Food is my meditation, my art, my relaxation and inspiration. I watch food documentaries, read food magazines and leaf through pages of a cookbook as if a Bronte novel. I feel real joy in the discovery of a new recipe, something that may bring joy to the taster and discovery to the palette.
This recipe is one of those, that fulfils all of the criteria of a foodie and blogger, it takes something complicated and makes it easy and as an added bonus the resulting dish looks like a piece of art. In fact when I served these, I was told they looked like they were from ‘one of those fancy, expensive patisseries’! This is for a dish that takes 20 minutes prep and only has a handful of ingredients, most of which you would have in your fridge already!
The original dish that inspired this recipe was Alain Passard’s ‘bouquet de roses’. Passard is a Parisian chef who after gaining the accolade of three Michelin stars, removed meat from the menu, bought a biodynamic farm and changed the menu to an entirely vegetarian feast. If you are wondering, yes, he did retain the three stars and is currently also rated number nineteen in the worlds best restaurants (www.theworlds50best.com/list/1-50-winners/Arpege)
Needless to say, you shouldn’t be surprised if you see more Passard inspired dishes on this blog in the future.
Ingredients (6 roses)
- 1 sheet of puff pastry, thawed
- 2 red apples
- Juice of half lemon
- 1 tablespoon of coconut flour, to sprinkle the counter
- 3 tablespoons of preserve (I used papaya, apricot is good)
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
Method
- Thaw the puff pastry at room temperature if you haven’t done so yet. It should take about 20-30 minutes.
- Prepare a bowl half filled with water and the lemon juice.
- Cut the apples in half, remove the core and cut the apples in paper-thin slices (keep the peel so it will give the red color to your roses)
- Right away, place the sliced apples in the bowl so that they won’t go brown (oxidize)
- Microwave the apples in the bowl for about 3 minutes, to make them slightly softer and easy to roll.
- The apple slices should be cooked just enough to bend without breaking. If they break, you need to cook them a little more.
- Unwrap the puff pastry over a clean and lightly floured counter.
- Using a rolling pin stretch the dough into a rectangular shape of about 12 x 9 inch
- Cut the dough in 6 strips, each about 2 x 9 inch
- In a bowl, place three tablespoons of preserve with two tablespoons of water.
- Spread a thin layer of preserve on each strip of dough.
- Preheat the oven to 375f (190c).
- Drain the apples.
- Arrange the apple slices on the dough, overlapping one another.
- Make sure the top (skin side) of the slices sticks a little out of the strip. Sprinkle with cinnamon
- Fold up the bottom part of the dough.
- Starting from one end, carefully roll the dough, keeping the apple slices in place. Seal the edge at the end, pressing with your finger, and place in a regular muffin cup. No need to grease the muffin mold if it’s silicone. Otherwise, make sure to grease with coconut oil.
- Do the same for all 6 roses. Bake at 375f (190c) for about 40-45 minutes, until fully cooked.
- Wait for the them to cool a little before taking out of the case and serving to the sound of ooh and ahh.
Cooking with Manuela, a great food blog inspired this recipe, with a YouTube video in this case too if you are interested. http://cookingwithmanuela.blogspot.com
