Friday, April 4, 2014

Decadent Salad Topper

I wanted to make a special dinner for Jamie the other night and thought of this yummy puff pastry, brie-en-croute confection I'd made once in college. I tried it again - wow! I need to do this next time I have people over for dinner. Puff pastry makes everything better. This is so easy, and the warm melty cheese along with the flaky and buttery crust goes perfectly with the acidity of balsamic dressing. I made the salad look all fancy here, but you can put this on top of any green salad and it makes it special and fancy. 

Ingredients:
Brie cheese (depends how many of these you are making but a small wedge should suffice)
Puff pastry, thawed
some fresh currants (you can omit or add something else like a scoop of current jam or dried cranberries or something)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400. Slice the rind off the cheese.
Cut it into piece and put it in the freezer.
Lightly grease a muffin tin (only the little holes you're using). Roll out the puff pastry and fit pieces into the muffin tin. Add the chunks of brie and currants. 
Add some more puff pastry on top, crimping the edges together.
Then trim the excess.
Bake until they start puffing up and browning a bit - 10-15 minutes. Great to put them in right before you serve the main course so they're ready just in time for salad. (I always do salad at the end.)
This one clearly was not crimped enough! A little egg wash in between might work better as a binder.
Put the warm, oozing, gooey puff on top of a salad plate.
It will disappear quickly.

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