Читать книгу The Joyful Home Cook - Rosie Birkett - Страница 27

Wild garlic/harissa cheese straws

Makes 12–15 cheese straws

Yes, there are plenty of very good shop-bought cheese straws out there, but I wouldn’t be encouraging you to make these unless I thought they were worth it. Your guests will be in awe when you breezily tell them that the cheese straws are ‘homemade, darling’, and some inevitably crumble in the oven, making for bonus chef’s-perk nibbles. Once you get the hang of this method, the chances are you’ll be busting these out at every given opportunity and trying to feed them to everyone you know. I’ve included seasonal tweaks – wild garlic pesto for spring, and spicy harissa for the rest of the time. You’re welcome.

225g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting

large pinch of cayenne or red chilli powder

½ tsp sea salt

nutmeg, for grating

150g cold unsalted butter, cut into small dice

1 tsp Dijon or English mustard

100g Cheddar, Gruyère or Comte, finely grated

1–3 tbsp iced water

2 tsp Wild Garlic Pesto (see here) or rose harissa (I like the Belazu one)

1 egg, beaten with 1 tbsp milk

1 Sift the flour, cayenne or chilli powder and salt into a bowl and grate over some nutmeg, then stir. Add the butter and lightly rub it into the flour until the mixture has the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs – it’s okay if there are a few smooth flakes of butter in there. Stir through the mustard and half the cheese, then sprinkle over a tablespoon of the iced water, bringing the mixture together with your hands, squeezing until you have a smooth dough. Add a little more water if needed. Roll it around the bowl to pick up any stray crumbs or scraggy bits – you can dampen your fingers to help with this if you need to. Mould it into a ball and flatten to a disc, wrap it in greaseproof paper and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

2 Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6 and line a couple of baking trays with baking parchment.

3 Unwrap the chilled pastry and roll it out on a surface lightly dusted with flour to a large rectangle just a little longer than the length of this cookbook and about 5mm thick. Fold it in half like a book, rotate it by 90 degrees and fold it in half again, then roll it out once more to a large rectangle, just bigger than the size of this book. Spread the pesto or harissa all over the pastry, then cover with the remaining cheese. Fold the pastry in half like a book again, so the filling is contained (don’t worry if some escapes out the sides), and carefully roll it out lengthways to a rectangle about the size of this book, or 15 × 22cm. Place on a baking tray, trim the ragged edges with a sharp knife, brush with egg wash and chill in the fridge for 10 minutes, or until firm.

4 Cut the chilled pastry into strips – I think 13–15cm long and 1–1.5cm wide is just perfect. Either bake them as they are, or, if you’re feeling a bit swish, very gingerly pinch the ends and twist them ever so slightly to reveal the filling and underside of the pastry. Brush any exposed pastry that wasn’t coated in egg wash, place the straws on the lined baking trays and bake for 12–15 minutes, or until golden and oozy. Remove from the oven, allow to cool slightly, then serve still warm, or at room temperature.

TIP: the pastry can be a little delicate to work with, but it’s easy to patch up, and if they crack a bit once you’ve shaped them, a little extra grated cheese on top before you bake them can cover a multitude of sins. Remember, the beauty of making cheese straws yourself is that they should be perfectly imperfect.