Tasty Tuesday: Beef Wellingtons

Oh college. There are times I really miss college. Strangely, some of the things I miss have to do with the cafeteria (which at my alma mater was "The Commons"). Everybody seems to have vehement complaints about the various cafeterias they've encountered in their lives; certainly my high school cafeteria wasn't anything special. They had good bagels, but those came from Outside. Fridays were Domino's day. But, I digress.

At college, in the week following a ham dinner night, there would be these magical things that appeared during a lunch time: ham and cheese Wellingtons. At the time, I wasn't culinarily knowledgeable in the least, so I couldn't tell what the flakey buttery golden dough was around the ham and cheese. I'd never encountered if before. Was it from the croissant dough (the croissants were also magical, by the way)? Was it filo? Gordon Ramsay's Wellington, I know now, uses puff pastry.

But, I didn't know that then, or even just out of college, when I tried to recreate the Wellington experience. I used canned crescent rolls (you know, the "peel 'til it explodes" type?). They were all right, but not the same at all. Even knowing about the puff pastry, I haven't tried that yet. But, the other day, I made a big hunk o' beef in the crock pot, to have for the week, and the day after, I rolled out biscuits and made some "beef Wellingtons" with that.

Still not the same. But very, very tasty.

I promise, every last thing I cook isn't carby and cheesy. Those just seem to be the ones that I post here!