The 50 Greatest Dishes of the World

by James Steen

  BEEF WELLINGTON

  A fillet of cold, seared beef, covered in a paté and a mixture of shallots and mushrooms, and then a duvet of pastry, before it is baked. Was it named after the English duke or a street in Chicago?

  There are ample twists and turns in the story of this magnificent dish, as well as a few common misconceptions.

  One is that beef Wellington was created for the Duke of Wellington, that great British general, who was born in Dublin in 1769, and died peacefully in Deal, Kent, in 1852.

  It is extremely unlikely that he ever tasted the dish that bears his name. (Some say the dish – it fails miserably when overcooked – was named after his boots.)

  Clarissa Dickson Wright claimed that Wellington had nothing to do with the grand old duke, and it was instead created at a hotel dinner in Wellington, New Zealand. There is no evidence to support this, and it seems all too familiar to the tale of a famous meringue dessert (see: Pavlova).

  It has also been stated – and in the Oxford English Dictionary, no less – that beef Wellington did not appear (as a recipe, in print) until 1939. Apparently, this was when it was briefly mentioned in a restaurant guide published not in Britain, but in New York. ‘Tenderloin of Beef Wellington,’ was the title: ‘Larded tenderloin of beef. Roast very rare. Allow to cool and roll into pie crust. Slice in portions and serve with sauce Madire.’

  But please read on …

  Most probably, the dish was inspired by France, where for centuries they have relished bœuf en croûte – beef in a crust, and that crust is pastry. Beef Wellington is very, very French. It is smothered in either pâté or foie – distinctly French products. This, in turn, is covered in a duxelle of mushrooms and onions – a technique of classic French cookery; the mushrooms and onions are very finely sliced and sautéed. In France, truffles are sometimes used, dotted on the foie gras.

  Put simply, Wellington just does not seem like a recipe of 19th-century Britain, did not appear in any cookery books of the time, and there is actually nothing in print that connects the dish to the man, apart from the name.

  *

  This led me to consider the possibility that a French chef, knowing how to cook bœuf en croûte, left France and sailed off to find work in another country. As the first-known recipe appeared in America, and not in Britain, it seemed possible that this was where the chef had ended up.

  And so it was that I came across Ernest Amiet. Born in France in the late 1800s or early 1900s, he left his homeland to work in the kitchens of Switzerland and England. It is not known where he worked in England, but it seems he would have probably mastered the skills of working in a hotel kitchen in Switzerland.

  Amiet then made his way across the Atlantic, to Chicago and the Palmer House hotel. Today it is the Palmer House Hilton. Its history is rich in romance, charm and more than a little drama, which is worth recounting just to give you a sense of the world into which Amiet stepped. That history begins in the late 1800s with Potter Palmer, a Chicago business magnate, who married the wealthy socialite Bertha Honore, and gave her an extravagant wedding gift – namely, the hotel.

  However, only thirteen days after its grand opening, the Palmer House was almost destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire. Potter, who was clearly a man of considerable resilience, borrowed a couple of million dollars and set about rebuilding it. On 8 November 1873, the new Palmer House welcomed its first guests. It marked the opening of what would become America’s longest continually operating hotel.

  Shortly after befriending Claude Monet in France, Bertha Palmer began decorating the Palmer House with paintings, eventually accumulating the largest collection of impressionist art outside France. The Palmer House was bedecked with garnet-draped chandeliers, Louis Comfort Tiffany masterpieces, and a breathtaking ceiling fresco by French painter Louis Pierre Rigal.

  By the turn of the 20th century, the Palmer House was, without question, Chicago’s place to stay. Guests and visitors included US presidents and, from Britain, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde.

  It was an exciting place, with a heady, lively buzz, and this is where Amiet came to work, with his knowledge of French cuisine, and his experience in Europe. It is unclear when he did arrive, but his knowledge must have been extensive because, in 1929, he was the executive chef at the Palmer House, and overseeing a massive brigade. He was also Chicago president of the august society, Chefs de Cuisine Association of America. He features in a newspaper article that year, under the headline: ‘Banquet often a peril, says chef.’

  The report begins: ‘The average American is eating himself to ill health, and if he is given to attending formal banquets and luncheons he is doing it considerably faster than if he eats most of his meals at home. That statement comes from Ernest A. Amiet …’

  Amiet was quoted in the piece, saying: ‘The average guest at a big banquet has a nightmare and a stomach ache after he goes home, and gets up vowing never to attend another banquet.’ He was also critical of diets: ‘More and more people every year are going on diets. And why? Simply because in most cases they have been overeating.’

  Of course, Amiet was the chef feeding the overeaters. Glittering banquets and grand dinner functions took place every day at the Palmer House. The parties never stopped. And in 1933, the Golden Empire Dining Room of Palmer House was converted into an entertainment venue, hosting entertainers who included Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong and Liberace.

  It was all very swish and elegant, and Amiet decided to share his recipes with guests and the outside world. He wrote The Palmer House Cook Book, subtitled 1022 Recipes for Home Use. First published in 1933 (when Amiet was featured in the press), it was subsequently re-published in 1940. Among the recipes, it also featured 76 days of menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The hotel’s manager, Walter L. Gregory, wrote an Introduction to the book: ‘Chef Amiet has presented to the housewife a volume that can easily revolutionize her everyday table.

  ‘These recipes, entirely new to a family, place on the home table food that will add much interest to dining at home.’ People were often keen to cook at home the dishes they had eaten in hotels, noted Gregory, and Amiet’s book solved that problem ‘by reducing and proportioning the quantities from hotel kitchen totals to home kitchen amounts’. A cartoon of a chef’s chubby-cheeked face, with a big smile and even bigger chef’s hat, was splashed across the cover.

  *

  On page 121 of his book, Amiet suggests a dinner menu of: Petit Pain Brabantaise, Tenderloin of Beef Wellington; Cauliflower Polonaise; St Honoré cake. His recipe for beef Wellington is as follows:

  Lard 4 lbs of beef tenderloin, roast for 15 minutes, let cool and spread with cold, brown fine herb sauce. Roll out a piece of puff paste. Place the tenderloin on top and seal the meat with this dough. Paint with yellow of egg. Bake for 20 minutes in moderate oven (350˚F). Serve with hot brown fine herb sauce.

  His brown fine herb sauce involved frying chopped shallots and mushrooms in butter, adding white wine and letting it reduce a little; add a splash of Worcestershire sauce, parsley, chives and finish it with more butter. It is a bit like Madeira sauce, minus the Madeira. But clearly he was thinking of the home cook, the housewife, and the availability of ingredients.

  Essentially, Amiet’s beef Wellington was six years ahead of the beef Wellington which was mentioned in the New York restaurant guide in 1939. Therefore Amiet must take the credit for being the creator of the name. After all, he was the first to mention it in print.

  But why, if the dish was named by a Frenchman in Chicago, would it bear Wellington’s name? My theory is that Amiet named the dish not directly after the duke, but after the area in which he himself lived and worked. That is, the name Wellington was well known in Chicago; the city has numerous streets and avenues which are named after British places and British people.

  These include: Aberdeen, Addison, Argyle, Buckingham, Byron, Cambridge, Chamberlain, Churchill, Claremont, Clifton, Cromwell, Dickens,
Elgin, Hamilton, Hudson, Livingston, Montrose, Newton, Raleigh, Richmond, Shakespeare, Spencer and Stevenson. There is also a Wellington Street and Wellington Avenue which, yes, are named after the duke. And, since the early 1900s, there has been Wellington station, which is on the brown train line.

  It seems entirely credible that one evening Amiet was catering for a large party of residents who lived in one of the Wellingtons, or had a link of some sort to Wellington station. What could the chef make in their honour? Bœuf en croûte, which he had eaten in France, would be perfect. But why not by another name, and one that would delight the guests?

  *

  In Britain, meanwhile, beef Wellington is noticeably absent before the Second World War. And, of course, it could never have been made in early peace time because of food rationing, which lasted into the 1950s.

  In fact, it looks like the Wellington word spread from America; it seems they were making it first. The Americans were interested in what the French were eating, and the British were interested in what the Americans were eating.

  Julia Child showed Americans how to cook unusual ‘foreign’ dishes, and in her 1961 book Mastering the Art of French Cooking she introduced excited Americans to a new cuisine (she also had a successful TV show, The French Chef). Beef Wellington now became fashionable in the States and then in Britain, along with those other dinner party classics of the time, coq au vin, bœuf bourguinon and chocolate mousse.

  Meanwhile, in Bristol in 1971, a young chef called Keith Floyd – more than a decade away from becoming Britain’s first wine-slurping celebrity chef – was serving the dish to guests at his busy forty-seater restaurant. That year’s Good Food Guide reported: ‘… Main dishes range from moussaka at 75p or so (we have not seen the latest menu) to beef Wellington at £3 for two … You pay 20p for cheese, but there is a fair choice … The canned music is more obtrusive in the bar than in the restaurant. No dogs in the dining room.’

  Ultimately, beef Wellington is romantic. Dhruv Baker, winner of BBC One’s MasterChef in 2010, resorted to cooking this fantastic dish as part of his courting process when he met Aileen. ‘She was coming out of being a vegetarian. I was childishly competitive, like most men, and thought I’d cook her beef Wellington. It worked!’ Today they are husband and wife.

  And I know of one married couple, Dominic and Romina, who competed against each other to see who could make the best Wellington. On a Saturday morning in their kitchen at home, they busily set about crafting his and hers Wellingtons. Romina cut letters out of the pastry and laid them on top of her pastry case. When it emerged from the oven, perfectly baked and smelling delicious, there was the word spelled out in egg-glazed, golden letters: ‘WINNER’.

  BIRDS

  PEKING DUCK

  The skin must be golden and as crispy as parchment, the flesh should be succulent and sweet. A treasured delicacy of China’s palace tables which became beloved food for the masses.

  The Chinese were the first to domesticate mallards, keeping them as pets in ancient times, mostly destined, of course, for the table.

  According to Liao Shi (the book of China’s history), roasted duck originated in the South of China. The city of Lin’an was conquered by Bayan of the Baarin in the 13th century, and when the capital relocated to Peking (now Beijing), so did the chefs who were extraordinarily skilled in the culinary art of duck roasting.

  Roasted duck became a regular treat in the imperial palaces, while honey has long been an accompanying ingredient (the ancient Romans also approved of the duck– honey combination).

  By the 17th century there was at least one restaurant in Beijing which specialised in roasted duck, although it was cooked in an unfamiliar (to us) way: the oven was filled with sorghum, the tall grass, and a fire was made. The fierce heat permeated the oven’s stone walls, and remained within them. When the fire was out, the ducks went in, cooking in the heat from the walls. The birds were left with a crispy, golden skin.

  As residents of Beijing developed an insatiable taste for roasted duck, more restaurants opened to cater for the demand, and an interesting development came in 1864. Yang Quanren was a street vendor who sold live poultry on the streets, but he took the opportunity to buy a fruit shop when it came up for sale. He did not want to run a shop. Instead, he turned it into a restaurant, a tiny place called Quanjude. It is said that he acquired from the imperial chefs their special recipe for roasted duck – now the masses could feast like royalty.

  The ducks at Quanjude were hung from hooks in open ovens, cooking over the wood of peach or pear trees, which perfumed the poultry and, importantly, the ducks were basted all the while. Although it was small, Quanjude acquired, in time, a mighty, worldwide reputation. The restaurant was passed down through the generations, and today it is still in the family. There are ten branches, serving Quanjude Peking duck and Chinese pancakes to thousands of customers every day. At last count, the restaurants had served 140 million ducks since 1864.

  Travelling gourmets, as well as the rich and famous, have often made a beeline for Quanjude. ‘On arrival in China,’ it is said, ‘Peking duck at Quanjude should be your first meal.’ In 1971, President Nixon’s special envoy travelled to China for discussions that eventually led to a detente between the United States and China. During their first meeting with Chinese leaders it was a banquet featuring duck from Quanjude which helped put Kissinger and his countrymen well at ease.

  Roast duck can be enjoyed in three traditional ways. First, use chopsticks to spread sweet sauce on the pancake, add a few slices of duck and slices of spring onions, cucumber or radish on the pancake; roll it up. Second, put mashed garlic and soy sauce on the duck slices, and eat in or out of a pancake. Third, dip the duck slices in sugar; again, the pancake is up to you.

  In the Western world, and for many decades, Ken Hom has championed Peking duck, spreading the word via his cookery shows and cookbooks. ‘I’d like to have it for my final meal,’ says the Chinese-American chef. Very kindly, Ken has shared his recipe with me so that I may share it with you. It is highly recommended.

  Ken Hom’s Peking Duck

  Serves 4–6

  Ingredients

  1 x 1.6–1.8 kilogram (3½–4 pound) duck, fresh or frozen, preferably Cherry Valley

  For the honey syrup:

  1 lemon

  1.2 litres (2 pints) water

  3 tablespoons honey

  3 tablespoons dark soy sauce

  150 millilitres (5 fluid ounces) Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry

  To serve:

  Chinese pancakes

  Spring onion, sliced like matchsticks, lengthways

  6 tablespoons hoisin sauce or sweet bean sauce

  If the duck is frozen, thaw it thoroughly. Rinse the duck well and blot it completely dry with kitchen paper. Insert a meat hook near the neck.

  Using a sharp knife, cut the lemon into five millimetre (a quarter of an inch) slices, leaving the rind on.

  Place the slices in a large pan with the rest of the honey syrup ingredients and bring the mixture to the boil. Turn the heat to low and simmer for about twenty minutes.

  Using a large ladle or spoon, pour this mixture over the duck several times, as if to bathe it, until the skin of the duck is completely coated.

  Hang the duck over a tray or roasting pan and leave in a cool, well-ventilated place to dry for four to five hours, or longer if possible. (If you wish to speed up the process, place it in front of a fan for several hours.) When the duck has dried, the skin should feel like parchment paper.

  Preheat the oven to 240°C (475°F, gas mark 9).

  Meanwhile, place the duck on a roasting rack in a roasting tin, breast side up. Pour 150 millilitres (5 fluid ounces) of water into the roasting tin. (This will prevent the fat from splattering.)

  Put the duck into the oven and roast it for fifteen minutes. Turn down the heat to 180°C (350°F, gas mark 4) and continue to roast for one hour and ten minutes.

  Remove the duck from the oven and let it res
t for at least ten minutes before carving it.

  Using a cleaver or a sharp knife, cut the skin and meat into pieces and arrange them on a warm serving platter. Serve at once with Chinese pancakes, spring onion slices, and a bowl of hoisin sauce or sweet bean sauce.

  CHICKEN KIEV

  A fillet of chicken breast enveloping a pocket of garlicky, herby butter; coated in breadcrumbs, shallow fried and pierced at the table. Ukrainian, French or American?

  The answer to the question above is: no one has the foggiest. This is a dish of murky provenance. Where and when did it come about?

  The Art of Russian Cuisine tells us: ‘As the name suggests, this is a Ukranian contribution to Russian gourmet cuisine and a recent one, dating back to the early 1900s.’

  Others insist it was created by the French chef, Nicolas (Francois) Appert (1749–1841). He was certainly the man who invented the bottling of food. Alternatively, it is said, chicken Kiev was conceived by the great French chef Antoine Carême.

  The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Food and Drink in America suggests: ‘Unknown in czarist times, this dish is actually a Soviet-era innovation. During the 1970s and 1980s, it was served at the most elegant catered events in America. Eventually some American cooks substituted blue cheese for the butter or pan-fried the chicken instead of deep-frying it, variations that did justice to the original recipe.’

  In Britain, Alan Davidson, in his Oxford Companion to Food, writes: ‘It has been described by Lesley Chamberlain (1983) as “a Soviet hotel and restaurant classic”, which so far as she could discover had no pre-Revolutionary history.’

  The Russian Tea Room Cookbook, with recipes from the well-established restaurant in Manhattan which has served chicken Kiev since the 1940s, believes it is ‘the most famous of Russian dishes’ (Kiev is in Ukraine), but then admits that the ‘Kievian origins are obscure’. It also pinpoints Carême as creating the dish during his days at the court of Nicolas I.