Puff Pastry Gorgonzola Gallette

Sorry for the delay – but here it is, finally! Here I am making this at our local Iron Chef competition, which, coincidentally I did not win - but I should have! But oh well.... This is very easy to make for a crowd of  6 or 26, and looks great on a white plate with a little smudge of balsamic reduction, and tastes even awesomer.

• Puff pastry ( in your grocer’s freezer). It comes in a box with 2 separate sheets, one sheet  per gallete will serve about 7-8 appetizer portions.
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 medium red onion
• 1 garlic clove minced
• About 4-5 oz of Gorgonzola cheese, or half and half goat cheese / Gorgonzola.
• 4 tbsp chopped fresh dill
• 1 egg beaten
• 2 tblsp olive oil
• Butter 

Veggies sauteing

      Preheat oven to 410. Grease a baking sheet well with butter.  Roll out 1 sheet of puff pastry between 2 sheets of Saran Wrap – no mess method. The pastry needs to be about 9x13 or 10x12 or something like that. It really does not need to be perfect looking, if the edges come out uneven it’ll just have that “ rustic” look. You can roll it out the regular way using flower if you want – but the cling wrap method is just so much cleaner. Once the pastry is rolled out, put on the greased pan and brush the 1” edge with beaten egg. Slice red onion and red pepper into slices of about ¼” thick, and sauté in olive oil with the garlic until soft and start to brown – about 10 minutes.

Before it goes in the oven

     

     Spread the veggies onto the dough, leaving about 1” edge. 

     Salt/pepper, crumbled cheeses all over leaving the edges untouched, 

      and sprinkle with fresh chopped dill generousely.

Bake at 410 until golden brown, about 13-14 minutes.

 

Add caption

Slide out onto a cutting board, and slice in triangles, like a pizza. Serve with balsamic glaze smudge on the place. Enjoy! 

Crispy Skin Roasted Chicken

Today I will solve the ancient problem of soggy chicken skin with this simple roasted chicken recipe. The best part is that you will never look at a Bundt cake pan the same way again, and neither will your chicken. Yup, you heard me. I present to you the  Roasted Chicken in a Bundt pan. Why, you ask? Because  the chicken likes it that way. You know you probably have an old Bundt pan that you bought for some crappy recipe that you never made again. Dust her off, it will become one of your favorite accessories to roast a chicken in. Or, rather, On. The chicken and the Bundt pan will become very close and intimate friends. 

 You will need:

Bundt Pan

One willing chicken

Kitchen twine

Salt (1/2 tsp, or more) & ground black pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 450. Pat the chicken very dry inside & out with paper towels. The drier the better. Season the chicken generously inside and out with only salt and ground black pepper. You can get fancy with other seasonings if you wish - I don’t – the chicken is delicious with just those two basics. Mount the chicken on top of the Bundt pan. Giggle to yourself because you’re immature, and tie the chicken up once with kitchen twine around its wings, pinning the wings close to its pale salty body. See picture above.  Bake at 450 for 60-65 minutes. Do not open the oven, do not baste, don’t do anything. This is a completely hands-off experience for you and the chicken. Once the chicken skin is brown and crispy, you may take it out of the oven & let rest for 10 minutes before dismounting it off its anal probe. Enjoy, while silently apologizing to the bird for what you just did to it. 

Mini Cherry & Nutella Pies

Welcome back, my little lemurs! Baking has always scared me, but being a huge fan of cherry pie and not wanting to get a fat ass from buying a lard-loaded pie from Coco's I came across a recipe on a website that rhymes with "Killsberry", and this one is loosely based on that. These are somewhat of a production to make, but the ingredients are readily available, and the end result is impressive. Also, please realize that these puppies are about 2.5" in diameter, so you can probably fit about 3 of them in your mouth at once.  

Behold, the Mini Cherry -Nutella pies. 

The Ingredients: 

1 package of refrigerated pie crust dough. I like the Pillsbury dough. .
1 can of Cherry Pie filling.
Nutella, or other hazelnut spread.
1 egg
2 tbsp melted butter
Sugar

The Assembly: 

Preheat oven to 375, or whatever your pie crust recipe requires. Package of this refrigerated comes with 2 rolls, each roll makes about 10-12 mini pies. Bring dough to room temperature; otherwise, it's a bitch to roll out. Lightly flower your work surface & a rolling pin. BTW, a big thick wooden dowel from a hardware store works awesome as a rolling pin. Too bad I didn't know that before splurging on a fancy  $14 rolling pin. Roll out the dough slightly, to make more pies. Cut dough circles of a desired size, I like using cookie cutters no bigger than 3". There will be dough scraps left, ball them up and roll out again. Once you have used up the dough, you are ready to assemble. Smear about 1/3 tsp Nutella in the middle of each circle, plop 3 cherries on top, and another dough circle to cover it all up.  Crimp edges with a fork.

In a separate bowl beat egg with the melted butter to make an egg wash. Brush the top and bottom of each pie with the egg wash. Cut 3 SMALL slits in each pie so the pies don't explode whilst baking. Sprinkle with regular 'ole granulated sugar. Bake until pies are nice and golden, and screaming, about 15-18 mins. If you notice some filling leaking out during baking, you've totally screwed this whole thing up. Just kidding, it's totally normal. Now try to resist the urge to stuff your face until these sufficiently cool, or you will loose a layer of your mouth skin.

WARNING: be prepared to ward off accusations that you bought these at the store, and re-plated them. I did.


P.S. I tried making with Apple cinnamon and caramel filing, cherry tastes better.