Apple compote in puff pastry

Yesterday we had our second lesson in Amsterdam at Douglas Delights and because of the fact that the highway is being worked on around Amsterdam we were up at a ridiculously early time. We had to check wether we had to go by train or if we could still go by car. We went for the car in the end and we were early! Our class was supposed to start at 9 am and we were there at 8.30.. But I am sure that is not really of interest to any of you..

So what did we do this day? If you remember from lesson 1 we had made puff pastry, so today we were going to turn this puff pastry into little applebags (I have no idea how to call these in English… If you know, please let me know!). Apart from that we made the filling for the Joconde we made last week. We decided to go with Passionfruit mousse, so we made that. For the shortcrust pastry that we also made last week, we decided to go with Creme citron and in addition to that we also made Creme Mousseline. Now for today I will not be telling you anything about all of that, as none of it is entirely finished. Well, let me refrase; it’s finished but we couldn’t bring it home as it was just barely out of the oven and too fragile to transport. So that will have to wait for next week. (don’t you just love the suspense…lol)

Making the applecompote

For now I will stick to the one thing that we did bring home; those lovely apple thingies. First of all, we had to make an applecompote to use as filling. Making an applecompote is not really very difficult but you can obviously vary enormously in flavors. We started out by pickle the apples that we were gonna use; Jonagold 50% and 50% golden rennet. The difference between the two is that the rennet is a very dry apple, not aromatic and it gives the right amount of sour to a compote. The Jonagold has a lot of moisture inside, plus is a fragrant apple and sweeter then the other one. Together they form a good combination to make a nice compote. Jonagold and Elstar are quite similar in taste, so you could easily swap those two. The apple season is just starting here, so Carle was lucky to find the first Golden Rennet’s of the year.

Look who we have here... curious as ever!

Ingredients for Apple Compote:

3 Jonagold apples, peeled, cut and chopped into medium sized pieces

3 Golden Rennet apples, peeled, cut and chopped into medium sized pieces

Sugar

butter

Take a fairly large pan and cover the bottom of the pan with a layer of sugar. Not too little but also not too much. Maybe half a centimeter thick. Cover that with as little water as you can. The sugar has to barely be covered by the water. Bring the sugarwater to a boil, but make sure NOT TO STIR until it caramelizes. If you stir the sugar it will crystallize and become hard. You can slowly swirl the fluid a bit inside the pan by moving the pan around. Just so the sugar dissolves.

As soon as the sugar becomes brown and starts to smell like caramel add the apples to it and stir well, making sure the caramel gets evenly distributed amongst the apples and does not stick to the pan. Cook until it starts to resemble the apple compote structure (mousse with some chunks here and there)

Let it cool off and then taste if it is sweet enough. You can add a little more sugar at this point if you want to or add a little cinnamon. (we added some cinnamon..)

We had ofcourse already made the puff pastry the week before, but if you need a recipe; here you can find the recipe from the Daring Bakers challenge we did about a year ago.

The puff pastry was rolled out to a thickness of about 3 mm. Make sure you roll it out as evenly as possible as that will help to bake it evenly too. We cut out circles using a circular cutter. I think it was roughly 15 cm in diameter. Those circles were then slightly rolled out a litte bit more rolling from the center only, to make them a little larger and to make the folding process a little easier.

Then use a pastry brush to wet the outsides with eggwash and fold the other half of the circle over the ball of compote and seal it shut using your fingers first and pressing it closely together to make sure it will not start to leak once in the oven.

Once you’ve filled them all and put them on a bakingtray with sufficient space in between use the eggwash to go over all of the apple thingies. Let it dry for a bit and repeat this process. After you’ve let the eggwash dry for a second time you can carve little figures into the dough which will show if you start baking them.

Preheat the oven to 220C, put them in the oven and bring the temperature down to 190/200C. Bake until golden. Once golden remove from the oven and sprinkle a layer of icing sugar on top of the applebags. If you then transfer them back into the oven and put it on 250C the sugar will melt and form a shiny layer of melted sugar on top which makes it look really nice. But make sure to pay close attention as it does burn easily (as we found out!)

Closing the apple enveloppes

After the first baking

Covering with icing sugar

Just out of the oven and shiny!

Related Posts:

• Spiced nutty apple-pear cake
• Creme Brulee – creamy perfection
• Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce
• Cranberry sauce
• Mascarpone raspberry trifle

Chanterelle mushroom pie

I was so happy when we went to the farmer’s market in Amsterdam on saturday to find an entire stall filled with all sorts of mushrooms. Remember that in the supermarkets here you can only ever find button mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms and the occassional oyster mushroom and shiitake if you’re really lucky. But I had never even seen Chanterelles, let alone eaten them fresh, so I was quite excited when we found them in the market. They had other varieties of mushrooms as well that I had never seen before, but I couldn’t bring all of that with me ofcourse so had to do with just the chanterelles.

Fresh chanterelle at the Noordermarkt, Amsterdam

I wanted to make these as an appetizer for when my friend would come over for dinner tuesday and Olga had come with the suggestion of making them into a tart with puff pastry. Which reminded me I still had puff pastry in the freezer, so that would be perfect to make some quick appetizer for dinner. The main would be work enough so I didn’t want to spend more time in the kitchen then I had to.

Because I wanted to try out the flavors I made a little one in the afternoon with chestnut mushrooms and the cheese I bought and it was delicious. And it is really almost too simple to throw together and looks quite good and tastes fantastic. You can ofcourse use any kind of mushroom you want with this, but the chanterelles were very tasty. I actually made this three times now and the flavors get better everytime I make it, so just use your own taste to put whatever in that you like.

I used storebought puff pastry, but if you have anything leftover in the freezer from the Daring Bakers challenge you can certainly use that!

Storebought however, is especially quick since you don’t have anything to roll. In the Netherlands puff pastry is sold in little square packets with separate sheets about 10-15 cm square and already thin enough to use as it is. Ideal for these little pies.

The recipe gives approximates qty’s for 4 people

4 square sheets of puff pastry

200 gr chanterelle mushrooms

blue cheese. I used Castello Blue which is nice and creamy and melts beautifully, but you can add any kind you like

Pecorino. Because the Castello Blue is lovely but when warm looses some of it’s strength, I added a bit of grated pecorino on top just to pick it up a little. Ofcourse you can use parmezan or another hard and strong cheese.

Preheat the oven to 225°C.

Cut the chanterelles into manageable sizes. Keep in mind it needs to fit on top of the puff pastry and you don’t want huge chunks here but not too small either. In a bowl toss the mushrooms with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Take the puff pastry (defrosted ofcourse) and put some of the mushrooms in the middle, making sure to leave the sides free. Don’t be too shy; you want to have a nice little pile of mushrooms there. They will decrease in size in the oven. Generously add little chunks of the blue cheese here and there. Make sure to have an even distribution of cheesy goodness there.

Put some eggwash on the sides of the puff pastry and fold it creatively in a little basket, so that the cheese stays in when it starts to melt. Plus the corners will become nice and crispy too. Pinch it tightly to make sure it stays put once heated.

Put the little pies in the oven for about 12 minutes on high, then bring the temperature down to 190 °C and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown and crispy.

Tomato version

I also made a version with tomatoes for the simple fact that I did not have enough chanterelles left for the second pie (I had already made the pie two times before at that point, so they were gone… ) so I filled it up a bit with little pomodori tomatoes, which worked very well too. It’s a little less strong in taste and I prefer the flavors of the chanterelle only version, but ofcourse you could make endless variations with this. Maybe add a little fresh thyme to it (which I didn’t have in the studio when taking the photos) or mix the mushrooms or… well, just go wild.

I love it!! And apart from the time in the oven, it takes literally 5 minutes to assemble. Perfect!

Related Posts:

• Plum & almond crumble slice
• Endive salad with nectarines, seeds and haloumi
• Another halloumi salad…
• Tartelette with peas, ham and cheese
• Vol-au-vents: Daring Bakers september 09

With tuna

When coming back from holiday one of the first things I did was to check out the new assignment for the daring bakers. I would ofcourse have less time then the usual month, so figured I should make sure that I could do it in the time left. So when I read that we were to make puff pastry my first reactions was ‘o nooooo’ thinking that it would be really hard to make!

And I am not going to tell you here that it was incredibly easy or that nothing can go wrong, but it was a rather pleasant surprise to find that it is nowhere near as difficult as some people might make you believe. Ok, mine weren’t perfect as they didn’t rise evenly (even with or without using the silicon mat to weigh it down in the beginning) but I am guessing I did something wrong somewhere. The taste sure wasn’t any less for it!

Filled with bakers cream and raspberry

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

The whole process starts with adding flour and water to make the dough and then add a pound of unsalted butter into the dough (process is explained in the recipe). I was glad that I watched  a couple of videos on how the process was supposed to look, as without it I would have been even more afraid to start with making my first ever puff pastry.

After spending quite some time making the dough, doing all the turns, chilling the dough in between, etc. I didn’t really feel like coming up with something elaborate on the filling so I chose some very basic stuff. The savoury one was filled with home made tuna salad (with canned tuna I still had in the cupboard) and the sweet one was made with bakers cream and raspberries. I will be making a few more with whipped cream and strawberries also but no photos of those.

I’ve only used 1/3 of the dough so will probably be making more out of them. We’re going to have various filling tonight for dinner, so depending on how many are being devoured I will probably still freeze something too.

After all the anticipation I had it was easier then I thought and I might even attempt to make this again! You hardly need any ingredients at all, apart from the filling and the dough is quite versatile. You can make vol-au-vents but you can use for lots of different pastry thingies as well. I’ve got to think of what to make with the remaining dough. While I like vol-au-vents; I don’t want to use all the dough for that.

The instructions for making them is quite lenghty but here it is!

Forming and Baking the Vols-au-Vent

Yield: 1/3 of the puff pastry recipe below will yield about 8-10 1.5” vols-au-vent or 4 4” vols-au-vent

In addition to the equipment listed above, you will need:
-well-chilled puff pastry dough (recipe below)
-egg wash (1 egg or yolk beaten with a small amount of water)
-your filling of choice

Line a baking sheet with parchment and set aside.

Using a knife or metal bench scraper, divided your chilled puff pastry dough into three equal pieces. Work with one piece of the dough, and leave the rest wrapped and chilled. (If you are looking to make more vols-au-vent than the yield stated above, you can roll and cut the remaining two pieces of dough as well…if not, then leave refrigerated for the time being or prepare it for longer-term freezer storage. See the “Tips” section below for more storage info.)

On a lightly floured surface, roll the piece of dough into a rectangle about 1/8 to 1/4-inch (3-6 mm) thick. Transfer it to the baking sheet and refrigerate for about 10 minutes before proceeding with the cutting.

(This assumes you will be using round cutters, but if you do not have them, it is possible to cut square vols-au-vents using a sharp chef’s knife.) For smaller, hors d’oeuvre sized vols-au-vent, use a 1.5” round cutter to cut out 8-10 circles. For larger sized vols-au-vent, fit for a main course or dessert, use a 4” cutter to cut out about 4 circles. Make clean, sharp cuts and try not to twist your cutters back and forth or drag your knife through the dough. Half of these rounds will be for the bases, and the other half will be for the sides. (Save any scrap by stacking—not wadding up—the pieces…they can be re-rolled and used if you need extra dough. If you do need to re-roll scrap to get enough disks, be sure to use any rounds cut from it for the bases, not the ring-shaped sides.)

Using a ¾-inch cutter for small vols-au-vent, or a 2- to 2.5-inch round cutter for large, cut centers from half of the rounds to make rings. These rings will become the sides of the vols-au-vent, while the solid disks will be the bottoms. You can either save the center cut-outs to bake off as little “caps” for you vols-au-vent, or put them in the scrap pile.

Dock the solid bottom rounds with a fork (prick them lightly, making sure not to go all the way through the pastry) and lightly brush them with egg wash. Place the rings directly on top of the bottom rounds and very lightly press them to adhere. Brush the top rings lightly with egg wash, trying not to drip any down the sides (which may inhibit rise). If you are using the little “caps,” dock and egg wash them as well.

Refrigerate the assembled vols-au-vent on the lined baking sheet while you pre-heat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC). (You could also cover and refrigerate them for a few hours at this point.)

Once the oven is heated, remove the sheet from the refrigerator and place a silicon baking mat (preferred because of its weight) or another sheet of parchment over top of the shells. This will help them rise evenly. Bake the shells until they have risen and begin to brown, about 10-15 minutes depending on their size. Reduce the oven temperature to 350ºF (180ºC), and remove the silicon mat or parchment sheet from the top of the vols-au-vent. If the centers have risen up inside the vols-au-vent, you can gently press them down. Continue baking (with no sheet on top) until the layers are golden, about 15-20 minutes more. (If you are baking the center “caps” they will likely be finished well ahead of the shells, so keep an eye on them and remove them from the oven when browned.)

Remove to a rack to cool. Cool to room temperature for cold fillings or to warm for hot fillings.

Fill and serve.

*For additional rise on the larger-sized vols-au-vents, you can stack one or two additional ring layers on top of each other (using egg wash to “glue”). This will give higher sides to larger vols-au-vents, but is not advisable for the smaller ones, whose bases may not be large enough to support the extra weight.

*Although they are at their best filled and eaten soon after baking, baked vols-au-vent shells can be stored airtight for a day.

*Shaped, unbaked vols-au-vent can be wrapped and frozen for up to a month (bake from frozen, egg-washing them first).

Michel Richard’s Puff Pastry Dough

From: Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan
Yield: 2-1/2 pounds dough

Steph’s note: This recipe makes more than you will need for the quantity of vols-au-vent stated above. While I encourage you to make the full recipe of puff pastry, as extra dough freezes well, you can halve it successfully if you’d rather not have much leftover.

There is a wonderful on-line video from the PBS show “Baking with Julia” that accompanies the book. In it, Michel Richard and Julia Child demonstrate making puff pastry dough (although they go on to use it in other applications). They do seem to give slightly different ingredient measurements verbally than the ones in the book…I listed the recipe as it appears printed in the book. http://video.pbs.org/video/1174110297/search/Pastry

Ingredients:
2-1/2 cups (12.2 oz/ 354 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups (5.0 oz/ 142 g) cake flour
1 tbsp. salt (you can cut this by half for a less salty dough or for sweet preparations)
1-1/4 cups (10 fl oz/ 300 ml) ice water
1 pound (16 oz/ 454 g) very cold unsalted butter

plus extra flour for dusting work surface

Mixing the Dough:

Check the capacity of your food processor before you start. If it cannot hold the full quantity of ingredients, make the dough into two batches and combine them.

Put the all-purpose flour, cake flour, and salt in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and pulse a couple of times just to mix. Add the water all at once, pulsing until the dough forms a ball on the blade. The dough will be very moist and pliable and will hold together when squeezed between your fingers. (Actually, it will feel like Play-Doh.)

Remove the dough from the machine, form it into a ball, with a small sharp knife, slash the top in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Wrap the dough in a damp towel and refrigerate for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the butter between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and beat it with a rolling pin until it flattens into a square that’s about 1″ thick. Take care that the butter remains cool and firm: if it has softened or become oily, chill it before continuing.

Incorporating the Butter:

Unwrap the dough and place it on a work surface dusted with all-purpose flour (A cool piece of marble is the ideal surface for puff pastry) with your rolling pin (preferably a French rolling pin without handles), press on the dough to flatten it and then roll it into a 10″ square. Keep the top and bottom of the dough well floured to prevent sticking and lift the dough and move it around frequently. Starting from the center of the square, roll out over each corner to create a thick center pad with “ears,” or flaps.

Place the cold butter in the middle of the dough and fold the ears over the butter, stretching them as needed so that they overlap slightly and encase the butter completely. (If you have to stretch the dough, stretch it from all over; don’t just pull the ends) you should now have a package that is 8″ square.

To make great puff pastry, it is important to keep the dough cold at all times. There are specified times for chilling the dough, but if your room is warm, or you work slowly, or you find that for no particular reason the butter starts to ooze out of the pastry, cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it . You can stop at any point in the process and continue at your convenience or when the dough is properly chilled.

Making the Turns:

Gently but firmly press the rolling pin against the top and bottom edges of the square (this will help keep it square). Then, keeping the work surface and the top of the dough well floured to prevent sticking, roll the dough into a rectangle that is three times as long as the square you started with, about 24″ (don’t worry about the width of the rectangle: if you get the 24″, everything else will work itself out.) With this first roll, it is particularly important that the butter be rolled evenly along the length and width of the rectangle; check when you start rolling that the butter is moving along well, and roll a bit harder or more evenly, if necessary, to get a smooth, even dough-butter sandwich (use your arm-strength!).

With a pastry brush, brush off the excess flour from the top of the dough, and fold the rectangle up from the bottom and down from the top in thirds, like a business letter, brushing off the excess flour. You have completed one turn.

Rotate the dough so that the closed fold is to your left, like the spine of a book. Repeat the rolling and folding process, rolling the dough to a length of 24″ and then folding it in thirds. This is the second turn.

Chilling the Dough:

If the dough is still cool and no butter is oozing out, you can give the dough another two turns now. If the condition of the dough is iffy, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. Each time you refrigerate the dough, mark the number of turns you’ve completed by indenting the dough with your fingertips. It is best to refrigerate the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns.

The total number of turns needed is six. If you prefer, you can give the dough just four turns now, chill it overnight, and do the last two turns the next day. Puff pastry is extremely flexible in this regard. However, no matter how you arrange your schedule, you should plan to chill the dough for at least an hour before cutting or shaping it.

Related Posts:

• Veggie wellingtons with a little chicken…
• Apple strudel; Daring bakers May challenge
• Sage and prosciutto corn cakes – Donna Hay Styling and photo Challenge #4
• Apricot cupcakes or nectarine clafoutis?
• Yeasted Meringue coffee cake; Daring Bakers march 2011

I had a serious amount of puff pastry left over from something I will tell you about in a few days… and I wanted to use it. I am not going in putting stuff in the freezer. I usually end up forgetting completely I ever made anything that went into the freezer. You see our freezer is usually stuffed to the brim with fishfood. For when Tom decided he wants to go carp fishing, so the little space that is left goes to things like peas and maybe some fries or meat I bought.

Anyway, I saw a recipe for vegetarian wellingtons in the Good Food and decided to change it a bit to be a little less vegetarian (but you could easily make it a veggie version if you like) as I had some leftover chicken that I wanted to use.

It’s actually a really easy recipe; if you have either storebought puff pastry or homemade puff pastry you can easily fill this with anything you like. I used spinach, mushrooms, chicken and cheese and rolled out the pastry with some thyme which is also sprinkled a bit on top to give it a bit added flavor. To be honest I thought it was lovely but quite heavy on the stomach. No wonder really with all that pastry made with loads of butter, so if you’re on a diet (as I should be!!) don’t go for this dish! But it’s lovely and quick (apart from the needed time in the oven)

WELLINGTONS

Chestnut mushrooms about 200 gr sliced

4 tbsp olive oil

1 garlic clove, chopped

100 gr chicken cooked or smoked, shredded or chopped

300 gr spinach leaves

a bit of flour for rolling the pastry

1 tbsp of picked thyme leaves

350-500 gr puff pastry block

140 gr cheese (use one with a bit of sharp taste. Stilton would be nice but I could easily see any blue cheese go well here too)

1 egg, beaten for the eggwash

1 Heat the oven to 200 C. Clean the mushrooms and slice. Heat the oil in the frying pan and sizzle the mushrooms for about 3-4 minutes untill golden and cooked through. Lift them out of the pan and let drain on kitchen towel.

2. Place the pan back and add the rest of the oil. Fry the garlic briefly before adding the spinach in the pan and stir for about 2-3 minutes untill it’s completely wilted. Season with salt and pepper and leave to drain thorougly! I actually squeezed most of the water out with my hands once the spinach got a bit cooled down.

3. On a lightly floured surface sprinkle the thyme leaves and the roll out your puff pastry block to about a dollar coin thickness. Using two round shapes cut out 2 circles and then 2 circles that are about 10 cm wider then the first.

4. Place the smaller circles on a baking tray and carefully arrange your spinach, mushrooms, cheese and chicken on top making sure you leave space around the edges to place the larger circle over. Brush the border around your filling and then gently stretch the larger circle over the top of your filling making sure not to trap any air.

Press the edges with a fork. Trim the edges with a knife if you want to, then brush them both generously with eggwash. Bake for 40 minutes untill golden, then leave to cool for a few minutes before serving.

Ofcourse the size of your pastries determines for how many people this recipe is. I made two but you can make four smaller ones or 1 large one. That’s up to you!

Related Posts:

• Vol-au-vents: Daring Bakers september 09
• Punjabi chicken curry
• Pumpkin-celeriac soup
• Stuffed pumpkin
• Chicken, lentil & sweetcorn chowder