Doing it the French way: snails puff pastry and Alexandra cocktail.
Christmas is over, but who is to say that the celebration needs to end that day? With New Year’s Eve coming soon, let’s keep the festive spirit for a few more moons. Over here on the Undercover Toad side, I have started to design a few jewelry of mine. I can’t believe it has already been six months since I have graduated from Ecole de Boulle school of jewelry. Definitely something I am thankful for and that adds a bit of glitter to the party!
We had so much fun doing this recipe that I thought I would share it for everyone to see. For this festive week recipe, here is to trying a French royalty: snails’ puff pastry. It is very easy and oh so tasty.
Prepping the snails puff pastry
For a party serving (around 40 snails puff pastry), I have used:
- 20 big Burgundy snails
- Two garlic gloves
- A branch of flat leaf parsley
- 25g of butter
- A roll of puff pastry
To prepare this recipe, you have to get your hand on some snails Burgundy. Nowadays many retailers sell regional goods. Easy peasy to taste some international tasty food!
I have discovered many worldwide treats and it only required me a bit of online dig.
Start by prepping your ingredients, namely the snails and the garlic/flat leaf parsley butter.
- For the snails. As these were a pretty big size, they would have made big chunk amuse bouche. Not quite the etiquette rule! Depending on the size of your snails cut them in half to get normal bites.
- For the garlic and flat leaf parsley butter. Let your butter soften while you mince the peeled garlic and flat leaf parsley. I always use salted butter. If you use normal butter, it may be useful to add a pinch of salt to your mixture. Mix the soft butter with the minced garlic and flat leaf parsley until you get the garlic butter that you want.
- (Optional). Add the snails to the butter and blend it all together to create a snails’ butter purée stuffing. I personally prefer the texture of the snails instead of the purée and did not perform this third step. Quite an interesting version to do though!
Preheat your oven to 180°C (thermostat 6).
While your oven is heating, cut the puff pastry into small circles. Add some garlic butter in the middle and a chunk of snail (or snails butter purée). Then fold the pastry in a ball around the stuffing.
If the corners are refusing to stick together, use a bit of water it will make the process easier. For optional visual effect guaranteed, brush the top of the puff pastry ball with egg yolk. It will give them a nice brown color once baked.
Now repeat until you are out of snails or dough. Put the snails’ puff pastry balls on a baking paper on a baking tray and up in the oven for 15 min.
Prepping the Alexandra cocktail
To prepare an Alexandra cocktail you will need:
- 1.5 shot of Navy rum
- 1 shot of coffee liqueur
- 0.75 shot of single cream/half and half
- 0.75 shot of milk
- Martini glass
- Measuring jigger
- Shaker
- Strainer
- Fine sieve
Named after Royalty, this drink couldn’t be anything but fancy. I am not a huge fan of dairy and with single cream and milk, well, I wasn’t expecting something that tasty. I was wrong, my taste buds enjoyed it, how strong! Obviously, with the help of rum and coffee, that was pretty easy.
This drink is really easy to pour, no specific order, all in the tumbler. The only trick that I do is making sure I stir a bit the single cream with the milk to make sure that, even after shaking there are no chunks or uneven parts.
In a shaker, put all the ingredients with ice and smoothly shake. Take out the ice, shake without ice and fine strain into your chilled martini glass. If it is up to your liking, dust with freshly grated nutmeg for decoration.
Round 2 of the party, remember to enjoy everything in parsimony so the party pleasure can last longer!
If you have missed last week recipe, it is over here if you want to go and check it: Whiskey cocoa Cocktail and Christmas logs.