Chicken Drumstick in a Puff Pastry Pouch
The most common way to ruin this dish is to wrap an underdone drumstick. Inside the pouch the chicken steams rather than roasts, and in the time it takes the puff pastry to brown, raw meat next to the bone simply won’t catch up. So the drumstick is taken nearly to done in the frying pan; the oven only crisps the shell and heats the filling through.
Where it usually goes wrong
The second weak point is moisture. Broccoli and mushrooms give up a lot of liquid, and if they land on the pastry wet, the base turns to paste before the top ever crisps. Keep them in the pan until the water has cooked away, then let them cool a little: hot filling melts the butter in the pastry and the layers collapse.
The leek leaf isn’t decoration but the tie — blanched in boiling water it goes soft as string and holds the gathered edges around the bone. Cauliflower stands in for the broccoli, and frozen green beans are fine (all the more reason to drive off the water first). One 17.3 oz US box of frozen puff pastry holds two sheets, enough for about four pouches. Serve at once; the crunch lasts maybe twenty minutes.
Part of European cuisine — 100 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Rub the chicken drumsticks with salt and pepper and sear them in part of the vegetable oil until cooked through.
Break the broccoli into florets and cut the green beans and bell pepper. Saute the vegetables and mushrooms in oil until done, then season with spices and minced garlic.
Roll out the pastry into a square, brush with melted butter, add the vegetables and mushrooms, set a chicken drumstick on top and gather the edges of the pastry around it to form a pouch.
Blanch a green leek leaf in boiling water and tie it around the pastry at the base of the drumstick. Bake until done.
When serving, garnish with fresh herbs.
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