Flaking Out Again

Red alert! the Endless Simmer phyllo tag has not been used in 14 MONTHS! What a cruel, pathetic abomination. First of all, let me apologize to the entire community for this reprehensible failure. When we started this site, the public quickly got excited about our promise of extensive phyllo coverage, yet this flaky deliciousness somehow got lost among the maze of pine nuts and fried eggs. I take full responsibility for this failure and sincerely apologize.

But let me explain why. When I started getting serious about cooking, I used phyllo dough all the time. People are just so damn impressed with it. There’s something about this fragile, flaky dough that screams “I’m fancier than you are.” I swear, you could wrap cheez whiz and spam in phyllo and people would think you were the most gourmet chef ever.

But the truth is, it’s really not that impressive. I mean, all you’re doing is buying some dough, wrapping things up in it and throwing them in the oven. It’s about as impressive as a pre-made pie crust. Also, once you’ve made spanakopita and baklava a couple dozen times, you start to run out of ideas. But enough phyllo bashing. This is a phyllobration, not a phyllo funeral. I had to make something for a potluck this weekend, and running low on creativity, I thought of my old friend phyllo, and decided to get a little crazy…

So basically I made up both of these phyllo creations while browsing ingredients at the supermarket. The first version is kind of like a caprese salad stuffed in a phyllo, except since tomatoes are out of season, I used roasted red pepper.

Step 1:

Place one roasted red pepper, a couple of slices of mozz, and a few leaves of basil in the food processor (sorry, but  ya’ll know i don’t do measurements). Pulse it up a bit, grate some pepper in, and then just fold them up in triangle formation a la anything else wrapped in phyllo.

Step 2:

And fold:

Brush on some melted butter, and bake ’em up for 20 mins. These ones were pretty tasty, but I was much more excited about my dessert phyllo. Wasn’t quite sure if  this one was gonna be too crazy or not but I think it totally worked.

Place two blackberries and one tiny piece of brie (rind removed) on the phyllo and triangle it up. Please note how lovely my work station was at this point. While these ones weren’t as pretty (the dark of the cooked berries kinda shows through the phyllo), I thought they were pretty damn tasty.

OK, I’m officially back on the p-train. So, what else do all ya’ll wrap up in phyllo? Let me know!

More: appetizer recipes