Week one was a surprising success.  Cheese and mushroom pies with three very dear girlfriends.  Got this recipe from a fantastic cookbook that’s quickly becoming a staple of my library, Pastries and Breads: The Recipes You Must Have by Jane Price and published by Murdoch Books in 2007.  Breads, pastries and pies, savoury and sweet, from all over the world.

40 g (1 and 1/2 oz) butter

2 garlic cloves, crushed

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) button mushrooms, sliced

1 small red pepper, deseeded and finely chopped

2/3 cup sour cream

3 teaspoons wholegrain mustard

1/2 cup finely grated gruyere or cheddar cheese

6 sheets ready-rolled puff pastry

1/2 cup grated gruyere/cheddar cheese, extra

1 egg lightly beaten, to glaze

Preheat the oven to 375 F.  Lightly grease two baking trays with melted butter or oil. Heat the butter in a large frying pan.  Add the garlic and mushroom and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the mushroom is tender and the liquid has evaporated.  Remove from the heat and cool.  Stir in the finely chopped red pepper.

Combine the sour cream, mustard and cheese.  Cut twelve circles with a 14 cm (5 and 1/2 inch) diameter from the pastry.  Spread the cream mixture over six of the circles, leaving a 1 cm (1/2 inch) border.  Top each with mushroom mixture.  Sprinkle each with 2 teaspoons of the extra cheese.  Brush the outer edges with beaten egg then place the reserved pastry rounds on top of the filling, sealing the edges with a fork.  Brush tops of pastry with egg.  Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the pastry.  Place the pies on oven trays and bake for 20 minutes, or until lightly browned and puffed.

…So here’s what happened in actuality.  I got the puff pastry home and realized it wasn’t ready-rolled.  All these years of baking and still no rolling pin so I cleaned and floured up a wine bottle (no shortage of those) and went to it.  I gave up ten minutes in and the neat little pies turned into sort of puff pastry calzones pieced together very hastily and thrown in the oven.  Next time, ready-rolled for sure.  No gruyere to be found at my neighbourhood Sobey’s (no surprise really…they ran out of bacon at Christmas) but cheddar was just as nice.  I used old as opposed to mild, for a bit more of a kick.

Served it with a simple side salad…mixed greens, strawberries, red onions, toasted walnuts, balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Really, really tasty.