Puff pastry is an excellent base for many desserts - tartlets, strudel, pies. But this light and airy dough is not only suitable for sweets. Its oily flavor and layered structure goes well with vegetables, meat, fish, mushrooms and even cheese.
Puff pastry snacks
Tiny pies, tartlets and puff pastry baskets are great for buffets and more. The filling in them can be varied, from the usual minced meat to combinations of gourmet products. Try making puff pastry baskets with shrimp and cheese. You will need:
- 300 grams of frozen puff pastry;
- 200 grams of small frozen or canned shrimp;
- 100 grams of cream cheese;
- ¼ teaspoon of dried dill;
- ¼ teaspoon of mustard powder;
- 1 minced garlic clove;
- ½ teaspoon of salt;
- 2 chicken eggs;
- ¼ cup of chopped green onions;
- a handful of grated Gruyere cheese;
- butter.
Preheat oven to 200C. Lubricate the baskets with butter. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface and cut into 20-24 squares. Place them in molds, press lightly to form baskets. Whisk cream cheese with mustard, dry dill, garlic and salt. While whisking, add eggs one at a time. Place 1-2 shrimps in each basket, add the cheese mass and sprinkle with grated gruyere. Bake for about 10 minutes.
Instead of shrimp, you can fill the baskets with pieces of fried vegetables or mushrooms, smoked fish, or ham.
Puff pastry pies
Both sweet and savory pies are made from puff pastry. The most famous of them are strudels. Austrian strudel, of course, requires a stretch dough, but there are dozens of recipes that use puff pastry. Puff pastry can be the basis for another famous dish - quiche. Quiche is a wonderful snack pie, the filling for which is filled with egg mass and sprinkled with cheese. Puff pastry is not complete without the magnificent tart taten - a sweet cake made from caramelized fruits. A rare but great puff pastry dish - oxtail tatin - oxtail pie. It is very easy to make an Italian-style puff pastry appetizer - grease the dough with pesto or gremolate and spread cherry tomatoes or fried zucchini, eggplant and large fresh tomato slices on it.
Gremolata is a popular Italian condiment made from minced garlic, parsley and lemon zest with olive oil.
The puff pastry shell perfectly protects meat or fish, which is why second courses wrapped in this type of dough are so popular. This is how the famous Wellington beef and various kulebyaki are prepared. Puff pastry is covered with pots of fried stews or vegetable stews.
Puff pastry desserts
Fluffy and light dough is the basis for the classic French dessert - milfey cake, a variation of which is the famous Napoleon. Pears boiled in wine are wrapped in puff pastry, apples are baked in it, croissants, rolls with cream and various flaky trifles, such as tongues with jam or curls with cinnamon, are made from it. The simplest curls kids will love can be made with Nutella Sweet Chocolate Spread. You will need:
- 500 grams of puff pastry;
- 1 cup of Nutella pasta;
- icing sugar.
Preheat oven to 190C. Roll out the dough and brush with chocolate paste. Start rolling it into two rolls towards each other. Cut the resulting roll across into 10-12 pieces. Place them on a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Cool slightly, dust with powdered sugar and serve.
