Test Kitchen #2: Beef Vegetable Turnovers

This week's test kitchen with Dad should really be titled, "Make it up as you go," because that's exactly what we did. After last week's experiment, I told Dad that it was his turn to pick the recipe. He began describing this version of beef wellington that he wanted to try made with stew meat and puff pastry. Sounds like an interesting challenge. When I arrived today, after noon and hungry from my workout, I asked, "So where's the recipe?"

"No recipe. I figured we just make this stuff up as we went along."

And so we did. It came out pretty good for something we literally pulled out of the air. After a few minutes of brainstorming at the kitchen table, we set to work. With the snow coming down, Mom was coming home early and we would have a hungry test subject to feed.

Beef Vegetable Turnovers

Ingredients (Makes 8 turnovers)

1 pound of stew meat, cut into half inch cubes
1 package of pastry dough (2 sheets to a package)
4 medium sized carrots, thinly sliced
3 stalks of celery, thinly sliced
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 tablespoons of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of paprika
1 1/2 cups of beef gravy

1. Saute all vegetables and garlic in a large skillet until tender.
Transfer into a bowl and set aside.

2. Place beef in a large ziploc bag, add flour, salt, pepper and paprika. Seal bag with a little air inside and shake the bag vigorously to evenly coat the meat.

3. Add beef to skillet. When the meat is mostly browned, add vegetables back into the pan.

4. Stir in 1/2 cup of the beef gravy and mix well until thickens.
Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
(Do not put hot filling into pastry dough.)

5. Preheat oven to 425°.

6. Flour a work surface and roll out 1 sheet of pastry dough until you have a 12" square. With a pizza wheel or knife, cut the dough into quarters so that you have 4 6" square pieces.

7. Take approximately 1/3 to 1/2 cups of the cooled meat mixture and place in the center of one of the squares of dough. You can wrap them up a few different ways. Make sure you press and seal all the edges together with you fingertips.
A: Fold one corner of dough to it's opposite corner creating a triangle.
B: Gather all four corners in at the center to make a square pouch.
C: Fold in two side towards the center and roll up like a burrito.

8. Place turnovers on a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Brush all with egg wash making sure to cover the seams.

9. Place in the upper middle rack of the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Using a food processor to chop your vegetables cuts your prep time down significantly. Plus, you can get nice thin slices that are all relatively uniform. We served each pastry sitting on a small mound of mashed potatoes and drizzled the top with some of the remaining gravy. It was very good and one portion was very filling. I liked the twisted square shape the best made by gathering the four corners to the center. (See top left corner of the baking sheet in the picture above.)

The test subject (Mom) enjoyed it too and as a reward shared with us her chocolate cake that she had baked the night before. She was planning on taking it to a party this evening, but the snow is keeping her home. We couldn't let it go to waste!