Party food - puff pastry tarts, mushroom & stilton, tomato, garlic & olive, tomato & mozzarella

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tart

One of the things that I find difficult about hosting parties is providing enough food to cater for different preferences - e.g. people who don't like cheese or tomatoes or whatever - while not cooking so many different things that results in kitchen chaos.

At the party we hosted recently, I went for making mini puff pasty tarts with different toppings.  Very easy, can be made small enough that they are finger food, and allow you to have a variety of toppings to appeal to all.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tart

Mushroom and stilton puffy pastry tarts

What you do is:  buy some puff pastry, cut into squares of about 2 1/2 inches square, put on topping, bake for 10-15 mins at 200 degrees C.  It's worth leaving some space around the edges to avoid spillage but you don't need to leave more than about a 1/4 of an inch.  To avoid having to faff in the kitchen too much with guests around, we baked these the morning of the party and served at room temperature but they would be good hot/warm too.

The toppings I went for were:

Mushroom and stilton:  which I made by frying mushrooms in butter and sherry, then melting in some stilton.  These were probably the ones that got eaten fastest at the party.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella:  thin slice of tomato on each with a slice of mozzarella on top.  These looked like mini pizzas.

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tarts

 Tomato, olive and garlic:  slice of tomato, olives and chopped garlic.  Mmmm, garlic!

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tart

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tarts

Mushrooms stuffed with stilton and garlicky breadcrumbs

Mushrooms ready for stuffing

For some reason, this past month has been the month of the mushroom in our house. I seem to have cooked a lot of mushroom dishes. For instance, recently, I tried to recreate the mushrooms stuffed with stilton that we had atThe Vaults a little while ago.

I took 14 small mushrooms, took out the stalks and put them into a buttered oven dish. Then scattered 250g of stilton, the sliced mushroom stalks (waste not, want not!), 300g of crème fraiche on top, in that order.

With added stilton

Mmmm, stilton

With mushroom stalks added on top

With creme fraiche added on top

Musing on what I thought was missing from The Vaults' version, I realised that it was the obvious: garlic! So, I crushed in three cloves of garlic into two slices of bread's worth of breadcrumbs along with olive oil, salt and black pepper. 

The missing ingredient!

Breadcrumbs tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic

Having sprinkled the mushrooms with the breadcrumbs, I then baked at 180 degrees for 25 minutes. 

The finished product

Verdict: tasty but some of the mushrooms were a little undercooked. I think, next time, I'd be tempted to roast them on their own for 10 minutes or so before adding the crème fraiche and breadcrumbs and baking for a further 25 mins or so. I think, also, it would have helped to have melted the stilton into the crème fraiche as then that element would have been hot before it went into the oven.

One to experiment with more another time.

Restaurant review - The Vaults, Cambridge

Much though I love my home town, Cambridge, it has never seemed to have as many good restaurants as it should do.  Or perhaps during my formative years, I just never had the money to eat at them.  Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised recently to have a lovely dinner at The Vaults.

We had the dinner menu which suggests that you have 2-3 dishes each and share.  I had the twice cooked eggs and half of the goats cheese toast and the mushrooms with stilton.  The mushrooms with stilton were delicious - I spent half my time thinking "mmmmm" and half thinking "I must figure out how to replicate this at home" (I have an idea of how to - will post when I try out my idea).  The goats cheese was pretty tasty, though came in rather small portions.  The twice cooked eggs were a good idea but rather underseasoned - I'm not sure they were salted at all and, in my view, eggs really need at least a little salt - so a bit disappointing.  Though, really, I enjoyed the mushrooms so much that I wasn't that disappointed.

In general, the only real quibble I had with the food was that the portion sizes seemed a little arbitrary - the meat dishes that my husband ordered came in much larger portions than the vegetarian dishes.  Fortunately for marital harmony, the mushrooms came in a reasonable portion size so we weren't reduced to the indignity of squabbling over the last bit of stiltony sauce.

I rather wanted some gelato to finish (as previously mentioned, I love gelato) but, sadly, they'd run out of every single flavour.  I attempted instead to order some pomegranate dessert wine but they'd also run out of that.  So, poor me, I ended up with a rather lovely espresso martini to round off the meal.

Despite having had five dishes and bread to share, a glass of wine each, a pudding for my husband and an espresso martini for me, the bill came to around £60 which I thought was damn good value.

Overall:  definitely the nicest meal out I've had in Cambridge.  I will return. 

Pie

I have a friend who has been telling me for years that it's not that hard to make your own pastry but, somehow, I never really believed her. It always seemed like something that only 50s housewives would do. But, actually, it is quite easy. Also, I have extremely cold hands and this is about the only thing that I have ever found that helpful for so I sort of think that it's something I should therefore do.

Grated butter and flour

Grated butter and flour

Grated butter and flour

Grated butter and flour

I found a basic recipe for pastry somewhere and have been using it ever since:  275g plain flour, 225g butter, pinch of salt.  You put the butter in the freezer for about half an hour before you want to start.  Then you put the flour in a bowl, grate the butter into it (quickly, well, that's what the original recipe said, because I have ultra cold hands, the butter really doesn't melt on them and I can kind of take my time!), then gently mix the butter into the flour and gradually add cold water until it becomes dough-like.

You can wrap it by alternating strips

Or you can wrap it up like a parcel

All wrapped up like a parcel

Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for about half an hour.  Then roll it out till it's about 3 or 4 mm thick, put some filling in it, wrap it up, put it in the oven at around 200 degrees for about 30 minutes.  If you glaze it by brushing beaten egg over it, it looks prettier.

Ready made pastry is still a glorious invention and I won't stop buying it for the times when I just can't be bothered to make my own but it does genuinely taste better when you make it yourself and it's actually not that time consuming to make.  I'd say it's only about 20 minutes worth of actual effort (and some freezer and fridge time.)

I have tried out a few fillings.  Last time I made pies, I made two, one spinach, broad bean and feta using the filling from this Nigel Slater recipe.  And mushroom, chestnut and stilton pie from my own invention.  I just kind of made it up but, roughly, what I did was:  slice up some mushrooms quite thickly, fry them up with some sliced garlic, add some chopped chestnuts, fry it for a bit longer, then add some salt, black pepper, parsley and stilton at the end.  Pretty damn good.

Spinach, broad bean and feta filling

Spinach, broad bean and feta filling

Mushroom, chestnut and stilton filling