Delicious Entrée Corn Pastries

Cooking adventure number #2 – Delicious Entrée Corn Pastries – ‘corn & ham quiches’ and ‘chicken & corn puffs’

For my second main ingredient, my cousin selected ‘corn’. I researched and selected four recipes including corn & ham quiches, chicken and corn soup, corn chowder and corn mini quiches. All four recipes looked appealing and weren’t time-consuming however, I chose corn & ham quiches because the combination of ham and corn were unusual and the recipe had a 5 out of 5 rating.

I decided to cook a second dish as I recently went to a party and entrée were serving these football-shaped pastries, which had chicken and CORN. It tasted amazing and I wanted try recipe for my project. I was excited to make two different pastry recipes with the one main ingredient… CORN!

I decided to call my entry Entrée Corn Pastries – ‘corn & bacon quiches’ and ‘chicken & corn puffs’ because pastries are always a winner at parties!  The ingredients for the ‘delicious entrée corn pasties’ are:

Corn and Bacon quiches

Corn

Egg

Bacon

Onion

Cheddar Cheese

Puff Pastry

Melted butter (to grease pan)

Bacon (replaced ham because bacon has a stronger taste)

Chicken and corn puffs

Corn

Mince Chicken

Onion

Puff Pastry

Parsley

Bread crumbs

Carrot/Peas

Salt and pepper

Milk

It took me 30 minutes to prepare all the ingredients for the two recipes. This included measuring, cutting and washing all ingredients into bowls and plates and the presentation for the photo. Since this recipe was short, the preparation was quicker than my previous recipe.

This is the main ingredient, corn being poured into the chicken mince. I used fresh corn cobs instead of canned corn as fresh corn is sweeter and juicer. When I was “kneading” the mince, I was told that I was kneading too hard and was actually massacring the chicken, so I kneaded the chicken mince and corn more gently.

I combine the chicken mince, corn, parsley, carrots, peas, salt and pepper together to begin making the mixture for the corn pastry. I also added in the onion and bacon which I had fried lightly and set aside to cool. The onion needs to be cooled or else when you add the onion to the chicken mince it will cook the chicken mince. There were great smells and flavours from the mince as the onion and bacon were lightly fried. I also added breadcrumbs to soak up the moisture and juice from the chicken mince. Without the breadcrumbs, the pastry could be soaked in the moisture and juice from the chicken mince and other ingredients while it is cooking in the oven which could cause the pastry to be soggy.

I set aside the chicken mince mixture and started preparing the pastry. I had to measure 

and cut the puff pastry so each piece could fit my chicken and corn puff filling tool. At first, the puff pastry was getting stuck to the tool and I couldn’t peel off the pastry without ruining the shape. I quickly worked out that the puff pastry was a little wet from being defrosted so a bit of plain flour might fix the problem. Thankfully it worked. Working out how much meat filling you put in the tool was difficult; too little and all you’ll taste is pastry and too much and the pastry won’t stick together. At my attempt, there wasn’t enough filling so the pastry felt a bit airy inside. The more pastries I made I learnt the right measurement was one full teaspoon of mince mixture was enough.

Here are some of the finished uncooked pastries, some of them were big and some of them were small. The square pastries were pressed together by using a fork. There were lots of unused bits of puff pastry which I put together and rolled into one big sheet of puff pastry. I then brushed the pastries lightly with some milk to create a more golden colour. I was scared that the re-used and re-rolled puff pastry wouldn’t puff up. It did puff up but didn’t we used the left over pieces of puff pastry. Once we ran out of pastry, we used the left over pastry but when we tasted the pre-made pastry and the re-used pastry, the re-used pastry was much harder than the pre-made but it was still puffy. After making at least 60 meat pastries, I brushed each pastry with milk so it can achieve a rustic golden look when it finished. 

I left the chicken and corn puffs aside as I wanted to cook the two pastries together and started working on the corn and ham quiches. I beat the eggs and added the corn, bacon, onion and grated cheddar cheese. Similar to the other recipe, the onion and bacon had been lightly fried and cooled.

After mixing for quite some time, the corn mixture looked a bit unappealing. It actually looked like yellow vomit but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t going to taste how it looked!  

I then set aside the quiche mixture and started preparing the pastry. I greased the muffin tray with some melted butter and measured and cut each piece of pastry to fit the muffin tray. I then filled each muffin tray with the quiche mixture by measuring two tablespoons of mixture to each muffin cup. Some of the muffin cups were overfilled with the mixture which made the puff pastry a bit soggy.

Both the quiches and the puffs were now ready to be baked. This is the corn mixture pastries being oven-baked in my family’s oven. The pre-heated temperature was 160 degrees Celsius and when I opened to put the pastries in the oven, the hot air pushed into my face. It felt so nice especially because it was a very cold day. This photo was one of the best photos taking my cousin for this recipe.

The first batch of egg corn pastries looked BRILLIANT! The pastries had puffed up and looked like bowls and the egg corn filling is the meal. The egg mixture was golden brown and you could really smell the cheese and bacon. There were four batches after the first batch so there were lots of these pastries to go around the family. From the appearance of the pastries, it looked puffy, crunchy and I wanted to dig my teeth into one.

This is the chicken and corn puffs baking in the oven. Some of the pastries had too much filling so some of them had holes with filling slowly moving out.  For some pastries, I only brushed one side with milk and some had both sides brushed. I was pleased to see that there wasn’t that much moisture and juice coming out of the pastry which meant the breadcrumbs was doing its job. The chicken and corn puffs were baked for 15 minutes and then flipped to the other side and baked for an additional 5 minutes to golden the pastry.

The first batch of meat corn pastries looked AMAZING! The big and small pastries looked like footballs. After they came out of the oven, the whole kitchen smelt like a French bakery and the smell of pastries was delicious. There were five batches after the first batch so it was like a feast rather than an entrée.

The finish product looked like it was from a 5-star restaurant and all the pastries that I used for this photo were all golden on all sides. In total, I baked over 50 or so pastries for the whole family which I was extremely surprised to cook that much. The first bite of the egg corn pastries was like a party in my mouth; all the textures and taste being mashed in one bite. The pastry was very crunchy and puffy, the corn was still juicy and sweet and I could barely taste the cheese. In future, if I could cook this recipe again, I would put more cheese than recommend on the recipe.

The corn meat pastry was the winner; the pastry was so crisp and golden and the flavours of the mince and the vegetables were delicious. By looking at the pastries you couldn’t tell which one was re-used but you could taste it as the pastry was hard and wasn’t that crunchy. I’m still glad I re-used it rather than throwing out the remaining puff pastry.

The filling had some problems such as I couldn’t taste the corn but the parsley was a little overpowering so next time, less parsley and more corn. My family devoured the pastries in half an hour but luckily I saved some for school the next day. The puff pastry was delicious and it made me think how delicious home-made puff pastry would be. I know that it’s difficult to make but maybe one day I should try it! These two dishes was a really winner with my family and I would recommended it for any party!

The corn and bacon quiches recipe was taken from TASTE.COM

The chicken and corn puffs was from the TRAN FAMILY


Q: If you had corn has your main ingredient, what would you make?