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24th March 2010
Leftover Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday...
Leftovers. They're a blessing. And a curse.

After days of congealed béarnaise sauce-buttered Breakfast Bap sandwiches filled with leftover Roast beef, mayonnaise, dijon mustard, sliced red onion, tomato and rocket, I hit upon the Beef Wellingtonettes for using up the beef in a hurry.

Not only that, but I used up the spare mussels too. Hurray.

Spare Mussel Tagliatelle
main pasta fish
Something to make after you've drunk a good steaming bowl of mussel stock

It helps if either you thoroughly de-beard the mussels whilst you're cleaning them by wiggling the beards back and forth until the pull cleanly out of the shell, or you remove the tangled seaweedy mass as you shuck the mussel shells after making the stock.
Mouthfulls of chewy mussel beard in your tagliatelle are just yeuch.

Serves 4

Ingredients
tagliatelle
olive oil
2 rashers smoked bacon. Probably not leftover. Unfortunately
24 leftover mussels, shucked and chilled
3 leftover shallots, minced
6 leftover garlic cloves, puréed
2-4 button mushrooms, roughly chopped
2 cups leftover double cream
leftover chilli parsley butter
Method
Put a pot of pasta water on to boil

Chop the bacon into relatively generous lardons. Fry in olive oil until cooked through, add the shallots and cook until soft, add the garlic and cook through, add the mushrooms (not too finely chopped) and warm through then add the cream.
Start the tagliatelle cooking
Now when the cream mixture has heated through, add the mussels, reheat then add the chilli parsley butter in small quantities and whisk in to thicken the sauce.
Season.
Drain the pasta and serve topped with the mussel sauce
It's pretty tasty, though the sauce could be thicker - maybe some flour cooked in before the shallots?

Beef Wellingtonettes
main meat
Beef Wellingtonette
Yum. Dig that leftover beef.
It's ok to use shop-bought puff pastry sheets: It's leftovers.

Ingredients
fist-sized chunks of leftover roast beef
puff pastry
6 button mushrooms
leftover shallots and garlic (optional)
dijon mustard
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas 6.

Blend the mushrooms to a paste in a food processor. Add a little shallot or garlic if you like On second thoughts, maybe not the shallots. You could add truffle or fois gras though, if you're feeling rich
Fry in a little butter until slightly reduced and the mushrooms will hold together.
Smear the steak chunks with mustard (or horseradish), then cover with the mushrooms and roll in the puff pastry.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until golden brown.
(though not too close together lest they merge into one big soggy Wellingtonboot, and the girlies pick at them listlessly complaining that they aren't properly cooked)

Eat with the leftover Sambuca mushrooms and Green Beans.

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