47. 'Chorizo' Bakes

Well it’s been a little while since I’ve done a savoury recipe on here. So much of baking is all about sugar and spice and everything sweet tooth related aka nice, but you can’t live on that. Or you can’t live on just that. Or you can’t live on just that every day. At least…. once a week?… you should probably eat something savoury.

For those of you who feel the need to eat something savoury, have a go at these “chorizo” bakes. No chorizo involved, or meat if you use vegetarian sausages, but all the flavours of chorizo are there to be enjoyed! This recipe was inspired by one from the BBC Good Food magazine, but I found their ratios of filling to pastry to be a bit wrong, so this is my updated version.

This recipe is really easy to adapt to be vegetarian or vegan depending on the sausages and milk you use. Most puff pastry sheets you buy at supermarkets are already suitable for vegans, just make sure to check the packaging!

I made two batches of these, and Callum couldn’t get enough. Maybe I should make him more savoury stuff. More than once a week. Maybe. The leftover filling from doubling up the batch size made a great pasta sauce when combined with chopped tomatoes!

Makes 6 bakes

Ingredients

• 3 sausages, vegetarian or pork

• 1/2 onion, finely diced

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed

• 1 tsp olive oil

• 1 bell pepper, finely sliced

• 2 rosemary sprigs, chopped

• 2 tsp harissa paste

• 2 tsp ground cumin

• 2 tsp paprika

• 1 tsp cayenne pepper, or chilli powder

• 1 sheet rolled puff pastry

• 1 tbsp milk, or milk alternative

• 1 tbsp sesame seeds

Method

1. Chop up your sausages into small bits. Combine with the onion, garlic, oil, harissa and spices and fry in a pan for about 8 minutes, until the sausage is cooked and the onion has softened. Allow to cool.

2. Preheat the oven to 200C and take out your puff pastry sheet.

3. Cut your puff pastry (either on a lightly floured surface or on greaseproof, it usually comes rolled in it) into 6 squares/rectangles.

4. Place a heaped spoon of your filling into the centre of one half of your square/rectangle and brush around the edges of the visible pastry with your milk. Fold the pastry over your filling and use a fork to crimp it together along the edges. Transfer to a lined baking tray. Repeat for all 6.

5. Brush the tops of your bakes with more milk and sprinkle on some sesame seeds.

6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden.

7. Enjoy hot or cold!

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20. Palmiers

So last week at school we focussed on puff pastry and got to take home the puff that we made but didn’t use, which was quite a lot to be honest… I didn’t really want to freeze so thought I’d get it used up quickly by making palmiers, also known as elephant ears. I have to admit, it wasn’t an original idea. In our demonstration lessons the chefs always do extra than what we do in our practicals and the chef last week made palmiers, just to show us an additional use of puff pastry. I quite like palmiers, but it would never have really occurred to me to make them. Have to say, they are ridiculously easy to make if you already have puff pastry in. If you’re interested in making your own puff, I’ll put a recipe underneath, but shop bought puff pastry works absolutely fine, if not better.

Mine turned out alright, and have done two batches. The ones pictured ended up a little overdone, oops, but were still plenty tasty! The second batch I added some orange zest and cinnamon, and they were not bad. Not bad at all.

Makes roughly 12 palmiers.

Ingredients

• 300-400g (10.5-14oz) puff pastry.

• at least 100g (3.5oz) caster sugar

• water

Method

1. Instead of dusting your work surface with flour, use caster sugar in a fairly liberal covering. Roll out your puff pastry. Get that workout! Keep flipping it over and putting down more caster sugar so that the puff pastry gets thoroughly coated in sugar. Your final piece should be about 3mm thick and twice as long as wide.

2. Trim the edges of your puff pastry to make them straight.

3. Using the back of a knife make dents in one of the long sides to split it into 6 roughly even pieces. Using a pastry brush (if you have one) wet the outside sixths a little, not a lot. Fold over the outside sixths.

4. Repeat with the folded over bits to fold in again until you get something that looks like the fifth picture below, and then fold it over one last time.

5. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

6. Preheat the oven to 220C. Grease a baking tray with butter. This is important or else you won’t get any caramelisation.

7. Cut your chilled puff pastry into slices just shy of a centimetre thick, roughly 8mm.

8. Bake for 11-13 minutes until the bottom side is golden brown, and then flip them over and bake for a further 5 minutes until the other side is also golden brown and caramelised.

9. Immediately transfer to a wire rack to cool, or else they will stick to the tray and be impossible to get off!

10. Enjoy!

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If you’re feeling fancy, you could pipe a little melted chocolate on top.

Puff pastry recipe

• 250g strong white flour

• 225g butter, room temperature

• 150ml water

• Pinch of salt

1. Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl and create a well. Pour your water into this well and mix together quickly using a dough scraper or mixer. If using a scraper use a chopping and twisting action. Once a dough starts to form, cover it in cling film and chill for at least 20 minutes.

2. Whilst that is chilling, put your butter between two sheets of parchment paper and start rolling it into a rectangle, slightly smaller than a piece of A4 paper. If you can make an “envelope” in which to do this, so you get sharp corners, all the better.

3. Chill your butter rectangle until two minutes before you are ready to use the dough.

4. Dust the workbench with flour and roll out the dough until it is slightly wider than your piece of butter and about 1.5 times as long. Put the butter on top in line with the bottom edge of the dough and fold over the top third, so half the butter is covered. Then fold up the bottom third, so you have three layers of dough separated by two layers of butter.

5. Turn the dough 90 degrees, and roll it out to roughly the size you just rolled out. Fold it in thirds again. This is called a “turn”

6. Chill your dough for at least 20 minutes. If you don’t, your butter will become too soft and disappear into the dough and you won’t get the lamination.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 another four times. You can, if you work quickly, do two “turns” in one go, but any more than that will make the butter far too soft and you’ll lose the lamination.

8. Once done, chill the dough for at least 30 minutes before using.