Showing posts with label puff pastry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label puff pastry. Show all posts

Saturday, January 1, 2011

New Year's Nibbles

We had an awesome New Year's Eve: lots of delicious food, champagne and playing board games and Wii (Just Dance 2 = super fun!).
At Tim's request and to Meghan's delight, I made old-school cheese balls, one just cheddar, one blue cheese and cheddar, both rolled in walnuts, both pretty tasty. I used a recipe from my ancient Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Better Homes and Gardens is not responsible for the suggestive knife placement, however.I also made 2 types of cute puff pastry swirly things: one with prosciutto, Dijon and Romano, a riff off of Joy the Baker's recipe, and one with feta and spinach. Both tasted great (although the Romano may have been a tad salty, but it's what I had in the house), can be served hot or at room temperature, and the leftovers also reheated well in the oven the next day. Plus, as I said, they were pretty cute.Liz made these awesome mini-roast beef sandwiches with melty Havarti, peach preserves, and chopped walnuts- so good! Plus, they sounded fairly easy to put together, which is always a bonus.Chuck successfully remade a couple of the deviled egg recipes we tried a few months ago... the Sriracha eggs still kick ass, and the herbed deviled eggs are a step up from the usual eggs (although the recipe makes waaaay too much filling). We also had some cute mini-quiches, corn and bead salad, excellent pumpkin bread and other tasty delights...

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Mushroom and Gruyere Tart

This mushroom and gruyere tart came together really quickly and was pretty tasty served alongside a salad...
It used the last sheet of puff pastry I had hanging around in the fridge, as well as a couple other odds and ends. Very cheesy... Tim was worried about the mushroominess of it, but he ended up liking it a lot- he ate 2 pieces.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Asparagus, Crimini and Gruyere Tart

This dish was a hybrid of a couple recipes I found online, plus a few modifications of my own based on what I had in the fridge, what needed to be used, and general spaciness/laziness after a busy weekend.The Martha Stewart Recipe looked good, but almost too simple. This other recipe included mushrooms, which I wanted to use up, but I liked the idea of Gruyere more than creme fraiche (and didn't want to pre-cook the veggies).

So, I ultimately used packaged puff pastry, rolled it out on a baking sheet, put a super (super!) thin layer of Dijon mustard on it, sprinkled it with shredded gruyere, a thinly sliced green onion, a little bit of minced fresh thyme, parsley and rosemary, S&P, and then laid out raw asparagus and mushrooms in an artful way. Brushed the top with olive oil and more S&P and stuck it in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes. The only thing I would do differently next time is grease the baking sheet a wee bit.

Tasty and definitely cool looking!!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Goat Cheese Apple Tartlets

These apple tarts are made with apples and goat cheese from the farmers market, and puff pastry from the freezer. Pretty fancy, but super easy.


PS: Chuck gets most of the credit for doing most of the work on these. I was busy making the main course, which was chicken thighs with mushrooms and white wine and roasted root vegetables with rosemary and thyme.