Stilton en croûte aux Champignons et Épinard

The weather is getting colder these few weeks in the coast and for several days it rained continuously. Looks like Winter maybe earlier this year! My little boy caught the cold and coughs from his Dad. Felt like I'm started to have the symptoms too ... sigh... :-( Anyway, I don't want this to upset my day, grabbed few food mags and newsletters from couple of shops my family frequent to. Sometimes, you can get very good deals when the supermarkets and wholesalers on promotions. Few months ago, I got few promo packs of 2 + 1 Galbani Cow Mozzarella for € 2.99! I missed the one that gave 1 tub of Ricotta Finetta :-( Back in my hometown, that price is for 1 piece of the same item! Of course, at the same time, I bought Buffalo Mozzarella too. It's a must in my menu :-D Both items shared the same shelf anyway :-P.

So, this time I was keen to try out some recipes with Stilton cheese and I saw one version called Melty Mushroom Wellington in Good Food magazine, October issue. Now, 'Wellington' in the culinary world is informally used to describe other dishes in which meat or fish are baked in a puff pastry not boots! That reminded me fondly of Paddington Bear and his cute yellow wellington boots :-D Anyway, instead of the usual fare of having Stilton, I was torn between cooking a soup with Stilton or bake the savoury pastry. In the end, I chose the savoury pastry recipe as I want to use up an 'ancient' ready-to-roll pastry in the freezer. It would be great for l'heure de l'apéro before dinner and I'll have the Stilton (again!) to end the dinner with :-D. I want to try out the recipe because it's vegetarian and it looked quite easy. I'm not that good in baking and I want to improve it seriously. By the way, anyone follows BBC's Masterchef: The Professionals? It's really a great challenging cooking shows among chefs. I skipped others cooking challenges just to watch it.

One more thing, if you have those Stilton cheese that came in ceramic jars, you need to spoon it out thinly to layer the fillings for this recipe. It's easier if you can find sliced Stilton (or any sliced Blue Cheeses). I was lucky this time to taste Stilton from Paxton & Whitfield (last Stilton-in-a-Jar I had was from Harrod's) brought back by my father-in-law during his trip to London recently. Here's my adaptation of the original recipe. I'm not sure if I followed it correctly in the pastry steps but the Verdict? It's delicious and will definitely make it again!

Stilton with Mushroom and Spinach Puffs

(Stilton en croûte aux Champignons et Épinard)

Serves 4

4 Medium-size White/Brown Mushrooms

300 g Spinach leaves

1 Tbl Thyme leaves ~ hand picked

1 clove Garlic ~ chopped finely

1 Shallot ~ chopped finlely

4 Tbl Olive Oil

1 Egg ~ plus a good pinch of salt, beaten for brushing and taste :-)

100 g Stilton Cheese (or any Bleu Cheese you fancy)

1 x 32 cm ⌀ Roll Ready Made Butter Puff Pastry (or x 500g block)

Flour for dusting

Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 200 ºC/180 ºC Fan.

2. Remove stalks from mushrooms. In a pan enough to cook the mushrooms all at once, heat half of the olive oil and sizzle the mushrooms for 3-4 minutes on each sides until golden and cooked through (depends on the size of the mushrooms, you may need longer time to cook them). Lift the mushrooms out onto kitchen paper for a moment. Set aside.

3. In the same frying pan, heat the rest of the oil. Fry garlic for few seconds and add in the chopped shallot. Fry until the shallots turn transparent, then add in the spinach. Cook for 2-3 minutes over high heat until completely wilted. Season with salt and pepper. Remove the cooked spinach into a sieve to drain the liquid thoroughly.

4. On a cleaned, lightly floured working surface, scatter the picked thyme leaves and roll out the puff pastry on top of the herb. Light press the pastry surface evenly to make sure the thyme leaves stick to it nicely. Using a cutter, cut out 4 size pastry rounds 2 cm wider than the mushrooms for the base and 4 pieces of 4 cm wider rounds for the tops (that is 4 cm wider than the measured base).

*After several attempts to maximise the yield of the ready-made rolled puff pastry, it gave me about 4 pcs x 8 cm base and 4 pcs x 10 cm top. I was lucky to find smaller mushrooms than the base size.

5. To Esemble:

Divide the cooked spinach into 4 portions and stilton cheese into 8 portions. Place the smaller circles on a lined baking sheet. Top with 1/4 of the spinach and making sure that the amount isn't wider than the size of the mushroom. Top with 1/8 of the stilton cheese and then a mushroom, top side up and another 1/8 portion of stilton cheese. Brush the edges with beaten egg. Top it with one larger puff pastry round and gently stretch the pastry over the mushroom ~ trying not to trap any air, then press the edges together with a fork. Trim the edges if needed and brush the top generously with beaten egg. Complete the rest of the cut out puff pastries with mushrooms, spinach and cheese.

6. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown. Leave them to cool for few minutes before serving. (Depends on the types of oven, you may need to adjust the temperature or the pastries may burn. Please read the manufacturer's manual).

Tip: This recipe can be made several days before as it freezes well and it's great for tea time as well.

Note:

If using large mushrooms like Field mushrooms or Portobellos, it's best to use a 500 g block Ready-made Puff pastry. Scatter the thyme leaves (or suitable fresh herbs available) on floured surface, roll out the block to the thickness of 3 mm. Cut out 4 pieces pastry rounds 5 cm wider than the mushrooms and 4 pieces of 10 cm wider rounds for the tops, re-rolling the trimmings if needed. If you're short of time (like me), you can use 2 ready-to-roll puff pastries; 1 for the base and 1 for the top (like making Ravioli) and follow Step 5 to finish.

Red Snapper Fillet In Thymato Sauce

I bought a small pack of Arrowroot powder sometime ago but it's not been used as much as I planned. I used it in soups but haven't test it in stir-fries. My house helper bought me some nice and fresh Red Snapper fillets and large prawns last week from a fisherman, selling by the road side :-D She's really good at sourcing such produce and I'm really happy with her service :-P I even told her that I mentioned about her in my blog... she's so happy :-)

I decided to use the arrowroot for this recipe that used tomatoes before it's due date :-P I read that arrowroot is works very well with acidic liquid (example; tomatoes in this recipe or maybe pasta sauce?). It's neutral tasting it's the best among the starch thickeners besides surviving the freezer with no effects of odd taste or spongy. It also gives high gloss to your dishes ( I think it's fabulous with pie fillings!). One thing of caution though, arrowroot doesn't work well with milk based sauces as I found out when I use it to make ice cream when I ran out of cornstarch :-(

Here's a recipe that I wanted to share. You must be wondering what's this 'Thymato Sauce' :-P It's the combination of 'Thyme' and 'Tomato'. You see, when I upload my recipe and picts to food sites, they have this word/title limits to certain count. So, to shorten the process (actually, my laziness :-P), I decided to call the fish's sauce/gravy as 'Thymato'. I think it sounds better than 'Thymemato'. Hmmm... sounds like one of those weird science projects, huh? Well, If you can have 'Tamarillo', why not 'Thymato'? Hee heee heeee... :-P

Red Snapper Fillet In Thymato Sauce

Serves 2-4

300 g Red Snapper Fillet (or any white fish fillet) ~ skin on

400 g Tomato ~ skinned and seeded

2 pcs Lebanese Cucumbers

1 Tbl Fresh Thyme ~ fully packed/1 tsp dried Thyme

1 clove Garlic ~ minced

10 g Arrowroot Powder **

Some oil for shallow frying

For Fish Marinate:

2.5 g Salt (approx. ½ tsp)

3o ml Ginger Wine (I'd posted a recipe if you don't have ready-made wine)

Some Ground White Pepper to taste

For Seasoning:

60 ml Water

30 g Raw Sugar

2 g Salt (approx. ⅓ tsp)

20 ml Tomato Sauce (Tomato Ketchup)

10 ml Rice Vinegar

Thickener Glaze:

30 ml Water

12 g Arrowroot Powder**

* Unless stated otherwise all cup & spoon measurements are level.

** For this recipe you can use other starches as thickener or glaze like Cornstarch, Kudzu, Potato Starch, Tapioca or Water Caltrop Starch.

Method:

1. Rinse fish fillet and pat dry with kitchen paper. Cut into pieces (depends on the size of fillet, you can have about 3 or more portions). Mix gently the pieces with marinade for 10± minutes.

2. Slice the skinned and seeded tomatoes into wedges. Cut the cucumbers into quarters lengthwise and then dice coarsely. You can cut into rounds as well ~ as long as the cucumbers cook evenly.

3. Add the Kudzu powder to the pieces of fish and mix well (it's easier to mix with fingers).

4. Heat some oil in a deep pan. Fry the fish pieces on both sides until medium-well done (62.8°C/145°F degrees core temp). Dish out and set aside. Remove the used oil.

5. In the same pan, heat some oil. Stir-fry the minced garlic until fragrant. Add in tomato wedges. Stir for awhile. Add in the seasoning and fried fish pieces. Let it cook for few minutes.

6. Add in the diced cucumbers and fresh thyme. Gently mix the ingredients so that the fish pieces are not break apart.

7. Add in the thickener mixture and gently stir until it thickens. Dish out and serve.

Enjoy!