(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Kiwi Daughter: currently aged nine years of age, often expresses interest in cooking.
I’d like to think that it’s all due to the Maternal Influence in this household… that she has seen my passion for food, my deep love of cooking, of entertaining and feeding people.
Sadly more critical inspection reveals that the most likely cause of her motivation consists of her attempting over indulgence of her rampant sweet tooth, since about 95% of her chosen recipes involve chocolate or icing as an ingredient… or even more preferably, if she can manage it…. both.
Because of this I have been trying hard to show her that cooking savory items can also be satisfying and since she has recently discovered that she likes puff pastry, she asked if she could make something for lunch that included pastry.
I am not able to stand on two feet at the moment and the combination of crutches, an oven, a nine year old helper and a minuscule galley kitchen meant that I needed to think of something easy, whereby Himself could take care of the oven and assist in the easiest preparation possible.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Thus the brainwave… smoked sasuages wrapped in pastry, a.k.a. “pigs in blankets”.
Dutch pastry of the commercial variety comes in small frozen packages of ten little square sheets, approximately 10 cm square (about 4 inches square).
Here in The Netherlands we do have soft sasuages in cans, called ” knackworstjes“. They come in regular length and in mini form and I think that the mini sized ones translate to the little sasuages that are called “cocktail franks” in North America.
Our version of these have soft side and no real skins and would quickly go mushy in the oven, so I used a different sort of knackworst that has a firmer skin and just sliced them into thirds to make them the right length.
All Kiwi Daughter needed next were a few sheets of pre-prepared puff pastry.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Ingredients:
Frankfurters
Several sheets Puff pastry
Milk (optional)
Mustard (optional)
Ketchup (optional)
Method:
Preheat your oven to 225 C (440 F)
Take a thawed sheet of ready rolled puff pastry and roll up your Frankfurter pieces.
Use a small dab of water to seal the join of the pastry, and place the pieces join side down onto a baking tray.
Brush with milk ( if you want a more golden coloured pastry).
Bake for about 12- 15 minutes or until the pastry, puffs up, is cooked and golden in colour.
Serve with mustard or ketchup if you wish.
Et Viola!, Himself was the Master Controller of the Oven and hot trays, Kiwi Daughter did the cutting of the sasuages and the rolling up of the pastry, she achieved a simple tasty lunch with minimum effort and adult input and she’s pleased as punch with the results.
hmmm… I foresee a looming addition to puff pastry, so dear Daughter, no you can’t have these every day this week, there are other savoury school-holiday lunch recipes at our disposal too… we will cover many of them in due course.
Meantime, my Compliments to my budding chef and her sous-chef helper: Himself… by the time my foot is mended I might have a fight on my hands to wrestle back my kitchen LOL!
