With a huff and a puff

Today I made SARDINE PUFFS because my mom asked me to. She's absolutely mad for sardine puffs, and asks for them all the time. A while back I was crazy over puff pastry, but since I got over my fascination, I was left with a couple packets of puff pastry, and so I put them to good use and made these beautiful puffs.

A few notes on handling puff pastries in general:

1. The secret to perfect golden brown puff pastries is to put as much egg wash on it as is humanly possible. This means that every millimeter exposed must be covered, and also that one wash is usually not enough. After the first wash dry, give it a second wash. A third if you have the patience.


2. I don't know if everyone knows this, so I'm just putting it down; cover all exposed parts EXCEPT for the bottom, otherwise you'll have a hell of a time prying it off the tray. Also, avoid the edges of the pastry. If the egg wash get onto the pastry edge, it'll glue the pastry together and you'll get a half-stuck-half-rised frankenstein of a pastry.


3. Most cookbooks will say that, if you are cutting shapes out of your rolled pastry, only rework the left overs once, or even not at all, as the pastry would not be able to rise evenly after that. I say, however, that unless I'm serving the President or Lee Kuan Yew himself, I am not about to waste food just because they won't rise that well. So unless I'm making vol-au-vent, I generally use up every scrap of pastry.


4. Puff pastries dry up rather quickly, so work fast. Especially if you are reworking it, don't leave it to roll out later; they'll dry up and be no good at all.


5. Absolutely no shame in frozen puff pastries, takes a saint to be able to whip these up everytime they need some. Just remember to take it out to thaw at least 3 hours before use.

Ok then, back to the puffs. These are really great, they taste fantastic, a snap to make [minus the time it takes to thaw], and they look sooo pretty, all golden and puffed.

INGREDIENTS

Canned sardine [roughly 2 large cans of sardine, roughly 300g each, to 750g pastry]

1 large yellow onion

1 1/2 packet of frozen puff pastry

*measurements are according to what I had on hand, adjust as you like

Flake sardine, as chunky or as smooth as you like, taking as little liquid with it as possible. Chop up onions into cubes and mix into the sardine. Taste and season. That's your filling done.

Roll out pastry into desired thickness, probably around 2mm, then cut desired shapes out of it. You can do either triangles, rectangles or circles, and of varying sizes as well. You can also wrap them in a variaty of ways, but I'm lazy, so I used a pastry cutter to cut circles, fill them up and press down the edges with a fork. Take note to seal the pastries with a dab of the egg wash, or chances are they'll be gaping open when they cook and the sardine expands. Brush well with beaten egg and bake in a hot 200 degree celcius oven until golden brown, and that's it!