April 4th, 2009

4/4/09 was a big day. Lawson Kane Wahlers was welcomed into the world, screaming, clamoring, and keeping it real the whole time. (i don't know what that means either...)
also! It was puff pastry day at school, a monumental, make it or break it day.
due the the former announcement, I missed puff pastry day, but i got some practice in at home. Puff pastry is a grueling, back breaking, soul wrenching practice. good times. but it's really impressive when done properly, and still moderately impressive when done improperly. so i took the dough i had made at school, before little Lawson decided to join us, home with me and made Spinach and Blue Cheese Strudel!
i promptly forgot i would be writing about this, so i didn't take pictures of me rolling out the dough, which i'm actually more pleased with than the rest of the process. but take my word that I AM AWESOME.
or something.
but really, i had to roll out the dough to paper thin width, into a 36 inch square, to later be cut into 2 18 inch squares. for those in the audience who have never done this, this is really f***ing hard. it tore a bit, i used a ton of flour to patch it up and eventually i got a very jagged squarish piece of dough. good enough for me! i trimmed the edges with a knife. I chilled the dough for about an hour, and in this time i got the filling ready. i love blue cheese as much as the next guy, but this stuff smelled HORRIBLE. cringe inducing bad. i convinced myself that this meant it was really good cheese. the smellier the better? please someone confirm this for me.
moving on, the flling consisted of: spinach, butter, milk, 2 eggs, a bit of flour, salt/pepper and 4 ounces of Bleu Cheese. blanch the spinach, the return to boil. then cool/pat dry/chop.
heat butter and milk in a sauce pan, when it comes to a boil add the flour so it's all pasty. mix the paste and the 2 eggs together, then add spinach...then stir in the cheese. strap on your gas mask and proceed....
place the mixture in a piping bag, and line one of the pastry sheets with 4 or five rows.

then lay the second sheet on top and press the dough together where the hills end.

all i could think of was Shai Hulud from Dune.
then trim the edges so that they will bake as 4-5 separate strudels. bake at 375 for 25 minutes and you too can have this:

which looks like this inside:

Had i done this in school it would have been remarkably more pleasing to the eye, with Chef barking over my shoulder (lovingly, of course). but they were still quite delightful. the pastry was nice and light and the filling, well, cheesy.

Until my next adventure, good night my little robots....