Friday 15 February 2013

Friday quickie - cheese and puff pastry wheels

This is one from the archives. I was actually preparing another post, but got distracted, so I thought I might as well finally get this one posted as it has been waiting for it's turn for such a long time. It's a true Friday quickie. It's so quick it's technically not a recipe at all. And it might not have been the healthiest recipe ever. But oh so good...

I was writing up a post about soft pretzels, and fear not, it's still coming. But after getting halfway through writing that post, for some obscure reason I decided to finally get back to tweeting again. That turned out to be a bit of a project, as I had to have my password reset for my twitter account. My last tweet was from June last year, you can't expect me to remember what my password could have been. When I finally figured out my twitter username (@pinkunicornfood by the way, please feel free to stop by and say hi, I feel so lonely out there in twitterspace), I realised I had connected that account to a really old email I no longer use. So I tried to swap it to my unicornmail, but Twitter told me that email was already linked to another account. Which I thought was odd, since my other twitter account is linked to my main email account. After a bit of detective work I figured out that my unicornmail was actually linked up to a third twitter account, a really ancient one I set up ages ago when I first tried out twitter. I haven't used it for a few years at least. So I realised I have three twitter accounts (but a total of six or so tweets between all of the accounts...) and three emails. I needed to swap the emails around, but because twitter won't let you make up a fake email address, I actually had to go and create a fourth email for myself so that I could switch the really old twitter account to that new email address which I have no intention of ever using. Then I was finally able to swap my food twitter account over to my unicornmail. This whole thing is getting slightly ridiculous, with so many accounts and passwords to remember. And on top of that there are all the gazillions of passwords to remember for work. I'm all for some sort of fingerprint or retinal scan or DNA based identification method to grant access to all the electronic devices and accounts we use. That way we wouldn't have to remember a thing. That would just be so convenient. Do you have some great tips how to remember your various passwords?

Cheese puff pastry wheels:
500 g puff pastry
250 g grated cheddar or other cheese of choice
2 tbsp garlic pachadi, or you could substitute by finely chopping 1-2 cloves of garlic and mixing with 2 tbsp of olive oil
The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Roll out puff pastry to a rectangle. If you roll it out really thin the puffs get more flaky and crunchy, whereas a slightly thicker pastry stays softer (the way I like it, just a bit gooey in the centre) Spread cheese and pachadi (or garlic oil) on top. Roll together like a swiss roll, and cut into chunks. Brush with egg wash or milk and bake until golden on top and cheese is bubbling, about 20-25 minutes.
The verdict:
What is there to say. Wonderfully flaky puff pastry and cheese. Make sure you buy the good, all butter puff pastry because it makes a huge difference. The cheese puffs look so tiny and innocent, but you can't walk past without popping one into your mouth. Then another when you walk past again. And then you are making up excuses to walk past them some more. And then magically they are all just gone. 

These are great to serve as an appetizer or late night snack with some wine and grapes. Endless opportunities for variation by using blue cheese, goat's cheese, feta or whichever cheese strikes your fancy. Best friend made some really tasty cheesy wheels using a strong cheddar with ground black pepper, and they were really tasty. 


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