How many of you remember those potato patties which were sold in bakeries along with sweet pastries and fruit cakes? When I was a kid, in India pastries meant those mini cakes loaded with cream frosting, cherries and pineapple. The other savory ones which were made using flour dough were called patties, that were stuffed with potato or paneer and were a great replacement of traditional fried samosas.
Well, when I came to US, I came to know that here pastry means the recipes made out of the same flour doughs and patties mean regular tikkis that we used to eat in India… confusing right???
Anyways, this was all from my memories and understandings, but the truth is, what ever you call them , these are cute little savory , flaky and puffy swirls made from puff pastry sheets and which your family would love to devour.
I had this box of frozen pastry sheet in my freezer since 2 months and I was being lazy to make any snack out of it. When I got to know about Sonal’s ( Simply Vegetarian777) Semi Home Made Collective post, I thought what better could be than making something out of the pastry sheets. I tried these cute looking swirls using a filling made of Paneer and Spinach. you can easily find these pastry sheets in the freezer section of grocery stores or you can make the pastry sheets at home.
There are many videos on internet on how to make pastry sheets at home. basically pastry sheets are made using all purpose flour ( maida) and lots of butter. A dough is kneaded using butter, flour, salt and warm water and more butter is added at various layering stages while kneading the dough. It is the butter in the layers of thses dough sheets which makes them puffy, crispy and flaky.
I made these cuties as evening after school snacks for my kids and both of them loved them. I was happy as this way they had eaten the spinach and paneer filled inside the swirls. My little one said “mumma I love these baby pizzas”; well do I need to mention that he loves pizzas 🙂 and he was thinking that I am baking Pizza in oven.
Lets proceed with the recipe
- 3 sheets of Frozen Puff Pastry sheets.
- 1 cup of frozen spinach( or fresh, finely chopped and blanched spinach)
- 1/2 cup of grated low fat Paneer
- 1 medium onion finely chopped
- 3-4 cloves of garlic chopped
- 1/2 tsp of red chili flakes
- salt to taste
- 2 tbsp of milk
- 1 tsp of oil for making filling
- Oil spray for baking the swirls.
- Pre Heat the Oven at 400 F
- Take out the pastry sheets from the freezer and let it thaw for 40 minutes before you plan to start to make these swirls. Take out three sheets and keep the rest back in the freezer.
- Mean while,heat oil in a pan, and once the oil is hot, add onions to it. Stir fry the onions until they are pink.Now add chopped garlic and stir fry them too.
- keep the frozen spinach in a strainer and place it under running water. this way, spinach would be thawed. You can also thaw it in microwave.
- Once the onions and garlic are little cooked, add spinach, salt, chili flakes and mix everything well. Let this mixture cook for 5 minutes on medium flame and then switch off the flame and allow this mixture to cool.once cooled, mix the paneer also to this mixture.
- Take one pastry sheet and roll it longer using a rolling pin. Spread the paneer and spinach filling on the pastry sheet leaving one inch space in the ends.
- Roll the sheet with both the ends and seal the edges using milk. Once the sheet is rolled, brush with milk all over, and cut it into 1.5 cm thick swirls. you will have 4 swirls form each sheet.
- Grease a baking tray with little oil and place all the swirls on the baking tray. Spray some oil all over.
- Bake the pastry sheet swirls at 400 F for 25 minutes. You may flip the swirls at some time in between so that they get baked on both the sides equally.
- Once they are baked , take them out and serve hot with tomato ketchup and enjoy.
- If you like eggs you can also replace egg wash in place of milk in making these pastry puffs.
- The total amount of time depends on different ovens, so keep checking the swirls in between.
can u use spring roll sheets?
If you want to use spring roll sheets, you need to deep fry them before cutting and then once they are deep fried, you can cut them. Or else you can make pastry sheets at home. Google how to make puff pastry sheets at home.
thank u will try
Drooling here big time
Yummmm
Thanks dear
Awesome recipe Swati – Sreelatha
Thankyou so much Shreelatha