I’ve often found myself thinking of different things that I can use puff pastry for… I’ve made cheese straws, cinnamon puffs, filled ramekins with meat and created lids – all sorts of tasty treats.
Most of my food ideas happen while on the journey home, when I’m hungry. On this occasion I really felt like using my pestle and mortar to create a pesto, but wasn’t sure what else I could put in the pastry.
I got to the shop and it just clicked into place – I walked around picking up the items without realising what I had selected. Let me share with you what I created…
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cooking Time: 1hr
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- Peppers – 2 whole
- Rocket – garnish
- Spinach – 1/2 bag
- Tomatoes – 10 cherry
- Buffalo Mozzarella – 200g
- Puff pastry – 1 pack
- Basil – 1 plant
- Pine Nuts – 25g
- Garlic – 4 cloves
- Olive Oil
- Lime juice – 1/4 lime
- Breakfast Mushroom – 2
- Mozzarella – 250g
- Butter – 35g
- Parsley – 15g
- Salt & Pepper – to taste
Pesto
- Using a pestle and mortar mix together the basil, pine nuts, olive oil and garlic
- Squeeze some lime into the mixture
- Leave to sit for 5 minutes then stir thoroughly
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can use other greens, I’ve use nasturtiums from the garden before – it gives the pesto a more peppery flavour.
Garlic Mushrooms
- Use a garlic press to puree some cloves of garlic
- Mix with butter
- Chop parsley and add to butter mix
- Use spoon to put on muschoom
- Pop in oven for 10 minutes
- Cover in mozzarella cheese
- Put back in the oven under the grill for 5 minutes
Pastries
- Get puff pastry out and cut into squares
- Cover one side with olive oil
- Mix spinach, tomato and buffalo mozzarella together with herbs
- Spoon pesto mix onto pastry
- Grab a handful of spinach mix and put on pastry
- Add slice of buffalo mozzarella
- Fold over and pinch the sides to keep everything in
- Whisk an egg and brush over the pastries
- Pop in the oven at 170 for 40 minutes
Tips
When using doughs and pastries, be sure to use some flour on the surfaces or baking paper to stop it sticking. I used wholemeal flour on this occasion.
To get the mushrooms just right – cook them partway and put them back in the oven with the mozzarella 5 minutes or so before the pastries are done.
The roasted peppers were just made by drizzling garlic olive oil over the peppers and leaving them in the oven while prepping everything. I then removed them and left them in a glass dish covered up to really soften up.