A heroic feast

Beef Wellington, a signature dish at The Cut, an award-winning steak restaurant in Beijing. Photos provided to China Daily

Beef Wellington is a time-consuming challenge to prepare, but this photogenic star of British cuisine is a favorite for special occasions. Mike Peters tucks in for a warm feast on a cold Beijing night.

Christoph Zoller's gleaming chef's knife slices easily through a picture-perfect pastry crust and the tender Wagyu tenderloin inside. It's easy to see why beef Wellington has become a pastry-crusted British classic.

Zoller is a tree trunk of a chef, a towering Swiss who looks impossibly young to be running a kitchen like The Cut, the award-winning steak restaurant at the Fairmont Beijing. Zoller started cooking in a vocational program at age 15 (one day of school, four days in a commercial kitchen), and the plates now before us prove he was a quick study.

"Of course, the dish is traditionally made with duxelles (mushrooms that have been pulverized into a paste) that encase the beef," he notes when we arrive for dinner.

"However, I think that looks a bit gray, so my version is a little prettier, a little more colorful."

Zoller achieves a more vivid look－and flavor－by mixing ground pork and bacon with pan-fried mushrooms, salt, pepper and duck foie gras to give a famously rich dish an air of even more luxury.

"Ovens vary, but here we roast it at 180 C for 22 minutes－or 24 minutes for medium-well, which Chinese guests sometimes prefer. Then we let it rest for 30 minutes to set all of the flavors."

The result is gloriously pink beef－so rosy it's almost red but not at all bloody. Using Wagyu tenderloin from a meat importer that ships it in without freezing means each serving is fork-tender every time.

A month ago, Chinese celebrity chef Steven Liu kicked off the British Menu Week in Beijing by recalling President Xi Jinping's recent state visit to London. That provoked a fish-and-chips frenzy after Xi enjoyed that English classic and some India pale ale with Prime Minister David Cameron.