Next weekend it’s the Super Bowl, and we’ll be celebrating with a weekend of American food. This weekend, in contrast, will be very much European.

We’re starting with beef wellington, from The Gandiand’s Cook the Perfect recipe (using homemade puff pastry off course), with pommes soufflées from a recipe in Le Monde, and a miceowaved bag of mixed cabbage. And don’t you dare judge us using microwave bags of cabbage: we’re making the puff, the mushroom pâté, the wellingtons, & the pommes soufflés from scratch: nuking some veg at the end is totally acceptable!

I start by searing the beef to develop flavour and leave a fond in the pan to be a base for the mushroom sauce. while Soph fries up the mushrooms and shallots that form both the pâté for the wellingtons and part of the sauce.

I made the puff in advance, rolled it out, then Soph assembled the beef parcels.

They get egg glazed and sprinkled with poppy seeds.

Potatoes get mandolined then fried at 150C for about seven minutes.

After 30mins at 180C fan the wellingtons are done.

After drying on paper towels the potatoes goes back in at a higher 180C temperature to puff up… but only a couple puffed up properly, probably because we overcrowded the pot.

Then after the cabbaged has been nuked and the pan sauce made we’re ready to serve.

Cutting into it as we find the beef perfectly cooked: rare but warm. The pastry was a lttle bit undercooked, but better the pastry under than the beef over.

Not the healthiest meal in the world. A bit of cabbage doesn’t cover up huge amounts of red meat and deep-fried potatoes. But we don’t eat red meat during the week, and as the best advice in the world says: everything in moderation; including moderation.