Summer Berry Rissoles
If you like my Sorrel Shrimp Rissoles, then I know you’ll like the original, my Summer Berry Rissoles. Rissoler means to brown, and the way we learned rissoles in culinary school was to stuff balls of puff pastry with sweet syrup-poached pear. Delicious, but once again, you had to spend a lot of time and effort on your little donut hole reward. These are easy. Start with frozen puff pastry, and some beautiful berries, and then proceed as if making fresh ravioli. Fry them up, toss them with sugar, and you’re done. The outside is like a crusty doughnut with a million layers, but soft, and sweet, as well, and the inside is like a starburst of sweettart berries that are just turning from fresh fruit to pie filling as they explode in your mouth.
If you never thought you’d ever eat fried puff pastry, don’t mock it till you’ve tried it. These are your own homemade French Pop’ems. Bon app!
Summer Berries
For the full story and recipe from my French in a Flash column at Serious Eats, click here.
Ingredients
- 2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
- 1/2 cup raspberries
- 1/2 cup blueberries
- 2 teaspoons flour
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 egg, beaten
- Vegetable oil for frying
- Powdered sugar
Procedure
- Fill a pot halfway with vegetable oil, and begin heating it to 350 degrees F.
- Using some bench flour, roll the cold but thawed puff pastry out into a square that is about 12 inches on each side. Cut 4 equal strips across the pastry.
- Toss the berries with the flour and the sugar.
- Making the rissoles is just like making ravioli. One strip of dough will be the base, on which you place your filling. Another strip of dough will blanket over the filling, and then you will stamp out the ravioli. So, begin with 2 strips of dough. Brush each lightly with beaten egg, to help the top and bottom pastries stick together. In your mind, divide the base strip of dough into 4 squares. Alternating, place either 2 raspberries or 3 blueberries in the center of each of those squares. Place the top layer of dough, egg wash side down, over the dough dotted with berries. Use your fingers to create little pockets, and press the dough lightly all around and between the filling, so any air gets out, and so the dough sticks firmly together. Flour a 2 ½-inch ravioli stamp, and stamp out the little round, fluted rissoles.
- When the oil reaches 350 degrees F, fry the rissoles in 2 batches for about 5 to 6 minutes, until golden and flakey. Drain on paper town, and dust generously with powdered sugar, like Tinkerbell scattering fairy dust. Eat them when they’re still too hot.
Those look wonderful! I want to try & make some this weekend. I havent had much puff pastries so I'd love to try these. Thanks again for another wonderful recipe!
these look fantatsic!