Ramsons, mushroom and feta parcels
Enjoy these easy to make mushroom, wild garlic and feta cheese pastries after a wet walk in the woods.
Sometimes foraging is a cold, wet and knackering business, and when you get in for lunch after a morning of scrabbling around in the dirt for tasty treats you just fancy some comfort food.
These puff pastry parcels use bought puff pastry - because honestly, even can't be faffed to make puff pastry.
Ingredients
Makes 6
1 pack of ready made all butter puff pastry
flour for dusting and rolling
2 oz butter
1 pack of chestnut mushrooms sliced
About half a carrier bag of freshly foraged wild garlic, rinsed and roughly chopped
1 pack of feta cheese
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Milk or a beaten egg for glazing
Method
Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5 or equivalent and grease two 30cm x20cm baking sheets with oil.
Melt the butter over a gentle heat in a large, deep frying pan and cook the mushrooms until fairly soft but not falling apart.
Add the wild garlic and stir until wilted. Season lightly with salt (you don't want it too salty because of the feta) and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.
Roll out the puff pastry into a rectangle fairly thinly on a floured surface and divide evenly into 6 roughly square shapes. Each square should be approximately 20cm x 20cm
Place the pastry onto the baking sheet so you don't have to move them once they are full.
Load each square with 1/6 of the mushroom and wild garlic mixture and sprinkle liberally with crumbled feta.
Gather the corners and sides of the pastry square in a bundle and twist shut.
Repeat for all 6.
Glaze with beaten egg and cook in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden.
These can be frozen before cooking once the filling has cooled, you can cook them from frozen, but give them an extra 10 minutes in the oven.
I'm sure these could be eaten cold, but why wait?
You can add crispy fried bacon lardons to this recipe if you like, or why not try using nettles and a little finely chopped garlic instead of ramsons.