Beef Wellington - pancake layer under the pastry?

[anonymousbird]

I have never added a pancake layer under my pastry when making Welly Boot, but heard of it recently and wondered if it would make much difference?

TIA

Don't really know what you mean by pancake, but the recipe I have uses a morelle (sp?) of mushrooms and parma ham under the pastry, and it really is lovely

I saw something about wrapping fillet in pancakes, as well as using duxelle and then pastry but didn't know what difference that would really make. May be something to do with pastry not going soggy from meat? Not sure.....

PS like the sound of Parma ham, may look onto that!

Ah, right. Yeah, think the recipe I use uses the parma ham instead of pancake, as you wrap it really tightly (using cling film) and then drape the pastry over really carefully to make sure no air between the two layers. The one I use is a Gordon Ramsey recipe I got in the Good Food years ago- everyone seems to love it, so I do it every Christmas. If you search on bbcGoodFood.co.uk (I think!) you should find the recipe there

Jooly, parma ham sounds infinitely more interesting than pancakes. I will search out the recipe you mention... thanks very much