Recently Jola and I have been cooking some less intensive meals. Things that in the Pinterest universe would be called, “Weeknight Meals.” We’ve also been eating together more often without cooking together because we made and froze some of our meals. Most recently, we had the Wickelkraut from Episode 7 for lunch.
Blätterteig is the German word for Puff Pastry Dough. (Teig means dough.) After Jola and I cooked this meal together, I became curious about what other meals I could make with it and have become pretty attached to this recipe. I remember always buying puff pastry in the freezer section in the US, having to wait for it to thaw and having it often be a little sticky once I unrolled it. Here you only find it in the refrigerated section and I find it much easier to work with that way.
Anyway, this recipe is not unlike a meal my own mother used to make. It’s simple and tasty. Here is how you make it:
First Jola’s tips: Jola says to make the filling the night before and refrigerate it because when you put it together cold, the filling is less juicy. That way the juice doesn’t run through the dough in the oven.
Then, just roll it out of the package as a horizontal rectangle. Here, it
comes already in a rectangular shape on a piece of baking paper. It is easy to transfer the dough, still on the paper, to a baking sheet, no mess, no extra work.
Ingredients:
1lb ground beef
3 Tbsp. oil (salt and pepper to taste)
3 bell peppers (preferably red, yellow and green) finely chopped
1 onion finely chopped
3 Tbsp. salsa texicana (this is kind of a thin salsa)
1/2 cup shredded cheese (125 grams)
1 egg yolk for egg wash
Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 F. (220 C)
Saute all oil, onion, bell peppers together, add ground beef until browned, then add salsa texicana. Taste and add salt and pepper or another spice that you like. Transfer to a bowl. Refrigerate over night.
Add cheese when the mix is cold. Roll out the dough. Transfer all the filling from the bowl to the middle of the puff pastry.
Close the dough around the filling, tightly closing all the holes (at this point you can use the egg yolk as a glue if you wish.)
After it’s closed then brush the whole thing with a whisked egg yolk.
Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes if you are using an oven that has over/under heat. You will need to modify timing if your heat is only coming from above or below or if you have convection.
Jola serves this sometimes with rice, sometimes with mashed potatoes or sometimes with nothing, depending on whether its lunch or dinner.
Just a short shout out to my dear friend and master baker, Violet, for giving one of Jola’s recipes a try in the USA! Last week she was brave and made what was featured in Episode 9 of Cooking with Jola. I am so excited and honored to have Jola’s Franconian food impacting the menu an ocean away!
Guten Appetit!
Laurie's Franconia 