Taste Your Way - Part II

As we continue our culinary tour of make at home dishes from the International Food & Wine Festival, held each fall at Epcot, it’s time to appease our appetites with something a little more substantial. Often times you find that the cookbooks from the festivals include a ton of recipes that, unless you’re a professional chef with your skills honed, are not truly functional for the home cook to take on. Today’s entry, however, doesn’t require three separate preparations to be timed in conjunction with each other just to make sure the dish isn’t ruined.

We’re pulling an item from the Food & Wine vault that has been a favorite when served up in France. Chausson of Roquefort Cheese may sound fancy, but it’s a very simple and rich dish to put together that will impress your family or dinner party guests. It’s also very adaptable recipe, but we’ll talk about that later.

CHAUSSON OF ROQUEFORT CHEESE

Ingredients

1 Ounce Diced Brie Cheese (approximately 1/4 cup)

1 Ounce Diced Roquefort Cheese (approximately 1/4 cup)

1/4 Cup Diced Tomatoes

1 Tbsp Chopped Chives

1 Egg

1 Sheet Puff Pastry Dough (thawed per package directions)

1 Tbsp Water

Coarse Salt (to taste)

Freshly Ground Black Pepper (to taste)

Before we move on to the directions, I want to pause to offer up a few words about the ingredients. Good luck trying to dice the Brie and Roquefort. The Brie will be a bit easier, but a good quality Roquefort will get messy and crumbly long before you can get it diced. Break both cheeses up as best you can so that your final product has a bit of both throughout. Also, if you can’t find Roquefort in your area, or find it too expensive, utilize your favorite blue cheese, it will work just as well.

Directions

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

Mix Brie, Roquefort, tomatoes, and chives in a medium bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Beat egg and water in a small bowl with a fork to create egg wash.

Place thawed pastry sheet on baking sheet.

Spoon filling onto pastry sheet, approximately 5 inches from bottom edge.

Fold bottom edge of pastry over filling, then fold in sides, then fold down top, envelop style, to form a rectangular packet.

Lightly brush with egg wash.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown.

Let rest 15 to 20 minutes before cutting into 8 thin slices.

I’m not sure that there is much better than some bread, good cheese, and fresh vegetables, and this recipe has it all. Beyond that, it is very simple to throw together. The majority of your time is spent waiting on it to bake and when it is resting before being sliced. The tomatoes provide enough acidity to cut through the richness and saltiness of the cheeses, and it’s all wrapped up in a nice, flaky pastry dough. These slices would be great for heavy hors d’oeuvres, but I wouldn’t recommend this as main course for family dinner.

This preparation is so easy that you could easily swap out the tomatoes for a variety of fruits. Think apples in the fall, peaches in the summer, strawberries in the winter and spring, or blackberries in summer. In fact, since we had a second sheet of puff pastry we threw together a second serving for dessert with fresh apples and cheese.

I hope you give this one a try. It’ll give you a lot of success with very little effort, and everyone’s taste buds will applaud you!