All posts tagged: puff pastry

An ode to pie

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In my thirty-something years of living in NZ, I have eaten a lot of pies. More than a hundred, less than a thousand. I love pie. In New Zealand, the word pie usually refers to a meat pie, not the fruit pie you might find in the US. My pie of choice is the mince and cheese pie. With golden pastry, beef mince, gravy and a oozy layer of melted cheese, it’s a classic. Found in every school tuck shop, dairy, lunch bar, bakery and cafe across the country, this humble meal is portable, cheap and filling. A fond pie memory: my 9th birthday party at the newly opened Rotorua Georgie Pie. Georgie Pie was a pie franchise that was KILLIN’ IT in the early ‘90s. Their $1 mince and cheese pie, a hand-held square in a paper sleeve. I thought it was the best thing ever. When we moved to Auckland the following year, we quickly located our closest Georgie Pie on Glenfield Road and made it our local. Loyal. Like any ubiquitous food, the …

Chicken and vegetable pie with creamy white wine and tarragon sauce

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Hey folks, it’s officially winter in New Zealand. This week we have had bright cold days with beautiful blue skies. Now that we’ve hit the long weekend, the gloom has set in. The rain is relentless today. It’s 9am and as dark as night. We have the lights on, the heater cranking and it is good to be inside. Bring on the comfort food. I’ve been craving pie lately and since leeks are in season (just a dollar each!) I decided to make a chicken and vegetable pie. The creamy white wine and tarragon sauce is stunning. This is a good one to have up your sleeve. This recipe is very forgiving. I’m sorry, the ingredients list looks super long but you can use whatever vegetables you have on hand to the equivalent of about 2 litres (an ice cream container) of filling. Some other vegetables that would try are: mushrooms, silverbeet, pumpkin, and celery. Read through the recipe ahead of time, as steps 2, 3 and 4 can be worked on simultaneously. Chicken and …

Farmhouse Pasties

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I’m glad I gave the traditional Cornish Pasty recipe a whirl already this autumn. Now I’m inspired to do some weird, non-authentic pasties. This next recipe uses some of the original ingredients like beef, lamb, onion and potatoes, but also puff pastry, bacon, carrots and cheese. You can put the cheese inside the pastie if you prefer, but I’ve sprinkled cheese on the outside. I thought it would look prettier, but it only looks ok.  I’m loving smoked cheddar at the moment. It has a distinctive smokey flavour that is divine with streaky bacon. I’m buying ethical meat when it’s convenient, even though free range vs organic vs free farmed can be confusing to the average home cook. It’s nice to remember that at least here in New Zealand, lamb and beef are free farmed at minimum. At best, they’re free range. I don’t think there are any wild cows or wild sheep out there. Although that might be interesting! Lamb and beef I consider my “happy meats”. It’s only chicken and pork you have …

Do something with rhubarb

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“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.” – Brian O’Driscoll I think you can consider a rhubarb as a vegetable in the same way that a tomato is a fruit. Rhubarb is completely alien to me. I recognise the word, but I I can’t say I have eaten rhubarb before. If I have, I mustn’t have been paying attention or maybe it was cooked with fruit and I wasn’t sure where the fruit ended and the rhubarb began. I was determined to do something with rhubarb this summer, and to know for sure what it was (and if I liked it). It’s a bit embarrassing that I wasn’t  sure what rhubarb looked like. I couldn’t identify it in the wild, although I’m generally pretty good at identifying edibles in the ground. I thought maybe it looked like silverbeet or celery only bright red. I was on the right track. I even claimed that I’d never seen rhubarb in any shops. Surely if I …

Make an edible gift

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Fudge When my sister and I were kids, we used to go to the Takapuna Flea Markets and 50 cents would buy us a small paper bag of russian fudge to share. It was buttery, sweet and melt-in-your-mouth delicious. I never knew russian fudge actually contained butter until I decided to make it this Christmas as an edible gift. Plan A I used the classic Edmonds Cook Book recipe, but tried and true it may be, after over 24 hours, including some freezer time, it just wouldn’t set for me. Big fail! What to do with squishy russian fudge? Well, of course, there was always ice cream or sauce. But what about using it as a spread? A few ticks later, I devised a Plan B. Plan B I cut out puff pastry shapes using cookie cutters, sprinkled with raw sugar, baked at 170°C for  10 minutes until just done, cooled for a bit, cut in half and filled with the still soft russian fudge. Serve with coffee for Christmas afternoon treat or with Christmas breakfast. …

I Love Strawberry

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I love strawberries and I find it hard to resist buying just a punnet when I visit farmers’ markets. This recipe is so easy and uses very little strawberries that you could make it 2 nights in a row if you wanted to extend your punnet. Cooking strawberries is some kind of voodoo magic to me. The taste and fragrance of these hearts, so potent you will be amazed it’s not artificial. There is no need to add more sugar to this dish as jam is already quite sweet. I used feijoa and ginger from Peninsula Preserves that we picked up from Lyttelton Farmers Market last month. This post is an entry for Sweet New Zealand, a monthly blogging event open to all Kiwi bloggers. Founded by Alessandra Zecchini, this month’s event is hosted by Mairi from Toast. See here for more info on this month’s event. Strawberry Heart Puffs Makes 2 hearts Ingredients 1 sheet frozen puff pastry 5 strawberries  2 tablespoons jam  Butter for greasing Optional: icing sugar for dusting  Preparation Lay puff pastry out the counter to defrost. Preheat oven to …

Lemon Sugar and Elephant Ears

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This post has been written as part of the new Sweet New Zealand blogging event founded by Alessandra Zecchini. It’s a chance for kiwi bloggers to share their sweet treats, so if you are a kiwi blogger and are interested in participating, check it out for this month. This month’s event is event number 2 is hosted by Allison at Pease Pudding and more information can be found here. Lemon Sugar I’ve been wanting to make flavoured sugar for a while and with our lemon tree growing some beautiful, thick skined beauties this spring, I knew I had to do something with the zest. Using my microplane zester (I love that thing), I lightly scraped the outside layer of a lemon and let the zest dry for about an hour on a chopping board. I then layered zest and white sugar into a jar. Leave the sugar for at least a few days for the lemony oils to permeate into the sugar. The result is pretty, but I haven’t used this sugar just yet. With the zest that was …

Unbelievably Easy Feijoa, Chocolate & Custard Pastries

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Tofu the bunny has been eating feijoas (pronounced fee-jo-ahs) and I have to check the lawns every day so that he doesn’t over eat. I toss any half eaten feijoas into the worm bin. The uneaten feijoas get turned into all sorts of yummy things. I made these babies for Natahma’s baby shower last week. It was the first baby shower I’ve ever been to and it was mostly just eating yummy food, talking about girl stuff and drinking champagne and feijoa wine. We didn’t play any silly games and the experience didn’t put me off having babies for life. These pastries are really easy to make and if you have a heavy feijoa tree in your yard, this is a good way to get rid of some. If you don’t have feijoas, I’m sure you could experiment with other fruit. I considered using plums and maybe still will at a later stage. I made something similar over a week ago but the latest ones are much, much better because they have chocolate in them. …

We don’t have feijoas coming out our ears.

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Really we don’t. Our tree is giving us a respectable 3 to 6 fruit a day. Totally manageable. This week, I learned that feijoas (pronounced fee-jo-ahs) thrive in our sub tropical climate and also don’t have any natural pests here. Every day, I check the lawn under and gather up any fallen fruit. Although Tofu doesn’t seem to be interested in feijoa this autumn, he could just be trying to trick me into nonchalance. I’ve caught him hoeing into them in other years so I’m not so easily fooled. I’m still squirreling away all the macadamia nuts that are dropping onto our lawn. I haven’t bought a macadamia nut cracker yet so I’m just collecting and collecting. The only way I can get them open right now is using a brick and smashing the nuts on concrete. But it’s not pretty and kind of caveman like to be honest. I hope my neighbours don’t see me smashing bricks and nuts in the backyard…and eating the results. The nuts have a great flavour, but aren’t crunchy. I’ve already …

Crunchy yum bacon quiche

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I love pulling out random ingredients from the fridge and being able to make something cohesive . I keep a constant supply of streaky bacon and puff pastry in the freezer and eggs are usually around too. Then it’s a matter of using up whatever vegetables are in the fridge at the time to fill up the rest of the quiche with and to make a side salad. We were lucky to have a bit of beetroot chutney too. Otherwise it would have to be tomato sauce and/or Kaitaia Fire Kiwifruit & Habanero Pepper Sauce. Also time to show off my new tea towel from the Fisher & Paykel stand at Taste of Auckland. Fisher & Paykel are a major appliance manufacturer based here in Auckland. Fisher & Paykel are pretty smart with their online presence. They’ve realised that people that buy their products like to cook and be inspired by foodie things. So they’ve set up their own food blog called Our Kitchen. Brilliant! See how two of the pastry corners curled over and two …

Birthday quiche!

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35 quiche. Only 1 quiche was sacrificed to quality control. At my work, it’s tradition to organise something for a morning tea shout or lunch shout for your birthday. The last 4 years I have just bought food from the local bakery to share, but this year I decided make something. We don’t have much of a kitchen at work so it really had to be something that could be served cold or could be microwaved. I’m not much of a baker, but I can make a pretty mean quiche. I made 36 of these quiche filled with eggs, cheese, tomato, broccoli and onion. They took much longer than I anticipated due to only 1 muffin tin. If I were to do this again, I’d buy or borrow some more tins. Everyone at work seemed to enjoy them with most scoffing back 2 quiche. Based on my recipe here.

Quiche pies!

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I make quiche pies about once a fortnight. They can be eaten hot or cold and are wonderful for breakfast, picnics, lunch, snacks or with a salad as a meal. I always change up the ingredients depending on what we have in the fridge. The ingredients I reckon you must have are puff pastry, egg and cheese, the rest you can be creative on. They keep fine for about 3 days…Maybe longer, but never had a chance to find out! Quiche pies Makes 12 Ingredients 3 sheets of puff pastry 6 eggs, beaten with a dash of milk 1 spring onion (scallion) finely sliced 6 sundried tomatoes 4 mushrooms sliced thinly Half an onion sliced thinly Cheese – 12 bite size pieces A bit of butter, melted A bit of oil A bit of salt A bit of pepper Preparation Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) Optional: Fry mushrooms and onion in a little oil until they soften. Remove from heat and set aside. Brush butter onto a muffin tin. Cut each sheet of pastry into …

Strawberry Pastries

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Easy summer goodness. Did you ever notice that strawberries look like hearts? Make this for your Valentine why don’t ya? Strawberry Pastries with Butterscotch Sauce (for two) Butterscotch sauce ingredients 4 teaspoons sugar 4 teaspoons water 4 tablespoons palm sugar 4 tablespoons butter A dash of milk Preparation In a small saucepan, simmer 4 teaspoons of sugar with 4 teaspoons of water. Add more water if it looks like it will burn. Stir for a few minutes until thick. Add palm sugar and stir until dissoved. Stir in butter and milk. I promise you this stuff is hot. DO NOT blow on the spoon and then lick the sauce. It will burn you. Molten sugar is hot like lava from the pits of hell. Trust me! I know! Strawberry Pastries ingredients 1 sheet of puff pastry A small punnet of strawberries (we ate some of the punnet already) Preparation Preheat oven to 200°C. Cut a square sheet of puff pastry in half and put each half onto a grease baking sheet. Wash and remove tops of strawberries. …