“I really want to play Princess Leia. Stick some big pastries on my head. Now that would be interesting.” ~ Ewan McGregor, Scottish actor (1971 – )

While we aren’t big proponents of consuming prepared foods, one of the exceptions is in using frozen puff pastry. There are a few reasons – the homemade stuff contains cholesterol from butter and can take days to make what with chilling the layers, for instance – but of most significance is that this is a lifesaver ingredient.

In the past, puff pastry was on my list of “maybe once a year at the most because it isn’t exactly healthy” foods. Recently, however, Pepperidge Farm has eliminated the trans- fats by switching to non-hydrogenated oils in producing their frozen puff pastry sheets. It still contains “2% or less” of high fructose corn syrup and salt, but for an occasional treat, I’ll accept that.

The beauty of this product is in its versatility because it can be combined with minimal ingredients to make a spectacular dish. It can be used to create lovely desserts, like the Little Britches palmier cookies we enjoy in the summer (see page 136 of the Mosaic Meals cookbook), or it can become part of a dinner entrée enveloping a savory filling.

For this appetizer recipe – also perfect for serving at a special tea time to celebrate a princess’ wedding – we combined the alternatives and came up with a savory cookie by layering a parsley-mint pesto between the folds. The filling choice is really incidental, as we can also envision this working with all kinds of simple spreads like an olive tapenade, a coarse mustard, or even a finely chopped caramelized onion.

The inspiration for this variation came while sitting at a Lebanese café and wondering what we could do with some leftover tabbouleh besides eating it as the salad it was intended to be. The little bit of cracked wheat in it doesn’t get in the way at all if you opt to use ½ cup prepared tabbouleh instead of assembling your own filling ingredients as indicated below.

Savory Palmiers
Serves 6
Time: 10 minutes active + 15 minutes baking

½ cup curly parsley (not packed)
½ cup mint leaves (not packed)
2 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
6 grape tomatoes

1 sheet puff pastry dough, thawed to room temperature

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Measure the parsley, mint leaves, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt into the food processor. Run on high speed until finely minced, then add the tomatoes and process until the mixture becomes a coarse paste.

Open the dough out onto your work surface and spread the parsley mixture to about ½ inch of the edges. Gently fold the 10-inch edges in to their nearest crease mark, then fold again to about ¼ inch from the center (leaving a ½ inch gap). Fold one side over the other to make a strip that is four layers thick and 10 inches long.

Using a very sharp knife, cut the dough into ½ inch wide slices. Lay the pieces out with one cut side down on a cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake until lightly browned, 10-15 minutes depending on the temperature of the dough. Serve warm or at room temperature.