Do you know the feeling like you have won the lottery when you discover an amazing new ingredient? There is this unrational thrill that a foodie gets when finding and loving a fab tasting new ingredient and my newest one is nduja, which I tasted here.
An email popped into my inbox inviting me to participate in a recipe competition using nduja, I of course agreed. Then came the dilemma, what to cook with it. I had a really busy week and about a day to think of something, get ingredients and to cook it and take some nice photos. The competition is stiff as the other food bloggers involved are great cooks and they all have serious DSLR cameras to take amazing photos with.
What is Nduja ?
Nduja is a spicy spreadable salami from Spilinga in Calabria and it is made of different parts of the pig with about 40% fat, sweet pepper and hot Calabrian pepper. The meat is ground and with spices and some salt and is stuffed into natural casing. This is then smoked for about a week and then left to dry for a few weeks.
The Calabrians like to eat nduja just spread on bread, with fusilli, in a tomato sauce, added to bean stews or soups. My inventive friends on twitter suggested these other ways, spread on top of a burger, and rubbing it on chicken for roasting.
Nduja melts when you heat it up so it is often used in pasta sauces, adding a bit of a spicy kick and the melted pig fat making everything taste extra delicious.
If you don’t fancy cooking with nduja yourself, you can always head over to the best Italian Restaurant in the City, L’Anima as Francesco is from Calabria and he serves a pasta dish with nduja.
Food Unearthed Recipe Challenge
For the challenge, I wanted to deviate from the traditional ways of using nduja and find a way of enjoying this without too much fuss. So I decided to make these delectable melt in your mouth spicy nduja palmiers with a hidden explosion of flavour. These canapes are really quick and easy to make and is an alternative to how nduja is traditionally used.
The competition is open for voting on Facebook , do have a look and please vote. Thanks.
Ingredients
- 1 packet Food Unearthed Nduja
- 1 packet of All Butter Puff Pastry
- About 75g Grated Parmesan cheese
- Honey to drizzle
- 1 beaten Egg for egg wash - optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 220C.
- Roll out the puff pastry evenly on a clean and lightly floured work surface until it is about the thickness of a pound coin. I made a rectangular shape with mine to make it easy to fold over. If you are using frozen puff pastry, make sure you take it out earlier to let it thaw before use. There are usually instruction on the packet for you to follow.
- For the first layer, spread the delectable spicy nduja all over the pastry leaving a 2cm edge clear. You don't need to have a very thick layer a little bit will go a long way. You can press the nduja down into the pastry to help the salami adhere.
- For the next flavour, evenly sprinkle grated parmesan cheese over the nduja. You can substitute parmesan with any other melting cheese that you have to hand.
- For an added dimension I drizzled honey all over this nduja and cheese topping. Honey seems to complement nduja really well as it takes an edge off the spiciness and adds an added depth to the flavour to each bite.
- Folding the pastry to make a palmier shape.
- Fold both the long side of the pasty so that the edges meet in the centre.
- Secondly fold the edges again to the centre again. You now have quite a thick piece of pastry.
- Lastly, fold this in half along the middle to form a flat sausage like shape.
- Alternative to folding: you can roll the pastry from the edge towards to the centre to create a scroll shaped pastry too.
- You can now wrap it up in cling film and put the pastry back in the fridge for about 15 minutes to firm up before cutting.
- With a sharp knife, cut pieces of the pastry into 1cm thick slices. If your knife is not sharp and your pastry is too soft, you will not get a clean shape. At this point you can egg wash the pastry to give it a gorgeous shiny finish after baking by just beating up one egg and brush each piece on the baking tray.
- Place these slices cut side down onto a paper lined baking tray. Spread them out a bit with some space between them on the tray as they will expand as they bake. You can sprinkle more cheese on top of the pastry too.
- Place on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 15 minutes until the nduja and cheese melts and the pastry turns golden brown. keep an eye on it as different ovens work differently and take them out when it starts to brown.
- When ready, take it out of the oven and carefully place them on a wire rack to cook. When cool it will crisp up very nicely.
- Serve.
This looks really delicious, I can imagine the spicy, fatty crunch of these.
Thanks Alex, they are very easy to make too which is a bonus.
spreadable salami sounds amazing, I know what you mean, I get very (overly) excited when I read about or get to try a new ingredient.