In my defense, she stuck it in my mouth first...

Well, I hope it wasn't an important finger.

Kate - you beat me! Good job!

Good for you in staying with it. We are going through stuff in our basement and I am embarassed to admit we tossed out a LOT.

Here is the recipe for the roast tenderloin.
Here is the recipe.

This for a 2 to 3 pound roast, but you can double the filling ingredients and if you have some filling left over, well, crostini is good, or mix it with some cream cheese or butter.

about 8 ounces of either cremini or button mushrooms, cleaned and trimmed. You can use the stems if they are still good.

1/2 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
1 medium onion, halved and sliced about 1/4 inch thick
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1/8 black pepper
1 medium garlic clove
1/2 cup Madiera wine or sweet Marsala wine (I don't use wine for cooking, I use either chicken or beef broth, or one of the three types of grape juice, apple juice, cranberry juice...you get the idea)or fruit juice.

The Roast:

1 beef tenderloin center cut Chateaubriand (2 to 3 pounds), trimmed of fat and sliver skin
Salt and pepper to taste. I use fleur de sel.
1/2 cup lightly packed spinach
3 tablespoons olive oil

Herb Butter
4 tablesoons unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsely leaves
3/4 tables fresh thyme leaves
1 medium garlic clove, minced or pressed through a garlic press (about one teaspoon)
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1/8 teaspoon table salt (I grind fleur de sel)
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

For the stuffing: roughly chop the mushrooms either by hand or in a food processor in short pulses. Heat butter and oin in 12 skillet
over medium high heat until foaming subsides.
Add onion, table salt, and pepper; cook, stirring occcasionally until onion begins to soften, about five minutes. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally until all moisture has evaporated, 5 to 7 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and continue
to cook, stirring frequently until vegetables are deeply browned and sticky, about 10 minutes.

Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, 30 seconds. Slowly stir in Madera (or liquid of choice) and cook, scraping bottom of skillet to loosen any browned bits, until liquid has evaporated, 2 to 3 mintues. Transfer onion mushroom mixture to plate and cool to room temperature.

The Roast: You can have your butcher butterfly it in three sections to make it easier to roll, but if you HAVE to do it yerself, here are the instructions: Inster chef's knife about 1 inch from bottom of raost and cut horizontally, stopping juste before edge. Open meat like a book. Make another cut diagonally into thicker portion of roast. Open up this flap, smoothing out butterflied rectangle of meat. Salt and pepper meat liberally. Spread filling
evenly over entire surface, leaving 1/2 inch border on all sides. Press spinach leaves on top of filling. Using both hands, gently but firmly roll up stuffed tenderloin, making it as compact as possible withouth squeezing out filling.
Evenly space eight pieces of kitchen twine (each about 14 inches) beneath roast. Tie each strand tightly around roast, starting with ends.

At this point, you can stop if you are making this a day ahead.

To proceed from that point, stir together 1 tablespoon olive oil, salt and pepper. Rub over roast and let it stand at room temp for 1 hour.

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat over to 450 degrees. Heat remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in 12 inch skillet over medium high heat until smoking. Add beef to pan and cook until well browned on all sides 8 to 10 minutes total. Transfer beef to wire rack set in in rimmed baking sheet and place in oven.
Roast until instant read thermometer inserted
into thickest part of roast registers 120 degrees for rare, about 16 to 18 minutes, or 125 degrees for medium rare, 20 to 22 minutes.

Herb butter; While the meat roasts, combine butter ingredients in small bowl. Transfer roast to cutting board (when done to your liking)
and spread half of butter evenly over top of roast. Loosely tent roast with foil, let rest for 15 minutes. Cut roast between pieces of twine
into thick slices. Remove twine and serve with remaining butter passed separately.

This is from the Cook's Illustrated December 2006 issue. Cook's Illustrated is one of the best cooking geek periodicals out there. A close second is Fine Cooking at Home, but duh, most of their contributors work at Cook's Illustrated.
Cuisine at Home is another excellent magazine.

I do tinker around with recipes, as sometimes the techniques or ingredients aren't clear or available. I have had my share of disasters, but
the successes way outnumber the failures, which is encouraging me to keep on doing this.

One last note about the roast: Chateaubriand comes from the center portion of the tenderloin, and won't get bigger than about four pounds
before it tapers to that little flap.

I am also making some headway cleaning out *junk* MrC is such a hoarder and sometimes I have to get junk out into the dumpster when he is away from the house *smile*