Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Camembert in Brioche

December 1, 2015 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, snacks, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 8 Comments
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camembert in brioche

The idea of chesse en croute kind of makes me giggle….seems like something from another dinner party era to me.  I do love a good retro treat though, so I was pretty excited to make Lora Brody’s Camembert (or Brie) in Brioche for Thanksgivng pre-dinner snacks.

The recipe in the book calls for making the brioche dough in a bread machine and caramelizing the onions in a slow cooker, but despite my ever-growing collection of gadgets and small appliances, I don’t have either of those in my kitchen arsenal.  I made the dough in my stand mixer instead (subbing warmed lowfat milk for the milk powder and water), with no problem, and followed the instructions to chill it immediately (without letting it rise first) before shaping.  I caramelized the onions in the oven with some thyme…even though I used small Cipollini onions, they did take a couple of hours, and next time I’ll probably just caramelize regular sliced onions on the stovetop.

I didn’t think we could take down the 9-inch wheel of brie the recipe uses, but I wanted a whole wheel rather than just a wedge, so I found a little 4-inch round of camembert and used that.  I only needed to make 1/3 of the brioche dough and use a few Cipollinis to cover it.  My 6-inch cake pans seemed too big to bake the cheese in, so I did it free-form, rolling the dough out into one round parcel that wrapped up the cheese, and making a little decorative twist out of some trim scrap.  Everything held shape very nicely in the oven, I’m happy to report.  Letting it rest for half an hour or so out of the oven keeps the cheese from being too runny and just spilling out of the crust.

Maybe this isn’t so much something from a bygone era as it is a classic.  Gooey, salty baked cheese, sweet onions and buttery brioche…it’s really so very good.  And quite stunning, too…a perfect holiday appetizer for a crowd.  I even reheated a leftover hunk on Friday, wrapped in foil in a low oven, and it was still just the thing with a glass of wine.

camembert in brioche

For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan.  I do think this is the final recipe in the “Savory Pastries” section of the book….wow!  Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.

Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Puff Pastry Pizzettes

October 21, 2014 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, other savory, savory things, snacks, tuesdays with dorie | 9 Comments
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puff pastry pizzettes

I’m no interior designer.  This has been made painfully obvious to me by my home decorating choices (more accurately called mistakes).  Right now I’m trying to choose a few paint colors and I just can’t.  I can’t.  I need a glass of wine and a treat.  Thankfully, that I can do, and easily, too, with Michel Richard’s Puff Pastry Pizzettes.  These little one bite snacky hors d’oeuvres are meant to use up the scraps from the other week’s Sunny-Side Up Apricot Pastries. Homemade puff pastry (heck, even store-bought– it’s expensive!) is a no-waste situation.  I only made two of the apricot pastries so I really didn’t have a whole lot of scrap to go with here and just got six pizzettes.  Even so, I made two versions with goat cheese– one with tomato and the other with sautéed leeks.  I’m annoyed that I forgot to put a little parsley leaf on top of each tomato one…my picture would have been cuter!  See what I mean?  I fail on the design details.

These were a tasty little snack with glass (or two) of wine.  They were best warm, though.  The room temp one I tried had definitely lost some of its crispiness.

For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan.  Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Scallop and Pesto Purses

May 6, 2014 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, other savory, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 18 Comments
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scallop and pesto purses

I’ve been trying to lay off the sweets a bit lately.  No more dessert every night, I’ll mostly keep that to weekends.  This is because I can tell my trainer would like it if I dropped a few pounds.  The things I do for this guy….I even got up early to run a 5K on Sunday!  He’s right of course, and he has made me strong, so at least that running was a piece of cake (unlike the cake I’m not eating).

I do miss baking stuff more than once a week, though, so it’s nice to have a little savory project to put together.  To tell the truth, these Scallop and Pesto Purses, courtesy of Gale Gand, were more of a quick assembly task than a real baking project.  Take a nice, fat sea scallop and a schmear of pesto, bundle it up in a phyllo dough wrapper and pop it in the oven.  These purses are intended to be elegant appetizers, but I will probably never have a dinner party sophisticated enough to serve them (pigs in a blanket, anyone?).  After I snapped this photo, I put a few of them together on each plate with a bit of salad, and we had them as dinner…with the rosé, obvi.  They were really tasty and the scallops cooked nicely inside (which I was worried about since I couldn’t really tell what was going on in there).  The juices from the scallop did make the bottom of the purses soft, but we were knife and forking it, so it wasn’t a big deal.

I pounded together a little bit of parsley pesto for these in my new mortar and pestle.  It was my first time making pesto this way– normally I use the food processor– and it was so good, I made more a few nights later for pasta.

scallop and pesto purses

For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan.  Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll! 

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