Given my well-developed fat tooth, you had to know I would love puff pastry. I loooove puff pastry. Furthermore, I love that even Jamie Oliver fully endorses buying the frozen stuff instead of fussing with making your own. The renowned chef openly grimaces at the prospect of making his own puff pastry and openly admits he rarely makes his own, if he can help it (see: all of his Christmas Specials).
Now that’s a celebrity endorsement I can get on board with.
On a side note, what’s with cooking channels only showing competition shows these days? Do they still make cooking shows where you actually learn recipes? Not that there isn’t a time and place for the likes of Iron Chef and Top Chef (and the less impressive Celebrity Cook Off and Guy’s Grocery Games), but like… I miss cooking shows. I end up OD’ing on the aforementioned Jamie Oliver Christmas specials every year because they show actual cooking and I am actually at home to watch them for once (maybe that’s why… do they show actual cooking shows during the day? While I’m at work? How RUDE.)
Ah right, but I digress… the sun is rising later. I feel like every morning I wake up and it’s very noticeably darker out. Logically, I know the seasons can’t be progressing that fast, but at 6am there is little place for logic, so when I get up to take Hannah for her morning walk it’s like “Batten down the hatches, it’s going to be pitch black and icy cold foreverrrrr!”
Of course, that is completely false. Half an hour later we’re walking through a bright and sunny day that will end up being far too warm for that bulky sweater I had planned to wear to work back in the dark hours of the dawn.
Still, I feel like my body is going into hibernation. I’m going to sleep earlier, I’m groggier in the mornings. That’s where these wonderful little savoury hand pies (or puffs, as I like to call them) come in. It’s breakfast on the go! Or lunch on the go! Or a snack when you get home at 6pm incredibly fussy because it was cold in the office so you ate your lunch at 10am like a monster so it’s been a good 8 hours since you had a snack and your blood sugar is in the hanger danger zone (not that happens to me every day or anything)
Last weekend I finally had my housewarming party (yes, I realize we moved in back in May. I did say ‘finally’…) and made a bunch of caramelized onion dip for the veggies. Of course, everyone bypassed the veggies and dip and went straight for the pulled pork sandwiches and chips because cleeeearly I don’t roll with a bunch of deeply health conscious folks. Regardless, I had a bunch of homemade caramelized onion dip left so guess what I did?
The wonders of transforming leftovers into something even better than the original meal will never cease to amaze me (and satisfy me, food waste makes me antsy). Strain out some of the ‘dip’ for sandwich spread, flesh out out the filling with some sundried tomatoes- ta daaaa! More than the sum of its parts for sure, next time I will skip the dip and head straight for the hand puffs.
Dinner tonight? A fully loaded spinach salad and a couple of caramelized onion sundried tomato puffs. Now that’s a quick and healthy dinner that will kick my hanger to the curb after even the most tiring of days.
| Caramelized Onion & Sundried Tomato Hand Puffs | Print |
- Filling:
- 1 onion, thinly sliced
- 1 Tbsp butter
- ½ cup mayonnaise
- 3 Tbsp plain yogurt
- ¼ tsp mustard powder
- ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 2 Tbsp sundried tomatoes in oil, drained and coarsely chopped
- .
- 1 package puff pastry, thawed overnight in the fridge
- Flour for dusting
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add onions and cook over med-low heat, stirring occasionally, until onions are soft and sweet- approximately 35-45 minutes.
- In a medium bowl, mix together mayonnaise, yogurt, mustard powder and black pepper. Add caramelized onions and sundried tomatoes.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Prep your egg wash- crack one egg into a small bowl with a spoonful of water and beat lightly.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Roll the puff pastry out on a lightly floured surface, dusting with extra flour to prevent sticking as needed. Puff pastry should be rolled out to ⅛ inch thickness.
- Using round cookie cutter (or a small cup and a knife), cut uniform circles into the puff pastry, roughly 3.25 inches (or 8 cm) in diameter. Make sure you have an even number of circles- if needed, roll the scrap pieces of puff pastry together to form one more circle. Divide the pastry circles into two groups- one will be the bottom of your hand puffs, the other will be the top. Place your bottom pieces on to the parchment paper.
- Drop a spoonful of the sundried tomato onion dip into the middle of each of your 'bottom' pastry pieces. Using the tip of your finger, brush some egg wash over the edges of each of your bottom pastry pieces, around the center dip mound.
- Now place each of your corresponding 'top' pastry pieces on to all of the dip filled 'bottom' pieces. Crimp the edges of each closed with a small fork. Use the fork to puncture a couple small holes in the top of each pastry.
- Brush each pastry with egg wash and bake for 15-20 minutes, until the pastries are puffed up and golden. Cool before serving. Store in an airtight container in the fridge as leftovers.
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