Rough Puff Pastry

I’ve been revisiting pastry recently and making more than my fair share of pies, cheese and chard, custardy bacon and egg, and the most recent a vegetarian pithivier, a round pie made by putting a filling between two pieces of puff pastry. Not one to buy something when I can make it, I set about taking another look at easy at home puff pastry, my previous version was worked by hand to ensure large chunks of butter remained, so when rolled and folded you’d end up with good lamination, I wasn’t completely satisfied with how this pastry turned out, and I figured there had to be an easier way.


Super Simple Rough Puff pastry.
200 Flour
200 Butter
2g Salt
Milk, ice cold

• Make sure everything is cold before you start.
• Blitz half of the flour with the butter in a blender until a fine breadcrumb consistency.
• Tip out into a bowl and add the remaining flour and salt.
• Adding a splash of milk at a time, work into a dough ball, don’t overwork the dough.
• Wrap in cling-film and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
• Lightly flour the bench and roll out the dough into a rectangle (about 20x30cm).
• Fold into thirds and roll out again, repeat and then wrap and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.
• Roll and fold the dough 3 more times and refrigerate, repeat this step once more, for a total of 9 folds.
• Wrap in cling-film and refrigerate until needed.

Hot water pastry–Pork Pie

Hot water pastry–Pork Pie
500g flour
200ml water
100g dripping (or lard)
80g butter
1tsp salt (5–10g)

• Gently heat the water, butter and dripping over a low heat. Once melted bring to a boil.
• Sieve the flour and salt together into a bowl, make a well in the centre.
• Mix together to form a ball of dough.

• Wrap and leave to rest for an hour at room temperature.

• Roll the pastry into a rectangle and then fold in thirds, repeat until the dough is smooth, 2 or 3 times).

• Roll out the pastry to about 5mm thick. Line the dish, fill and bake. I used a terrine to make this pie, it was greased with butter and then put in the fridge to set before lining with the pastry.
• The filling was a mixture of pork, nutmeg, chilli, salt, pepper, and mustard. Half of the filling was placed in the pastry lined terrine, hard boiled eggs placed down the centre, the remaining filling tightly packed in and the whole terrine banged to dislodge any air bubbles.

• An egg yolk wash was brushed on before laying the pastry lid, with air vents cut out, on top and crimping the edges, then a final egg yolk wash.
• Cook in a 200ºC oven for 30 minutes before lowering the temperature to 180ºC and cooking for a further hour.

• Allow the pie to cool in the dish completely before carefully turning out. Best served room temperature with some relish or hot mustard.

Onion Tart

This recipe was originally created for Urban Harvest, do go check out their website for some great produce and other recipe ideas.

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The key to this tart is taking your time with slowly, and I mean slowly caramelising the sliced onions over a low temperature, it’s not something that can be rushed, well unless you want to cheat, which I have to admit I did by using a pressure cooker, but it can be achieved in large pan on a stove on a very low flame and occasional stirring. For those who are curious and own a pressure cooker, it’s as simple as dumping the sliced onions, thyme and butter in the pot, bringing it up to high pressure and letting it cook for about 60 minutes, vent the pressure, remove the lid and then cook over a medium-low heat to evaporate off the liquid and enrich the caramelisation.

Caramelised Onions
1 kg red onions
Bunch of thyme
50 g Butter
Salt and pepper

Peel and cut the onions in half and then slice thinly, a mandoline is invaluable for this and will make quick work of it. Melt the butter in the pan over a low heat and add the onions and thyme, cover with a lid and cook very slowly, stirring occasionally. When the onions have melted down and started to colour remove the lid to allow the water to evaporate off. this could take up to an hour. Season and set aside to cool down.

An alternative method is to dump the the lot into a pressure cooker and cook on high pressure for 60 minutes, release the pressure manually. There will be a lot more liquid in the pot using this method so you will have to transfer it to a large pan (more surface area the better) and cook on a medium low heat until the water has evaporated. As above season and let cool.

Pastry
500 g white flour
250 g butter (unsalted), cubed
1/2 tsp Salt
Cold Water

It’s best to work with cold butter and work quickly when making the pastry. In a blender blitz together the flour, butter, and salt. When it forms a breadcrumb texture it is done. Tip the mix into a bowl and add about a tablespoon of cold water and start kneading it together to form a ball of dough, you may need to add more water. Wrap in cling-film and place in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Custard
4 eggs
500 ml of yoghurt
salt and white pepper

You want to mix this together right at the last minute, just after you have blind baked the pastry as you will need to steal a little egg white from the mix. Thoroughly mix together the egg and yoghurt, but take care not to incorporate too much air, season with salt and white pepper.


Assembling
Roll out the pastry to about 3mm thickness. Line a quiche tin with the pastry and trim off any excess. Place the tin in the freezer for about 15 minutes, this helps the butter to firm up and will help prevent shrinkage.

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Remove the tin from the freezer and line the pastry with tin foil and fill up with rice (sacrificial rice sad to say, as you won't be able to eat it, but do store it so you can use it again to blind bake), cook for about 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven, and carefully remove the tin foil and rice, brush with a little egg white to seal. Place back in the oven for a couple of minutes to dry the egg white.

Remove the tin from the oven and reduce the temperature to 170ºC. Carefully make a layer of the caramelised onions and gently pour over the custard. Place back into the cooler oven and cook for 30–40 minutes, when it just starts to puff slightly near the center it is cook, it should still have a slight jiggle. Let the tart rest on the bench for 10 minutes or so, great served up with some greens dressed simply with lemon juice.

Broccoli Quiche

Quiche done right is velvet smooth custard that practically evaporates when eaten, but cooked too long or too hot, the soft gel breaks, curdling and squeezing out the moisture ending up with a soggy acrid mess. So it is important not to cook it in too hot an oven, and keep an eye on it when the edges begin to puff up, once the centre just barely begins to puff, remove it from the oven, it usually takes about thirty to forty minutes in moderately slow oven (170°C), so it will require a little attention for the last ten minutes.

For the Pastry
200g Flour
100g Cold butter
2 tbsp Cream
Salt

• Mix the flour, salt and butter together until they resemble fine breadcrumbs, a food processor is handy, but not necessary.
• Incorporate enough cream to form a dough.
• Wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
• Roll out to about 2mm thick.
• Place the pastry in a quiche pan.
• Line the pastry with baking paper and add some weights (rice, dried beans etc).
• Blind bake for 10 minutes.
• Remove the baking paper and bake for 5 minutes more.
• Remove from the oven and trim the edges.

Filling
1 Broccoli cut into bite size florets blanched for a couple of minutes
1 Onion Sliced and sweated in a pan until golden
A handful of grated melting cheese, havarti works well

For the Custard
4 Large eggs
300 ml Cream
200 ml Whole Milk
Salt to taste

Mix together being careful not to add too much air to the custard, but making sure to fully homogenize the ingredients.


The egg custard has just set.

To Assemble
Preheat the oven to 170°C.
Line the pastry base with the onion.
Arrange the Broccoli florets.
Sprinkle with the grated cheese.
Pour in the Custard, giving it a little shake to make sure it gets in every little gap.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, keep an eye on it near the end, as soon as the middle begins, or even looks like it’s thinking about rising, take it out of the oven. Let it rest on the bench for a few minutes before slicing.

Cardamom palmier

I had a lot of leftover puff pastry after topping off my pies, instead of putting it in the freezer and forgetting about it, and only finding it when I have a dig around the tiny tiny freezer some months later, I decided some sweet buttery pastry cookies were in order. It is a great way to use up leftover pastry, or a good excuse to make some pastry.

Sugar Mix
¾ cup sugar
1–2 tsp ground cardamom, depending on personal taste (grind your own for the best result)
1 tsp salt

• Preheat the oven to 190ºC.
• Combine all the ingredients and mix well in a bowl.
• Roll out the pastry into a rectangle, using the sugar generously to prevent sticking, much like you would with flour.
• Sprinkle sugar over the pastry, coating it evenly.
• Firmly roll up one edge of the pastry into the center, and repeat with the opposite edge.
• Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for about 20 minutes, so the pastry has a chance to firm up.
• Cut 5 mm slices and arrange on a baking tray. They will spread slightly so leave enough space around each to allow for this.
• Bake for 10 minutes, then sprinkle with sugar.
• Bake for about 10 minutes more, or until golden brown and crisp.
• Cool on a rack, and when cool, store in an airtight container.

Puff Pastry

Plans dreamed up during the day in the odd moment I have spare, rarely end up as that night's meal, either lack of ingredients or time. I had great plans of making a dashi-chicken broth, whipping up some of McGee’s alkaline noodles, and serving with a hamine egg and shredded chicken, but it just seemed a bit too much for a Monday night after work. So instead I whipping up a couple of oxtail pot pies, a thick rich stew topped with a pastry shell.

The stew was a pretty simple, chuck together of oxtail, red wine, swede, potato, carrot, onion, garlic, anchovy, brandy, caraway, bay leaf, thyme, mustard, salt and pepper. Just brown up the meat, then the onions, deglaze with the brandy and wine, then add the rest, put it in the cooker on high pressure and wait, or simmer away on a stove until the meat is tender and the cooking liquid reduced to a thick luscious gravy.

So while the meat was cooking, I got onto the pastry. I’ve never made my own puff pastry, I make shortcrust quite often, but I always thought puff must be hard, anyway I had the idea of pot pie, I wanted a pastry crust, and like heck I was going to buy it. After some research, I was pleasantly surprised just how easy it seemed, the main theme I read, was to make sure to keep the dough cool, so the layers of folded pastry don't meld into each other. Apart from that it seemed like any other pastry, just folded and rolled a bit more.

Ingredients
200 grams Flour
1 tsp Salt
200 grams Butter (unsalted)
120 ml Water (Cold)

Dough

1. Sieve the salt and flour into a bowl.
2. Work the butter into the flour with your fingers, you want a large bread crumb type texture but still have some large pieces of butter in there.
3. Pour in about half of the water and work it into the butter/flour mixture, adding more water if needed, you want a firm dough that's not too sticky.
4. Cover and put it in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Rolling
Roll the dough out in one direction, keeping the edges straight, and trying to make it as rectangular as possible.


Fold the bottom third up, and then the top third down, and roll out again to the original size. Repeat two or three times more, on the last repetition stop before re-rolling, cover and place in the fridge for another 20 minutes. If the dough gets too soft during the rolling process pop it back in the fridge for a couple of minutes.


Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out to a couple of millimeters thick. Cut out the desired shape with a sharp knife, you don't want to pinch the edge together with a dull knife as it won't puff properly.

The amounts in the above recipe was more than enough for the two pies, and a healthy number of Palmiers.