Puff: Sweet & Savory Pastry ideas that set off the smoke alarm

Since the delicious success of the soy sausage pastries, I've had two more successes with ingredients that I'm much more likely to have on hand than soy sausage.

For dessert last night, I made Peach Puff Pastries.

Warm the diced peaches in a pan with a little oil and a good bit of cinnamon.

After spooning the peaches onto the pastry sheets, you could add some brown sugar if you had some (I would). I drizzled a little molasses over the mixture for two of my pastries, but the third I left without molasses, just peaches and cinnamon. You can see the difference in the finished pastries. Both were good. The one without molasses was a little more refreshing and fruity, while the molasses ones were heavy and sweet and smoky.


Perfect.

We have quite a bit of leftover vegetable stew (apparently Mark thought we were more than two people when he made the stew). So for lunch today, I spooned some of the stew (mostly vegetables, leave out the liquid) onto some pastry sheets and fried them up.

Here's the secret. Pour some olive oil into a little dish. Add very finely diced onion and... wait for it... ground rosemary. After adding the stew mixture to the pastries (about a tablespoon and a half per sheet), spoon a little of the oil, onion, and rosemary mixture around the edges to seal the pastry. Rub it in with your fingers if you want and pinch the edges together.


Serve the finished pastries (samosas, basically) with blue and red potatoes, which look nice and pink and purple when they fry. The potatoes are seasoned with salt, pepper, onion, and rosemary.
The stew mixture has black beans, corn, Great Northern beans, peas, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, and tomato. I found the corn was actually pretty dominant. That, combined with the rosemary and the pastry itself, gave these a sweet taste.

For the peach pastries, and for the soy sausage ones last night, I used single pastry sheets, but for the stew, I found I had to use two sheets together for each one. Otherwise, the wetness of the mixture caused the sheet to tear. When I used one sheet, the whole thing fell apart in the oil and started spitting hot oil sparks all over the kitchen and the smoke alarm went off.

Good times.