Catering - ladies a plate

I volunteer for a great charity called Dress for Success www.dressforsuccess.org/wellington and I am often asked to help cater at events to help raise money and the organisation's profile. I have a large file of 'party recipes', a few tried and true but for this event I had time to experiment with something new.

One of the things I like about living in our Capital is the CBD is very compact and you often 'bump into' people you know. Ruth Pretty is a well known chef in Wellington - I collect her recipes as they are really interesting, tasty and easy to do. I met her in a cafe recently, she has supported Dress for Success over the years so I thought I would give her a 'plug' and use one of her recipes for this event. I was really pleased with the outcome - it was a winner and had the added advantage of being suitable for vegetarians. Finely chopping the vegetables is a little time consuming but you could do that little job beforehand (over a glass of wine and it is done in no time!). I did think about putting them in my blender but thought they would make them too fine to roast properly.

These little pies are really yummy and they have the lovely tasty surprise of the hidden blue cheese when you bite into them.

Little Roasted Vegetable Pies (Ruth Pretty recipe in Dominion Post 14th June 2008)

 Makes 18 little pies but I made more than that as I doubled this recipe! They can be used straight away or placed in fridge to be reheated as required or frozen to use later, just thaw and reheat)

Ingredients

1/2 red onion (peeled and finely chopped)

1 shallot (peeled and finely chopped)

75g (1/2) red pepper (de-seeded and finely diced)

75g peeled pumpkin (finely diced)

75g zucchini - about 1 (finely diced) 

75g peeled kumara (finely diced)

25ml olive oil

flaky sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

200g puff pastry (I used ready rolled pastry sheets)

65g blue cheese (finely chopped)

65g cream cheese

1 egg lightly beaten - (only half required but as I doubled the recipe used a whole one)

2tsp finely grated Parmesan

Method

Use baking spray (Dot's spray is a must in my pantry) to lightly grease 24 mini muffin tins.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees Celsius.Place prepared vegetables in a bowl add oil and toss together.

Spread vegetables in a single layer on a low sided baking tray (if it is too deep they steam instead of roasting). I use baking paper too to help with the cleaning up! Place vegetables in the oven and roast for 5 -10 minutes until 'al dente'. Season with salt and pepper and allow to cool.

If using block pastry roll out to 2mm thick. Cut rounds with a frilly cutter and gently press into greased muffin tins. Any off cuts can be laid onto of each other, rolled and cut out as well.

Place Blue cheese, cream cheese, beaten egg and Parmesan in a bowl and use a fork to combine. Place a small teaspoon of the mixture in each pastry case. Pile 1 heaped tablespoon of the vegetables (although I used a heaped dessert spoon as it seemed too much) on top of the blue cheese mixture and very gently press down to 'stabilise' the diced vegetables.

Rest pies in the fridge for about 30 mins. 

Preheat oven to 210 degrees Celsius. Bake pies for 10-15 minutes or until pastry is cooked through and golden brown. When cool remove from tins.