Paired with crisp puff pastry, creamy fromage blanc and gorgeous watermelon radishes, the kale pesto easily made the jump to elegant. The result was festive, beautiful and, I gotta say, completely delicious.
If kale isn’t your thing, then use the puff pastry with the fromage blanc as a base for other toppings. You can substiute arugula pesto, sautéed mushrooms or even sautéed Swiss chard.
Ingredients
- 1 White Toque Butter Puff Pastry cut into eight 4 inch round circles (or use your puff pastry of choice)
- 8 tsp fromage blanc
- 1 egg
- cracked pepper
- sea salt
- 8 tsp kale pesto
- 2 watermelon radishes, sliced thin or 6 lollypop radishes of your choice
- sprig of thyme
Directions
- Remove puff pastry from the freezer and let thaw at room temperature. Preheat oven to 375.
- Once pastry dough is at room temperature, toss some flour on your workspace (no sticky dough, here). Take a 4-inch round cutter and cut out eight circles from the dough. Place the dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Score the dough with a pairing knife about a ¼ in from the edge. This helps the puff pastry to create a border for your ingredients — a trick my friend Julie Robles taught me. Drop one teaspoon of fromage blanc into the middle of the circle and spread with an offset spatula.
- Beat one egg and then brush around the edges of the pastry dough. Crack some fresh pepper on top and sprinkle sea salt. Bake on a silpat or parchment for about 18 minutes or until the edges of your pastry turn a beautiful golden color.
- Drop one teaspoon of the kale pesto and spread with an offset spatula. Top with two slices of watermelon radish. Sprinkle with fresh thyme and drizzle with a little olive oil. Serve.
A note about the kale pesto: A helpful reader (thanks, Tricia!) commented that when she made the pesto it was a tad salty. I thought I would take a minute to reiterate a couple of notes about the ingredients: 1) use unsalted blanched almonds, if you only have salted blanched almonds, such as Marcona almonds- wait to add any salt until you’ve buzzed it together and then give it a taste. 2) Be sure to rinse your capers before adding them to the processor.
For the full post, visit Eat Drink Garden.