If you scroll down to a few of my food-related posts, you will notice that I love cooking. Trying different recipes from different cultures all around the world, gives one a sense of travel all from the comfort of your own kitchen.
Usually, I stick to pots and pans types of dishes, but sometimes I try my hand at pastries and baking. Sometimes... barely. The thing that keeps me from pastries the most is the work that goes into making dough. Not to mention the messiness with flour everywhere. And then I discovered something that changed my perspective on pastries forever. They sell ready-to-go puff pastry sheets in the store. And after a few tests, I concluded that they actually taste very good. So now I can make a lot of pastry things without actually having to worry about the dough problematics.
And that's exactly what I did last week when I made mini spicy chicken-filled pastries.
First thing's first. I bought 2 boxes of the pre-made puff pastry sheets. The fancy ones with butter in them, so they add even more flavor to the dish.
And then it was time for the filling. (That's what she said)
I used about 2 pounds of minced chicken, which I mixed with shredded onions, dried chilies and lots and lots of chopped parsley for that fresh aftertaste. After that a bit of salt and white pepper to taste and the filling is also ready to go.
Then it was just a matter of filling the sheets on one side and folding them in half.
This is one of the sheets, defrosted and ready to be used.
I forgot to take pictures of the actual process though. But after doing one, I decided to test it first, so I put just the one in the oven for 30 min at 200 degrees Celsius, and that came out great. I had that one for breakfast.
Based on the first test, I figured I could let the bigger batch stay for 10 minutes to give them a bit more of a gold-brown color. So, the plan was set.
After breakfast, we made more of the same, and cut all of them in half, because there supposed to be "mini" of course.
In the oven they go! Ready to withstand the fires of hell!
Luckily, all of them survived the heat and came out better, more delicious, versions of themselves.
We enjoyed them a lot and so did the people we shared them with. I actually made another batch to bring to a brunch party we had in the weekend. This was my limit, as the repetitive work of making them does tend to get tedious at some point. Safe to say, I won't be starting a catering business, but I can definitely see myself trying more pastry recipes now that I have unlocked the knowledge of buttery store-bought puff pastry sheets. Nobody knows what they will be filled with next, but one thing's for sure, they will be glorious.