Apologies for the serious lack of posting these days. We shall have to address that soon, what with Ramadhan coming up and all. I shall (hopefully!) be posting lots of tasty treats for you all to drool over then. In fact, the motivation for this particular recipe comes from wanting to find something that would be an ideal light meal for breaking your fast, and maybe even suitable for finger food for Raya. We shall see. A lot of kinks have to be straightened out, it seems. Here we go!
What you need:
1 sheet ready-rolled sheet of puff pastry
Roughly 10 sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil
About 25 pieces of beef pepperoni, more or less depending on the size of your pastry sheet
A sprinkling of cheese, of your choice
What you do:
- Place the sheet of pastry on a square of baking paper, and place on a baking sheet. Preheat oven to 180 C.
- Meanwhile, drain the sun-dried tomatoes and process using a blender/food processor into a rough paste. Spread this paste evenly over the surface of the pastry.
- Arrange the pepperoni slices (in a single layer, and in orderly rows) over the tomato paste. I got 25 slices in. Scatter the cheese over the pepperoni.
- Bake in the preheated oven for about 20-30 minutes or until the pastry is puffed and golden and the cheese melted. Allow to stand for a minute before cutting into squares, with a pepperoni slice in each square. Serve immediately.
A very simple recipe, as you can see. Feel free to modify any of the ingredients to suit your taste. I wanted to use up the last bits of sun-dried tomatoes I had still in the jar, and thought that having a circle to pepperoni on each square of pastry would be cute, haha. Treat it like a pizza, if you will. Possible toppings inlude - onions, mushrooms maybe, even little shredded bits of meat.
Unlike a pizza, however, do not go overboard with the cheese. You don't want to overwhelm the pastry with the cheese and you don't want it too soggy because of the cheese either. We used Cheddar cheese, but it seems that it was a bit too oily. Add to that I had underbaked the pastry (by accident) slightly, the end result was a bit too soft for my liking. Some squares, especially around the edges, were crisp though and those were delicious!
Apart from that, I quite liked the topping. Babah, in particular, liked how the sour tomato sauce contrasted with the slightly spicy pepperoni. And of course, the cheese. I would have preferred a mature Cheddar, I think, for this one, but we only had some "normal" Cheddar cheese, common in Brunei. Perhaps even Kraft's processed Cheddar would do, that one is wonderfully salty, haha.
I think that this recipe could be a keeper, just need to tweak it a little. I had thought the pastry was done as it was beautifully puffed up, but alas! the bottom was actually undercooked as I had used the wrong mode for the oven. It deflated quickly once it was out of the heat. Shall not make that mistake again! Then there's the problem of which cheese to use. If you like it, I would highly suggest Parmesan. But since we don't, I'll have to experiment and see which ones give the best result.
Anyway, that's it from me for now! Hopefully, the next post won't be too long in coming. :)
Quote of the day: My idea of feng shui is to have them arrange the pepperoni in a circle on my pizza
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