Canapés seldom travel alone. An event that is worth one’s salt will have three to five different competing canapés offering a cornucopia of tastes, colours and textures.
This week’s addition is a small phyllo pastry basket filled with a mushroom and tomato mix topped off with shaved parmigiano and a drop of white truffle oil.
Everything mushroom should end up with strong and intense flavours, and in this case, the phyllo pastry basket adds the crunch.
Phyllo is an invention that came out of the general region we know today as Turkey. The stretching of dough paper-thin and then layering it, brushing with oil or butter to separate its layers when baking, has several mentions in Homer’s Odyssey and other sources in ancient Greece.
There are those, however, that award the Turks the mantle of inventing phyllo pastry in the 11th century, citing mentions by Mahmud Kashgari in his writings about food. Kashgari was based in Turkic Seljuk Baghdad at the time, and the Turks were still a long way from conquering and occupying Western Byzantium/Turkey which was still very much under Greek Byzantine culture and control until the 1300s.
My money is on the Greeks for two reasons: firstly they had continuously lived in this area since settling there around 1200 BC, and secondly, the word phyllo has a distinct Greek ring to it.
Phyllo Mushroom Baskets. Photo credit The BFD.
Phyllo Baskets Filled with Mushroom
Ingredients:
- One packet of frozen phyllo pastry removed from the freezer and defrosted in the fridge the day before the actual cooking.
- Canola oil for brushing the phyllo pages
- Knob of butter
- Small red onion finely diced x 1
- Garlic teeth crushed x 2
- Zest of one lemon
- Punnett of champignon mushroom chopped
- Dried porcini mushroom soaked and chopped x 40 gram
- Shluk of white wine
- Small bunch of parsley washed and diced
- Two sprigs of thyme
- Nutmeg
- Salt & pepper
- Parmigiano both grated and shaved
- Small handful of flour
- Tomato paste x 1 large tablespoon
- Eggs x 3
- Quality white truffle oil
Basically we are making a tomato based quiche filling without cream.
Soak the porcini mushrooms in 300 ml of hot water for half an hour, remove the mushrooms ensuring they are clean from any dirt and set aside. Sieve the soaking water from the mushrooms through a sieve with a serviette or cheesecloth, ensuring the liquid is free of any dirt particles, then mix in the tomato paste and set aside until needed.
Add a shluk of olive oil and the knob of butter to a frypan on medium heat. When the oil is hot and the butter has melted add the red onion; toss until it starts to clarify.
Add the garlic, stir and toss for a few seconds, add the thyme, parsley and lemon zest, then the chopped mushrooms (both), add a good pinch of salt and pepper, add a few ‘grates’ of nutmeg, toss well and let cook down until most of the liquid from the mushrooms has evaporated.
Add a good shluk of white wine, toss and again cook down until most of the liquids have evaporated. Add the flour, stir in well and then add the liquid of the porcini mixed with the tomato paste. Let cook on a low flame until it quickly thickens. Remove from the stove and set aside to cool.
While the mushroom-tomato mixture is cooling, take a flat tray and oil the tray with canola using a brush. Place one phyllo sheet on the tray, oil gently the top using a brush, then place a second sheet onto the first and oil gently again.
Using a pizza wheel cut the phyllo into equal squares. You should get 12 from the oiled phyllo rectangle. Oil your muffin tins or silicone moulds, place the phyllo squares into the moulds, ensuring they are sitting firmly against the base and sides, and set aside.
Break the three eggs into bowl, add a pinch of salt and pepper, mix well, add in the grated parmigiano and mix well, then add the mushroom mixture from the pan, mixing in well. Taste for salt, pepper and nutmeg; add if you need.
I then put the whole mixture into a food processor and give a few pulses, then into a piping bag and fill each phyllo shell about a third. This mixture should make about thirty pieces depending on how much you pipe in.
Put these into a 175°C preheated oven and bake for about 10 to 15 minutes until the phyllo starts to go golden brown and the filling is firmish to touch (like a quiche).
Remove from the oven, place each basket on the pass-around tray or buffet tray. Put a single small drop of truffle oil into each finished basket, a single small shaving of parmigiano and a decorative sprout or leaf, and each bite is pure heaven.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all the BFD readers and their loved ones and we shall catch up again in 2022.
Shalom from Jerusalem, Israel
Daniel Goldwater
If you enjoyed this recipe why not share it with your friends via social media or e-mail? If you want a copy of your own select the print option at the top of the page.
