Erin Patterson evidence recap: Accused mushroom killer’s dehydrator admission after beef Wellington lunch

Ms Patterson said Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson asked if she was coming to an upcoming birthday that the accused didn’t know about.

She said it was a quarterly family gathering to celebrate any wider family birthdays around that time.

She accepted the invite before finishing serving up lunch.

Ms Patterson said she plated up “five” Wellingtons, with the sixth placed in the fridge on an oven tray to “worry about” later.

The accused said she told her lunch guests to “grab a plate”, while finishing off the gravy for the meal.

While Ms Patterson was mashing potatoes, she said Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson looked at her pantry.

“They said it was great”, Ms Patterson said.

After that, it was time for lunch.

“I put out the plates and started serving the mash, then the Wellingtons and finally the beans,” Ms Patterson told the court.

She explained she used a variety of mismatched plates, specifically denying she owned or used any “grey” plates.

“I remember while I was doing this, Heather and Gail were talking to me.”

Ms Patterson told the court that her children were not at the lunch, instead, they went to a movie.

She said she thought their absence would make it easier to talk about an “upcoming” medical procedure.

Ms Patterson said she had a “pre-assessment” booked in for a gastric bypass, scheduled for “early September”.

Erin Patterson told the court that she made six beef Wellingtons for the “special” lunch.

“At the appropriate time, I put them in the oven,” she said.

“People were coming at 12.30.

“I wanted them out and resting by 12.30.”

Ms Patterson said her guests arrived “very close” to 12.30, with Heather Wilkinson bringing a “nice” fruit platter and Gail Patterson bringing an “orange cake”.

While Ms Patterson was preparing her beef Wellington, which she hoped would be “special”, her ex-partner, Simon Patterson, informed the accused over text that he was “too uncomfortable” about joining the lunch.

Ms Patterson replied, saying she had spent “many hours” preparing the lunch, as well as saying she may not be able to host a lunch like this again for some months due to her medical condition, which she admits was not true.

Ms Patterson said she wanted her ex-partner to “feel bad” for cancelling late.

Ms Patterson said she cooked her mushroom mix “for a very long time”.

“You have to get almost all of the water out,” she said, so that the pastry didn’t get “soggy”.

“I had to do it on a low heat,” Ms Patterson said, to avoid burning the mushrooms.

“I tasted it a few times.

“It seemed a little bland to me.

“I decided to put in the dried mushrooms I bought from the grocer that I still had in the pantry.”

Ms Patterson said she put them in a strainer, poured water over them, “chopped them up” and sprinkled them into her “duxelles”, a reduced mushroom mince.

“Now I think there was a possibility there were foraged ones in there as well,” Ms Patterson said, becoming emotional.

Ms Patterson explained how she used individual steaks instead of a “log” of beef tenderloin for her beef Wellington.

“If you make it as individual steaks like a pasty”, she said, the mushroom went on the “top” so she would “use a lot more” mushrooms.

“That wasn’t the only change I had to make,” she said.

“It called for mustard. I didn’t use that.

“It called for a layer of prosciutto, but I didn’t do that, because Don doesn’t eat pork.”

“I had the stake, the filo, the mushroom, the puff,” Ms Patterson said about her deviated recipe.

Ms Patterson said she bought about a kilo of mushrooms from Woolworths in Leongatha.

The court was shown records of her shopping trip where she bought “potato mash”, “beans” and “filo pastry”.

Ms Patterson said she “roughly” followed the recipe from her copy of the cookbook Recipe Tin Eats

“I did have to make some deviations,” she said.

“I couldn’t find the big log that the recipe called for, the tenderloin, so I had to use individual steaks.

“I had to adapt.”

Ms Patterson said she posted in her Facebook chat and “asked the ladies if they had any advice” for her ahead of preparing the beef Wellington.

Ms Patterson explained how she decided to cook beef Wellington.

“I went through quite a long process of deciding what to cook,” she said.

She said she cooked a shepherd’s pie for the last lunch that she made for the family, which she said didn’t seem “special enough”.

“I remembered on really important occasions my mum would cook beef Wellington as a kid,” she told the court.

“I’ll give it a go.”

Ms Patterson said she had never made it before and took the recipe from a book she owned, Recipe Tin Eats.

Explaining her lie, Ms Patterson said: “So, something I had been thinking about in the background and doing some preparation for, I had come to the conclusion I wanted to do something for once and for all about my weight and eating habits.”

“I was planning on having gastric bypass surgery.

“I was really embarrassed about it.”

Ms Patterson said she thought the lie may have allowed the family to continue supporting her with forms of care, without then knowing about potentially weight loss surgery.