Italian-Asian Fusion

Seriously? Italian and Asian? Well, sort of. If you count the egg roll wrappers sold in the produce section of your supermarket as an Asian ingredient, then yes.

But technically, it's pasta. Shall we recount the Marco Polo legend about bringing pasta from China to Italy? Nah - this is a cooking blog.

Anyway, I did this recipe once before on TV and called it "Italian Chicken Bundles." With all of the changes in television technology, I needed a high definition version of the dish and in the process renamed the bundles "purses."

Perhaps I should have led with this: This recipe is one of my all-time favorites. When I was in the personal chef business, my clients loved this dish. It's designed to be an appetizer or first course, but most of the people who've tried my recipe report back that they made a dinner out of them.

Here's a picture of what it looks like. I think you'll see that, based on appearances alone, it's a beautiful dish. Tasting the filling will confirm it.

Your muffin tin is the perfect vessel to make the "purses." While the egg roll wrappers may seem to be sturdy pieces of pasta, they actually tear quite easily, so it's important to be gentle while pushing the wrapper into the muffin cup. Try to center it so that when you go to close it, the ends of the wrapper come together uniformly. It will make for a good looking bundle or purse after it finishes baking.

The ingredients in the filling are fairly mild, especially with the ricotta cheese and chicken. So I jazzed up the dish by placing the purse in a pool of spicy marinara. If spicy isn't your thing, then a regular tomato sauce or pasta sauce will do.

Here's the video followed by the recipe:

1 1/2 cups chicken breasts, cooked and cubed (bite sized)
3 large green onions, sliced thin
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium to large garlic clove, minced
2/3 cup gated Parmesan cheese
2 spinach bunches, washed, stemmed, steamed and minced
8 ounces Ricotta cheese
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
12 egg roll wrappers

Marinara sauce for serving

 

Preheat the oven to 350.

Cook chicken and green onions in the oil over medium-high heat until chicken is lightly browned and onions are soft. Add garlic and cook one minute longer.Let cool slightly then combine 1/2 of the Parmesan with the spinach, ricotta, oregano and nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper.
 
In a 12-cup muffin tin, brush melted butter into 10 of the 12 muffin cups, reserving half of the melted butter for later. Carefully press one egg roll wrapper into a muffin cup and fill with the chicken mixture. Close egg roll wrapper over filling by gathering the ends and gently twisting. Brush with some of the remaining melted butter.
 
Continue until all 10 muffin tins are filled.
 
Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.
 

Serve in a pool of marinara sauce and garnish with additional Parmesan cheese and Italian parsley sprigs.

Oops. I Did It Again.

With apologies to Ms. Spears, I'm referring to another recipe I did involving Brussels sprouts because the hatred for them is legendary.

That's generally because your mother cooked them until they were dead and gray.

This week, I decided to deep fry the leaves, a process that requires a bit of precision work. First you must chop off the stem and remove the discolored outer leaves. The best Brussels sprouts have inner leaves that cling tightly to the layer of leaves beneath them, so you've got to exercise a bit of care to loosen the leaf enough to peel it off and have a whole specimen to plunge into hot oil.

As you'll hear in the video, I suggest that you keep the inner parts of the sprouts you've peeled to make another of my "turn the Brussels sprout hater into a Brussels sprout lover" dish. I was referring to the one that aired a few weeks ago that I call "Brussels Sprout Hash."

And now I can add a disclaimer or an admission of error in calling that dish "Hash." It has no potatoes. It does have bacon. But no potatoes. So it's technically not a hash. Does anyone, except the Culinary Institute of America really care?

The dipping sauce for this week's dish is quite spicy and if I could change one thing, I might add some extra honey to thicken it a bit more so it could cling to the leaves that turn into "chips" once they've been deep fried.

There's also a caution for you in my dialogue and that regards the high water content of the leaves and what happens when you drop them into a pot of oil that's at 350 degrees. They splatter and that hurts when it splatters on you. So you can use a pot lid as a shield of sorts until the splattering settles down.

I bought one of those home deep fryers a while ago and it actually allows you to close a lid at the same time you lower the fry basket into the oil. That certainly would take care of the splattering.

So here's the video followed by the recipe. And I promise: no more Brussels sprout recipes for at least a year.

1/2 lb Brussels sprouts
3 tsp honey
1 tsp Sriracha sauce
1/2 tsp Thai sweet chili paste
2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sesame seeds
canola oil for frying

Trim off the bottoms of the sprouts and discard the outermost discolored leaves. Pull off and set aside the next two layers of leaves, reserving the hearts for another use.

Make the sauce: whisk together honey, Sriracha, chili paste, lemon juice, sesame oil and sesame seeds in a small bowl and set aside.

Meanwhile, pour about 2 inches of oil in a pot and heat to 350º. Fry the sprouts in three batches, using the lid of the pot to protect your hands and face from popping oil. Cook for about 30 seconds or until the leaves are brown and risk. Drian on paper towels and sprinkle with flaky sea salt.

Once all of the batches are fried, transfer the chips to a bowl and drizzle some of the sauce over them. Toss lightly to coat and add more sauce if needed. Or pass the chips and let every one dip their own.

"Puffy" Pizza - Not a Seinfeld Episode

I want to begin by expressing my gratitude to Pepperidge Farms for making puff pastry accessible to all. I love working with puff pastry and I'm thinking about establishing a ministry to extoll the virtues of cooking and baking with it.

It's something of an ordeal to make from scratch. Gobs of butter must be incorporated into dough that is folded into itself multiple times. But buying it ready-made, either in sheets or in shells right form the freezer case in the supermarket, is the way to go.

There's really only one thing you need to remember about puff pastry. It won't rise (puff) properly unless your oven is set at 400 degrees (we're talking Fahrenheit).

Puff pastry works with savory dishes equally as well as it does with desserts and that's what this week's episode is all about. I basically put pizza toppings inside a puff pastry triangle, sealed and crimped the edges, baked them at 400 and -- Voila! -- about 20 minutes or so later, beautiful puffy triangles with sizzling hot pizza fixings inside. It's sort of a larger version of those miniature factory-produced snacks you used to see advertised on television.

And here's the recipe:

1 pkg frozen puff pastry sheets, thawed

1/2 lb Italian sausage (you choose: hot or sweet)

1 cup sliced Cremini mushrooms

1/2 cup onion, finely diced

1 cup pizza sauce (store-bought is okay)

1 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

1 large egg beaten with 1 Tbsp water

Flour to dust the work surface

Thaw the puff pastry for about 20 minutes, unwrapped, at room temperature.

Remove the sausage from the casing if necessary and brown in a large skillet over medium heat, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon. Drain and discard any accumulated fat. Add the mushrooms and onions and cook, stirring until tender. Remove from the heat and stir in the pizza sauce. When cooled slightly, stir in the cheeses.

Make the egg wash with the beaten egg and water. Set it aside for a moment.

Preheat the oven to 400.

On a lightly floured board, roll out each sheet of puff pastry to approximately 11-inch squares. Cut each square in half on the diagonal to create four triangles.

Divide the filling among the triangular pieces of puff pastry and brush the edges with the egg wash. Fold over the dough and crimp the edges with the tines of a fork.

Gently dust off any excess flour from the filled pastries and brush with additional egg wash.

Oil or spray a rimmed baking sheet and place the turnovers on the sheets. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes until the pastries are puffed and golden brown.

* * * * *
ERRATUM

From the New York State Department of Corrections: In last week's blog post, I wrote that Kimmelweck rolls were from a bakery by the same name in Buffalo, NY. Not so. Kimmelweck is actually a derivative of a German word for the roll, the key part of the word being "kimmel," which means caraway seed in German.  If anyone in Buffalo or elsewhere was offended, insulted, disturbed or otherwise bothered by this misstatement of fact, I apologize for the error.

As Henry Kissinger once said, "I am often mistaken, but never in doubt."

Potato-Salmon Mini Bites

Here's a wrinkle on twice-baked potatoes that makes a perfect passed appetizer.