to perfection:-)
Felt totally in heaven after having the crusty puff with delicious flavours inside..
This dish is going to stay in my favorites for sure.
Here's the recipe.
First let's prepare the short crust pastry sheets...
I followed a quick procedure to make pastry sheets. I know there are few lenghty procedures too which involve folding the dough with butter and rolling it multiple times. And refrigerate it each time you roll it. But that would take too long. So I chose an easier and quicker approach. I followed Chef Gordon Ramsay's short crust pastry recipe.
1)In a processor bowl, take 400 grams all purpose flour, 200 gms cold butter cut into fairly equal sized cubes, and a pinch of salt.
2) Process it for 15-20 seconds to form a bread crumb type mixture. I used a hand blender with dough hooks to do the same. Took a little more time to arrive at the required consistency.
3) Now transfer the mixture to a big bowl. Make a well in between. Pour about 2/3 of 100 ml water in it. ( we will use approximately 100 ml water or more if required). Twist the flour with your hand from centre to oustide, tryig to mix the water well with the flour.
4) Add rest of the water again in the middle. Repeat the same procedure to mix the ingredients. See if it is still dry and needs water. If so add little more water and mix it.
5) transfer the dough on your working platform. Spinkle some flour on surface and on the dough to help in kneading.
6) Gently knead the dough by rolling it with your hands from all sides. Make sure butter does not melt. If so cling wrap the dough and referigerate it for 5-10 minutes to allow butter to stay cold. Knead it once again if needed. Now palstic wrap and let it rest in refrigerator until you are ready to use it for wrapping stuff. Meanehile you can work on preparing the filling for the puff. Keep it in refrigerator atleast for 30 minutes. This helps the dough and butter to stay intact.
7)When you are ready to roll out the pastry sheets,take the dough out on a floured surface. Cut the dough it into 4-5 parts.We work on a small part at a time. Rest of the dough should stay in refrigerator.
Take a piece and roll it out as thin as a coin width using a rolling pin. I laid out the dough on a wax paper and covered it with a plastic wrap while rolling it out. That helped a lot to ease the process. Need to roll out equally across.
8)Now cut it into a rectangle or any shape that you want for stuffing your favourite items.
9) Your pastry sheets are ready.
Now let's work on the filling part.
Mushroom waterchesnut paste.
1) Remove stems from mushrooms (9-10). Randomly chop them.
2) Chop water chestnuts too. Chop 2-3 cloves of garlic.
3) In a blender, blend mushrooms, garlic, salt and pepper.
4) Now add waterchestnuts and blend it one more time.
5) Now transfer this mixture to a heated pan and cook until the mixture dries out.
6) finally add few leaves of fresh thyme and tranfer it to a bowl. Let it cool down.
Chilli shrimps
1) Clean out the shrimps and add some salt and lemon juice to marinate these. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
2) Meanwhile let's prepare the second marinade.
Take 8-9 dried red chillies and de-seed all of these. Put these in a bowl. Add some boiling water to the bowl. Let it rest for 10-15 minutes until the chillies become soft.
3) Now transfer these to a hand pounder. Also add 4-5 cloves of garlic. Add 1 tsp whole coriander seeds, 1 tsp cumin seeds, 1 tsp shahi jeera and some salt.
Pound it. Add some olive oil ( around 2 tbsp ) and 1 tbsp lemon juice.
Mix it well. Our marinade is ready. Keep some portion aside for forming sauce.
4) Transfer the shrimps in the marinade, let all the shrimps be covered well with marinade. Let it rest for 20 minutes.
5) Now add some oil in a heated pan and transfer the shrimps onto the pan.
Fry these until golden brown on all sides and curled up. It hardly takes 5-10 minutes for the shrimps to cook. But also allow them to dry up. We dont want any moisture in stuffing. Once dried up, transfer the prawns to a bowl and let it cool down.
Now since the stuffing is ready, let's start preparing our pastry puffs.
1) Keep few spinach leaves ready.
2) Roll out a pastry sheet on floured platform. In the middle spread some(2-3) spinach leaves. Sprinkle some salt and freshly ground pepper. Now spread some mushroom water chestnut mixture over the spinach leaves. Now layer some shrimps over it. Now gain add a thin layer of mushroom mixture. Layer some spinach leaves. Sprinkle salt and pepper.
3) gently spread some egg wash on the rest of the pastry sheet. ( beat one egg for this and add some salt.)
4) Gently roll out the puff to form a rectangular puff as shown in picture. On the corners, do some egg wash and fold them to form a closed puff. Repeat the same procedure for other pastry puffs. Refrigerate it for 5 minutes. Transfer it into baking tray now.
5) Using blunt side of knife, make some diagonal slits ( not actually making cuts) to form the blunt side of knife. Similarly do it from other side too to form a mat like pattern.
6) Egg wash on the top side of the puffs. Spinkrl some salt and freshly ground pepper over it.
7) Preheat your oven to 375°F and bake the puffs for around 20 minutes or until you see golden brown colored puffs.
So your Shrimp Wellington is ready. Serve it with some fresh salad and some sauce of your choice. I added some mayonnaise to the marinade mixture, along with some roasted cumin powder to make your mayo-chilli sauce. One puff is enough for a meal for one person :-).
Enjoy the lovely meal with your loved ones.
Cheers,
Shweta
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