Ham Mushrooms Cheese Puffs

For the second day of evening snacks, I have ham mushrooms cheese puffs from Puff Pastry website. I tweaked the recipe a little to my taste. The puffs were tasty but felt I could have added a little more spice. Ham is salty and I did not feel the need to add any salt to the ham filling. Don't let the length of the recipe intimidate you. Recipe is long but it is a very easy recipe.

Adapted from: PuffPastry.com
Total Time: 60 – 70 minutes
Preparation: 35 – 45 minutes
Cooking: 5 – 10 minutes
Baking: 20 minutes per batch (I baked puffs in two batches. While the first batch was baking I did the prep for the second batch of puffs)
Yields: 24 puffs

Ingredients:

• 1 Packet Pasty Sheets (Each Pepperidge Farm packet comes with 2 pastry sheets)
• 2 tbsp. Oil
• 1 -2 tsp. Ginger Garlic Paste
• 2 Green Chilies chopped
• 1 ½ cup diced Mushrooms
• 8 oz. Ham Slices chopped or 1 ¾ - 2 cups chopped Ham (I chopped or diced  them into ½" pieces)
• 1 small Green Bell Pepper diced or ¾ cup diced Green Bell Pepper (½" pieces)
• 2 Green Onions or approx. ¼ cup chopped Green Onions
• ¼ tsp. Black Pepper Powder
• ¼ - ⅓ cup chopped Cilantro
• 1 Egg beaten

Preparation:

• Follow instructions on the pastry sheets packet to thaw the sheets.
• Heat oil in a pan, add ginger garlic and fry for few seconds.
• Add mushrooms, green chilies and sauté for a minute or two.
• Add ham, green onion, bell peppers and sauté until the vegetables are cooked. This will take about couple of minutes.  Cooking time varies depending on the size of the vegetables.
• Add black pepper powder, cilantro and sauté for a minute or until mixture is almost dry.
• Remove from fire, add cheese and mix. Keep aside until ready to use.
• Preheat the oven to 375 F. Line two large baking sheets with an aluminum foil for easy cleaning or lightly grease it with some oil. I greased my pans.
• Take one pasty sheet out of the pastry box, and open it. Each sheet has three folds. Unfold the sheet and cut it into three long strips. Then cut each long trip into 4 strips. All together we should have 12 squares of pastry strips.
• Take a strip in your fingers and stretch it a little using finger tips.
• Fill the strip with approx. 1 tbsp. of ham mixture and fold it to make a rectangle. Pinch the edges to seal the puff. Place them on one of the baking sheets.
• Do the same with rest of the pastry strips. Brush the puff pastries with beaten egg. I used my fingers to brush the beaten egg but a pastry brush will work just fine.
• Place the baking tray in the middle rack and bake for 20 minutes or until the puffs are golden brown in color.
• While the first batch is baking, pull out the second sheet of puff pastry, cut it into 12 pieces, fill them ham mixture, fold it to a rectangular pastry and place them on the 2nd baking sheet. It took me 15 minutes to fill and brush the puff pastries with beat egg.
• Once the first batch of puff pastries is done, pull them out of the oven and let them cool on the baking tray or on a cooling rack. While the first batch of puff pastries are cooling, pop the second tray of puff pastries in the oven and bake them for 20 minutes or until done.
• Serve the pastries as it is or with some ketchup. I like to eat them as it is.

Note:

• The puff pastries were good but the spicy tooth of ours would not have minded bit more spice in the filling. Adjust the spice level to taste.
• Ham is salty and did not feel the need to add any salt to the filling mixture.  Taste the ham mixture and adjust salt as per one's taste.
• I did not use any moisture to seal the puff pastries. But one could use beaten egg or some water to seal the edges of the puff pastry. After filling the pastry, brush the edges with little water or beaten egg, fold the pastry and pinch the edges to seal it.
• Brushing the pastry with beaten egg gives it a shiny finish. I usually skip this step when I make puff pastries but I did brush the puff pastries this time  for that shiny finish.

Filling Suggestions:

• For vegetarians, ham can be substituted with veg ham. I never tasted it but found that veg ham is a great substitute for vegetarian version of these ham puffs.
• Other variations for the puff filling are; ground chicken (substitute turkey with chicken in ground turkey recipe), ground turkey and potato vegetable filling I used for bread canapes. Crumbled and spiced paneer would be a good filling too.
• For egg puffs, cut the boiled egg into two, sprinkle some pepper & salt on each ½ of the egg, place the egg in the center of the square pastry strip. Take the two opposite edges of the square piece, bring it over the egg and fold it in the center. Pinch it to stick or use either water or egg stick it and seal.