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Vegetable Puffs are a perfect snack loved by kids and adults. This recipe elaborates the procedure to make puff pastry sheets at home and use them in preparing vegetable stuffed puffs.
Ingredients for Puff Pastry Sheets:
All Purpose Flour (Maida) – 400gms
Cold unsalted Butter – 100gms
Salt – 1 1/2 tsps
Cold Water – 220ml
Soft Unsalted Butter – 300gms
Ingredients for Vegetable Stuffing:
Potatoes, peeled and chopped – 1/2 cup
Carrots, peeled and chopped – 1/2 cup
French Beans, chopped – 1/2 cup
Beetroot, peeled and chopped – 1/4 cup
Dried Peas, soaked overnight in water – 1/2 cup
Oil – 1 tbsp
Onions – 2
Garam Masala – 1 tsp
Salt to taste
Coriander Leaves, chopped – 3 tbsps
Method:
Preparing Puff Pastry Sheets:
- Sift all-purpose flour and salt together.
- Take the sifted flour in a large mixing bowl.
- Cut the cold butter into small cubes and add to the flour. Instead you can grate the butter quickly using a grater but make sure the butter does not get soft.
- Using a pastry blender, cut the butter cubes into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. If you do not have a pastry blender, use a potato masher.
- Now make a well in the centre of the mixture.
- Pour all the cold water at once.
- Bring in the mixture into the centre and gently mix until the flour is incorporated . Do not knead the mixture. The dough will be sticky.
- Lightly flour the kitchen platform or any other surface that you would like. Place the prepared dough and knead well using your fingers.
- Make a big ball of the dough, put a cross mark on top to get four quarters.
- Wrap it with a cling film or plastic wrap.
- Refrigerate overnight.
- On the next day, soften the butter by placing it between two plastic wraps. Rock a rolling pin on the plastic wrap to soften the butter. The butter and the dough should have the same consistency. To adjust the consistency, place the dough at room temperature or refrigerate the soft butter for some time.
- Using a rolling pin roll the butter into a rectangle of approx. 5×8 inches.
- Place the dough ball on a lightly floured surface.
- Using a rolling pin, roll through each quarter of the dough ball. Lift the dough sheet and dust the surface if required. Be quick so that the butter in the dough does not start melting.
- Brush off any loose flour from the dough sheet using a pastry brush.
- Place the prepared rectangle sheet of soft butter in the centre of the rolled dough sheet.
- Bring the opposite sides of the dough sheet together.
- Now bring the other two sides of the dough sheet together and seal such that the soft butter sheet is completely covered.
- Wrap this in a plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
- Remove the plastic wrap and place the dough on a lightly floured surface.
- Using a rolling pin, gently roll it along the longer edge of the dough. Do not roll with force; gently rock the rolling pin on the surface of the dough to form a rectangle sheet with even surface.
- Dust off any loose flour from the surface.
- Bring the shorter edges of the sheet such that the two egdes meet at the centre.
- Now fold from the centre like you close a book. Make sure you dust off any loose powder.
- Wrap it in a plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
- Again remove the plastic and repeat steps 21-26. These steps must be repeated 6-7 minutes. This is time consuming as you need to refrigerate for 20 minutes everytime. When you roll the sheet, be quick enough to not let the butter soften and do not apply too much force on the rolling pin.
- After you have repeated this for 6-7 times, wrap in a plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
- If you do not want to use it up the next day, you can freeze the puff pastry sheet tightly wrapped in a plastic wrap. Or if you want just a portion of it, freeze the remaining sheet.
Preparing the Stuffing:
- Boil chopped carrots, potatoes, beetroot, french beans and green peas with just enough water until they soft. You can pressure cook these vegetables to cook them faster.
- Heat oil in a pan.
- Add chopped onions. Saute until it turns translucent.
- Add garam masala powder and salt. Mix well.
- Strain out any water from boiled vegetables. Store this water (broth) for later use to make soups etc.,
- Mix the cooked vegetables to the sauteed onions.
- Cook until all the water content dries up.
- Turn off the flame, add chopped coriander leaves. Mix well.
- Let it cool down to room temperature.
Preparing Vegetable Puffs:
- Preheat the oven to 400 F.
- Grease and lightly dust two baking trays.
- Take the pastry sheet from the refrigerator, remove the plastic wrap.
- Place the sheet on a gently floured surface and using a rolling pin, roll along the longer edges to form an even, rectangle sheet of 1/4 cm thickness.
- Divide the sheet into 12 small equal sized rectangles.
- Take one such small rectangle.
- Place 3-4 tbsps of stuffing vegetable mixture in the centre of the small rectangle, perpendicular to the longer edges.
- Smear little water along the edges of the small rectangle.
- Bring the smaller edge from top and place it on the smaller edge at the bottom
- Using a fork gently press along the edges to seal all through the edges.
- Place it on a baking tray.
- Repeat steps 6-11 for all the remaining rectangles.
- Bake for 15 minutes.
- Remove the trays from the oven and quickly smear little oil on each puff.
- Place the trays back in the oven and bake for another 5-10 minutes until the pastry sheets turn crispy and golden in color.
- Remove from oven, serve hot.
