Feuilleté de chèvre aux épinards / Danish pastry with goat cheese and spinach

The Feuillete with goat cheese and spinach was the first dish of my “French cuisine lessons”. It’s supposed to be an “Entrée” dish (the dish before Main dish). Due to the poor time management, the pastry was not at all cooked at dinner time, and the big guys in the dinning rooms were hungry, so I have ended up serving it as the “Cheese” plat after the main. (Fortunately, it’s normal to serve “Cheese” after the main dish). The cheese pastry can be eaten alone or served along with a green salad with tomato.

I’m not a great fan of cheese in general, but the warmed goat cheese has a soft and round taste. I like it to be served with a bit of honey on a tiny toast with a green salad. This impression is reconfirmed in this recipe. The taste of both goat cheese and spinach are softened by the cooking and cream.

Feuilleté de chèvre aux épinards / Danish pastry with goat cheese and spinach

Ingredients (for 4 people):
“pâte feuilletée”/ puff pastry – 1 sheet (you can buy it from supermarket)
Goat cheese – 100g (basic ones will do, since it is not for direct tasting)
Spinach – 400g
Garlic – 1 clove
Cream (prefer thick than liquid) – 10cl
Egg yolk – 1
Salt and pepper

How to cook

1. Prepare the basic ingredients

• Cut the goat cheese into slides of 25g each (about 1cm thick) 
• Crush the garlic into mash
• Warm up the oven to 200°C
• Cook the spinach leaves with a pinch of salt, in steam for 1 min. (For frozen spinach, simply defrost it). Press the leaves into a ball to remove the water. 
• In a heated pan, mix the spinach, cream, and garlic together. Season it with salt and pepper as you like.

2. Make the puff pastry

• Mix the egg yolk with just a little bit of water. This mixture is called a “dorure” in French; it’s for making the pastry golden and crispy after baking.
• If you have prepared your own pastry sheet, prepare 4 slides of 10 x 14 cm. If you have bought a puff pastry sheet for tarte baking, cut the pastry sheet into 4 equal parts. In each part, place 50g of the spinach mix, and 1 slide of goat cheese on top of the spinach.
• Pinch the edges of the puff pastry together to form a package. Use a small piece of baking paper and roll it into a pipe shape, poke it into each package to form a chimney. 
• Spread the egg yolk mix over the puff pastry package’s surface.
• Put the pastry onto the middle level of a baking tray, and cook it for about 30mins at 200°C, until they are golden brown in color.

Bon appétit!