Black Pudding & Goats Cheese Parcels with a Red Onion Marmalade & a Mixed Leaf Salad

The perfect dish to impress friends with. The flavours work magically together. A dish not to be missed!!

Ingredients:

1 sheet of puff pastry
8 (1cm) slices of Black pudding
4 (1cm) slices of goats cheese (small roll)
1 egg
4 handfuls approx. mixed leaf salad
olive oil

For the red onion marmalade
4 medium red onions
200 ml balsamic vinegar
2 cinnamon sticks
100 g demerara brown sugar

Method:

1. Get your red onions sliced into thin strips and add them to a pot. Add in the balsamic vinegar, sugar and cinnamon sticks, which are broken in half, and mix well. Place over a medium heat and make sure to keep an eye on it as you don’t want it to boil as it can give a burnt taste to the marmalade. Taste every few minutes and if it’s still very sharp it may need a bit more sugar. You’ll know it’s ready when you run a spoon against the base of the pot and the liquid slowly comes back together.
2. Lay your sheet of puff pastry out on a table. Make sure to defrost it first if frozen and don’t leave it over a heater for too long as it will destroy the pastry. Making puff pastry from scratch I’m told is very tricky so your better off buying the frozen stuff.
3. Cut your slices of black pudding and goats cheese. Place a piece of black pudding about two inches in from one of the corner and then place a piece of goats cheese on top of it followed by another piece of black pudding. Cut a square from the pastry once you know approximately the size needed so each corner can reach the centre at the top of the stack.
4. Remove the stack and thin out the pastry by pressing down lightly on it working your way out from the centre. If you don’t do this the pastry can come out very thick after cooking.
5. Put the stack back in the centre and bring each corner of the pastry, one at a time, up to the centre of the piece of black pudding on the top and press down on it so it sticks. Once all four corner are up you will have four pieces of pastry sticking out. These can be pinched as close to the filling as possible making sure not to tear the pastry. Once that’s done trim the extra pastry off with a knife and then work your way around the parcel with your hands smoothing out the small pieces which are sticking out. Follow these steps for each parcel.
6. Heat your oven up to 180 degrees and while waiting for it to heat up you can egg wash each parcel. This is done by simply cracking an egg into a cup and mixing it. Then using a pastry brush rub some egg all over the parcels. This will give them a golden brown sheen once they come out of the oven.
7. Cook for 25 minutes and remove.
8. I just put some nice olive oil on the salad because there’s so much flavour from the parcel and the red onion marmalade that it didn’t need anything else.
9. You should be ready to plate up now so just place some red onion marmalade in the centre of the plate and place the parcel on top of it. Add some salad and just drizzle with olive oil.

Source: Séan O’Tuama