Daring Cooks December: Stuff en croute

Yes! I'm still here, still cooking, still eating. I promise to get back on the update wagon immediately. No more 20 days hiatuses. 

Well, December's challenge came at a time when I was feeling very frugal and very busy. Adding to that, my first read-through of the challenge made me think that us vegetarians got to make an inferior version of the challenge recipe that was, in my opinion, neither challenging nor exciting. So, I made the recipe within a week of it being revealed, and didn't think about it again until now.

I wish I'd looked back at it, because then I would have realized that I could have done so much more with this recipe, and cranked it up, Vegedible style! In fact, maybe I will do that once I get brave enough to go outside again in this -30 C weather...

Anyhow, here's my results:

The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online.

I used biscuit dough from the biscuits that I was making earlier in the evening. I realize now that one of the main parts of this recipe was to use pastry of some sort...but I also knew that the challenge hostess said we could just buy some puff pastry, so I thought it would be alright to use biscuit dough.

I was following this recipe, which was provided as a vegetarian alternative, sans chicken. But, as I said earlier, I was feeling frugal (AKA I was broke!) and decided to just use what we already had in the fridge. This means that we were short on spinach, and short on mushrooms, and had no cheese of any kind. I also didn't use the eggwash on top because Bri doesn't do eggs. I know, I really should have taken another stab at it (maybe today!) when I had a bigger budget. Oh well!

 

So, as could be expected, the spinach cooked down and the dough baked upwards, so we were left with a big gaping hole in the middle. On the bright side, this meant lots of room to pour in the fantastic gravy we made!

Then I ate it like a taco.

I'm open to taking another stab at it with proper pastry and more stuffing, because I do love pastry and stuffing.

I haven't decided what to make for the vegetarian entrée at Christmas dinner so maybe that will come to me through future experiments. Suggestions are welcome!