Roasted Garlic and Horseradish Crusted Beef Tenderloin

Crust to me means: a crispy topping a la the crust of bread is not soft.
This recipe?
Not crusty.

Not at all.

The recipes DOES make a great and full of flavor (I have stopped using the word flavorfull because it is so overused by Rachel Ray, who I no longer like very much) beef tenderloin.

Here are my thoughts on beef tenderloin. It is my beef of choice because it really needs a sauce, and I am saucy. Also it is not chewy, and you don't have to cut around hunks o' fat. It isn't the most flavorful beef. And filet mignon, grilled, is really kinda icky sometimes. It just ends up tasting like the grill. And I like keeping my bacon with bacon and beef with beef, so adding bacon around the beef so that it tastes like bacon, seems rather idiotic to me. I mean honestly, you are turning a $30 piece of meat (at a restaurant), into a 5 cent slice o' bacon.

So with a sauce, you are getting the tender, melt in your mouth, beef, with a nice addition of bernaise sauce, or red wine reduction, or some gorgonzola cheese. In this case, our dinner last night, it had a roasted garlic and horseradish topping. It was roasted, which is nice because then it doesn't taste like the grill. I served it with roasted garlic mashed potatoes.

The recipe says it serves 12 people. I halved the recipe for the two of us, using less than 1.5 lbs of beef (much less), and the topping was enough. So if you are going to do this with 3 lbs of beef, I recommend doubling the "crust". And if you want a "crust", as I define crust, press some breadcrumbs into the topping...

Here is the recipe, taken from Cooking Light.

Beef Tenderloin with Horseradish-and-Roasted Garlic Crust
1 whole garlic head
Olive oil-flavored cooking spray
1/3 cup prepared horseradish
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 (3-pound) beef tenderloin

Preheat oven to 350°.
Remove white papery skin from garlic head (do not peel or separate the cloves). Coat with cooking spray; wrap in foil. Bake at 350° for 1 hour; cool 10 minutes. Separate cloves; squeeze to extract garlic pulp. Discard skins. Mash garlic pulp, horseradish, salt, basil, thyme, and pepper with a fork until blended.

Preheat oven to 400°.

Trim fat from tenderloin; fold under 3 inches of small end. Rub garlic mixture over roast. Place tenderloin on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Insert meat thermometer into thickest portion of tenderloin. Bake at 400° for 40 minutes or until thermometer registers 145° (medium-rare) to 160° (medium).

Place tenderloin on a platter. Cover and let stand 10 minutes before slicing.

Yield: 12 servings (serving size: 3 ounces)

NUTRITION PER SERVING
CALORIES 179(38% from fat); FAT 7.5g (sat 3g,mono 2.8g,poly 0.4g); PROTEIN 24g; CHOLESTEROL 70mg; CALCIUM 22mg; SODIUM 117mg; FIBER 0.2g; IRON 3.3mg; CARBOHYDRATE 2.5g