Chicken & Sweet Potato Puff Pastry Hand Pies

All I can say about this next post is that I had been awaiting this day my entire cooking life. I had always wanted to work with puff pastry, but, as I believe most of us do, always assumed that it was incredibly difficult. Reserved for the kitchens of the Cordon Bleu. Unreachable. I so desired  to take that culinary leap of faith. To just go for it. To reach for the PUFF. The buttery, flaky, melt in your mouth PUFF. When I saw this recipe in, once again, Everyday Food, I knew that my time had come. I`ve included some step-by-step pictures of these little guys in case anyone of you goes astray. It really was a miracle in the oven, watching these little guys, well, PUFF up. I have to say too that my husband just LOVED me when I made these pies. He absolutely loved me. Who doesn`t love to be loved? 


The possibilities of different dishes with puff pastry really are endless - just check out Pepperidge Farm's Puff Pastry recipe webpage (most appropriately located at puffpastry.com) which my mum and I have been gigglingly exploring this past week. We served up our pies with some broccoli baked up with some yummy swiss cheese. YUM. Bon appétit!


Ingredients:
- 1 cup roasted sweet potatoes, mashed
- 1/2 cup heavy cream 
- 1/4 tsp. ground coriander
- 1/4 tsp. ground cumin
- coarse salt and pepper
- all purpose flour, for rolling
- 1 sheet frozen puff pastry (thawed) 
- cooked chicken, cut into bite-size pieces (approx. 1 cup) 
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten
- greens for the side (beans, broccoli, brussel sprouts?)


Directions:
1. Pre-heat your oven to 400F. Peel your sweet potato and slice into 1/2" circles; align on a lightly oiled baking sheet and drizzle with a small amount of olive oil. Bake for about 20 minutes until the potatoes are tender through. You can do this a day or two ahead of time to save time if you want.
2. In a medium bowl, mash your sweet potatoes with a potato masher. Add the cream (we just used light cream), coriander and cumin; stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Cook your chicken....slice in to teeny tiny pieces.
4. On a floured work surface, roll out puff pastry to a 12-inch square and cut into 4 squares. Divide your sweet-potato mixture among the bottom halves of the squares, leaving a good 1/2" border. Top each with 1/4 of your chicken and then brush your edges of the pastry with some egg. Fold top halves of squares over filling to make a triangle, then crimp edges with a fork. With a sharp knife, cut vents in pastry and brush with remaining egg.
5. Transfer to a parchment lined rimmed baking sheet and bake until golden and crisp, about 30 minutes, rotating your sheet half way through. 
6. In the meantime, make up whatever veggie it is that you're going to be serving as your side dish. For our broccoli, we blanched some fleurets, tossed them in the oven with some swiss cheese on top and just let the cheese melt. YUM. 


Here's the step by step instructions: 

This is HALF of the puff pastry sheet. It took 2 hours to thaw or you can pop it in the microwave on LOW for 2-5 minutes in its cellophane wrapper.

Roll out the pastry with a rolling pin to 12 inches... this was surprisingly easy!

After cutting your pastry in to 4 pieces, plop in your filling! Make sure that you leave about 1/2 an inch from the outside edges so that you can get a good clean seal. 

This is what your finished product should look like before putting it in the oven with the crimps and slits cut in and then covered with egg. Be proud, be very, very proud :)