Mixed Berry Jalousie

Last Year's Post: Joanne Chang's Lemon Bars
Two Years Ago:  In Praise of Asparagus

I've always admired the beautiful pastries in French pastry shops, but never thought I could actually make one.  To my surprise, it's really easy to make a jalousie (zhah-loo-ZEE), which is a light and flaky puff pastry enclosing a luscious fruit filling, using frozen puff pastry and frozen mixed berries.  It reminds me of a fruit turnover in terms of taste, but it's much more impressive.  Since Easter and Mother's Day are coming up, I thought I would publish this recipe because it would make a perfect addition to your brunch table.  Serve it whole on a cutting board with a sharp knife and let your guests cut small pieces to their desire.  Jalousie also makes a great dessert served with whipped cream, creme fraiche, or ice cream.

The length of the recipe may give you pause, but most of it is just an explanation of how to roll, cut and assemble the puff pastry.  There aren't many ingredients and you can assemble the whole thing the night before so it's easy to bake in the morning.  It's worth looking for sparkling (coarse) sugar because it makes the pastry look professional - you can find it in some upscale groceries, gourmet shops, or at King Arthur Flour.

If your berries vary widely in size like mine did, it's a good idea to cut the larger berries to a more uniform size with the other fruit.  I cut the strawberries with a kitchen shears after they were cooked, mainly because I wasn't smart enough to cut them before I started.

To assemble the jalousie, you roll the pastry out and cut it lengthwise, then put one piece on a baking sheet and brush the edges with egg wash.  Add the berry filling, then fold and slash the top piece and put it on top of the pastry.  Unfold, seal the edges, and refrigerate for 20 minutes or overnight.  Before baking you simply brush it with egg wash and sprinkle with sparkling sugar.

People will be impressed.  I know I was.

printable recipe

Mixed Berry Jalousie 

Makes 1 6”x 14” pastry; serves 6 as breakfast or dessert, or 12 as part of a brunch or dessert buffet

Note: the filling may be prepared and the jalousie assembled in advance, up to the night before baking. 

For the filling:

12 ounces frozen mixed berries

¼ cup granulated sugar (or more to taste)

1 tsp fresh lemon juice (or more to taste)

¼ tsp finely grated lemon zest

Generous pinch of cinnamon

Pinch of kosher salt

1 ½ tablespoons cornstarch

For the pastry:

1 sheet frozen packaged puff pastry, thawed according to package directions

Flour for rolling out the dough

1 large egg

1 tsp sparkling sugar (can substitute granulated sugar)

Sweetened whipped cream, crème fraiche, or ice cream, optional

For the filling:

In a 3 quart saucepan, stir together the frozen berries, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, cinnamon and salt.  Heat over medium high until the berries start to release their juices and the juices begin to bubble, 1-2 minutes.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer, stirring gently from time to time, until the berries release more juices and soften but still hold their shape somewhat, 7-9 minutes.  Remove from the heat.

With a slotted spoon, scoop out the berries, letting as much juice as possible drain back into the pan, and put the berries into a small heat-proof bowl.

Dissolve the cornstarch in 3 tablespoons cold water.  Whisk into the juices in the pan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until very thick, up to 2 minutes.  Scrape the sauce into the bowl with the berries and gently fold together.  Taste and adjust sugar and lemon juice to your preference.  Let cool completely before proceeding. 

May be refrigerated for up to 2 days in a covered container before using.

For the pastry:

Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment.

In a small bowl, make an egg wash by beating the egg with 1 tablespoon cold water until well combined. 

Unfold the puff pastry dough on a floured surface, and gently pinch together any seams that have split.  With a floured rolling pin, roll the dough into a 12x14-inch rectangle, using a sharp knife to even the edges.  Cut the rectangle in half lengthwise to form two 6x14-inch rectangles.  Gently fold one of the rectangles in half and transfer to the baking sheet, then unfold.

Use a pastry brush to brush a 1-inch border of egg wash around all edges of the dough.  Save the remaining egg wash.  Spread the fruit filling evenly down the length of the dough, leaving the egg-washed border clear.

Lightly dust the remaining piece of puff pastry with flour and gently fold it in half lengthwise; don’t crease the fold.  Using a sharp knife, cut 1 ½ -inch long slashes at 1-inch intervals along the folded side of the dough, leaving at least a 1-inch border on the remaining three sides.  Do not unfold the dough.  Gently lift the folded strip (another pair of hands helps here) and position it over the fruit-filled dough rectangle, match up the straight edges (the fold should be down the middle of the pastry).

Gently unfold the top piece and stretch it over the filling, matching the straight edges all the way around.  Press the edges gently with your fingertips to seal, then gently crimp all the edges with a fork.

Chill the assembled jalousie for 15 to 20 minutes.

At this point the jalousie may be refrigerated, covered with foil or plastic, overnight.

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 400d.

Right before baking, brush the top of the jalousie with a very light coating of the remaining egg wash (you won’t need it all) and sprinkle with sparkling or granulated sugar.

Bake the jalousie for 15 minutes, then rotate the baking sheet.  Continue baking until the pastry is puffed and deep golden brown, 12 – 15 minutes.  Immediately transfer the jalousie from the baking sheet to a wire rack by lifting the parchment paper onto the rack, then sliding it out from under the jalousie.

Let cool for at least 45 minutes.  Serve slightly warm or at room temperature, with optional cream or ice cream.  

Best the day it’s baked, but will keep wrapped well in aluminum foil, for 3 days.  Reheat at 325d for 5 minutes before serving.

Spinach, Blueberry & Goat Cheese Salad

Last Year's Post: Grilled Cheese with Pesto, Spinach and Avocado

Summer is such a wonderful opportunity for those of us who are trying to eat healthy.  Fresh fruits and vegetables are abundant, beautiful and cheap, and fresh salads seem so appealing.  But it's easy to get into a salad rut and start to get bored, which is never good.  Life is too short and calories are too precious to be bored with what you eat. (Although I do know an elite ultra-marathon athlete who regards food as fuel and eats pretty much the same thing each day, which I can't even imagine.  He's been known to do a 135 mile bike ultra-marathon in the middle of winter at temperatures down to -30 degrees, which I also can't imagine.)

I always think that if I'm not excited about what I'm going to eat then something is wrong, which is why I tend to post a lot of different salad recipes such as The Perfect Little Summer Salad, Chicken Salad with Fruits and Peppadews, Wild Rice Salad, Summer Salad with Cheese, Fruit and Nuts, Farro, Kale & Smoked Mozzarella Salad, and French Chicken Salad among others.  I'm always looking for new salad recipes and was very excited when I found a new one for spinach salad with fresh blueberries, goat cheese, cucumber, and edamame.  What an interesting and refreshing combination!  Not only is it beautiful, but very healthy as well with  no less than three superfoods - spinach, blueberries and edamame.

The original recipe was vegetarian but it's easily made into a main dish by the addition of crumbled bacon or cooked chicken, turkey, pork or duck so it's a great opportunity to customize the salad to your tastes or use up leftover cooked meat.  You can further customize it by changing the cheese from goat to blue cheese or fontina or any other cheese you like.

I think I'm usually pretty good at envisioning what a recipe will taste like, but this one surprised me.  Not the main ingredients of the salad, but the salad dressing - it has a touch of Dijon mustard that I hadn't really focused on prior to trying the recipe.  If I had, I would've been skeptical that a mustard vinaigrette would somehow magically tie all the ingredients together including the blueberries, but it does.  Try it yourself and see if you agree.

The only ingredients in the salad that are cooked are the meat and the edamame, so if you plan ahead for those two items (or head to the salad bar - my local salad bar carries edamame and numerous meat items) the rest of the salad can come together in literally just a few minutes. It's a great no-cook alternative for a hot summer day.

Spinach, Blueberry & Goat Cheese Salad

Serves 4

For the dressing:

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1/4 cup olive oil

Salt and pepper

For the salad:

1 package pre-washed spinach

1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

1 cup chopped seedless cucumber

1 cup cooked edamame

1 cup crumbled goat cheese

1 cup chopped cooked chicken (or crumbled bacon or other meat)

 In a small bowl combine mustard, lemon juice, sugar, vinegar and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Slowly drizzle in olive oil while whisking until dressing comes together and sugar is dissolved.

Place spinach leaves in large bowl. Add blueberries, cucumber, edamame, goat cheese and chicken.  Add the salad dressing, toss to combine, and serve.

Wild Rice Salad

If you would like to receive an email notification of future Cracked Pepper posts, you can sign up at left.

I started laughing the other day when I was flipping through my recipes and realized I have somewhere around 10 different wild rice salad recipes, not to mention recipes for wild rice side dishes, waffles, soup and other items.  Then and there I decided to crown myself the Wild Rice Queen.  Apparently it stuck somewhere in my subconscious because during a three hour bout of carb-and-sugar induced Thanksgiving night insomnia I mentally composed this entire post, complete with visuals.  It made me happy but did nothing for the insomnia.  I even toyed briefly with trying to create the entire post and publish it the next day, but I didn't think I could do it justice that quickly.  Wild rice is too important.  :)  So, my apologies to those of you who had too many leftover turkey sandwiches that really could have used this recipe instead.  Print it out now, so you'll have it ready for other holiday leftovers yet to come.

Wild rice likes to grow in a cold environment, so the primary producers are Minnesota (domestically) and Canada (internationally). If you didn't grow up in the Great White North you might not be familiar with it. I think of it as the northern answer to grits.  Having always been somewhat skeptical about the virtue of grits (aka "white dirt"), I was assured by my new southern friend Charline that I would love her recipe for Tomato Cheese Grits.  OK Charline, back at ya.  You try mine and I'll try yours!

Wild rice is actually not a rice, but the seed of a grass that grows in shallow lakes.  High in protein, lysine and fiber, low in fat and gluten-free, wild rice is the Cadillac of rices, which is one reason why you won't find it very often on restaurant menus.  Even when you do find a dish listed as wild rice, it will often be a mixture of white and brown rice with some wild rice added in.  One of the reasons that wild rice is more expensive than white or brown rice is because it's more difficult to grow and harvest.  Traditional Native American harvesting is done from a canoe using a long stick to bend the grasses down and shake the seeds into the canoe.  Not exactly high volume.  The wild rice produced in Canada tends to be harvested commercially and therefore is less expensive, but I can't tell any difference in taste or texture so that's the version I buy (it's really not that expensive).  If you happen across small boxes labeled "instant" wild rice, I wouldn't recommend buying them.  It might seem less expensive but that's only because the box contains a small amount.  And the pre-cooking and drying that are required to make it instant means the grains are softer and mushier when re-cooked.  Wild rice is definitely not supposed to be soft and mushy.

To enjoy a 100% wild rice dish is a unique taste experience - earthy, nutty, very flavorful and chewy.  Wild rice makes a great winter salad for those reasons compared to the light and delicate lettuce salads of summer.  The rice makes a great palate for virtually any kind of leftover meat - smoked or roasted turkey, pork, chicken, beef, or even duck and pheasant. Of course, you don't need to wait for leftover meat - you could always buy a rotisserie chicken or a thick piece of smoked turkey at the deli. We recently purchased a smoked pheasant from a local grower and I'm already dreaming of a smoked pheasant, wild rice and fresh cherry salad.  Yum!  Besides a wide variety of meats, wild rice goes very well with a wide variety of fruits, nuts, and vegetables.  Looking over my recipes I noticed certain similarities so for the first time in my blogger life I'm going to give you what I call a master recipe with variations.  (See what insomnia can do to you?)

But first we need to talk about cooking wild rice, which is slightly different than cooking white or brown rice.  Wild rice recipes will invariably give you a set time to cook, which is misleading.  In my experience that hardness of wild rice can vary from producer to producer or from year to year.  My advice is to cook for a shorter amount of time than recommended and then start checking.  I saw a visual a few years ago that led me to conclude I had probably been over-cooking my wild rice, so I thought I'd re-create it here.  First you need to rinse your rice (remember it hasn't been as processed as white or brown rice).

Here's what uncooked rice looks like.

Here's what properly cooked rice looks like - the grains are swollen and most have started to split.

Here's what overcooked rice looks like - most of the grains are split wide open and starting to curl.

My source recipe called for cooking the rice for 60 minutes.  I started checking after 45 minutes and concluded the rice was properly cooked at 55 minutes.  The visual of overcooked rice was taken at 70 minutes.  Most of the time it will take 55-60 minutes for properly cooked rice, but I've had it take as long as 70 minutes and as little as 50 minutes.

Most recipes will call for cooking wild rice in water, but I usually use low-sodium chicken broth for added flavor.  Don't expect that all the liquid will be absorbed, you'll just strain it after cooking instead.  Note that the wild rice can be prepared in advance and refrigerated, so this would be a quick salad to toss together after work.

Ok, so now that you have the rice cooked, here are two concepts for a master recipe.

            Elements Common to Both:
            wild rice
            meat - turkey, pork, chicken, beef, duck, pheasant
            chopped spinach or arugula
            toasted nuts - walnuts, pecans or almonds

                              - plus -

             V1:  Fruity                                                     
             fruity vinaigrette                                            
             fresh fruit - grapes, cherries, oranges, blueberries, etc.
             crumbled fresh cheese - blue, goat, etc.         

                              - or -

              V2: Vegetable-y
              mustard and garlic vinaigrette
              fresh vegetables - sugar snap peas, red pepper, etc.
              avocado chunks or crumbled cheese


I'll go into more detailed instructions and measurements in the recipe(s) below.  Yikes!  This is a long post.  I told The Lawyer I had to get it out of my head so I could get some sleep.  There was way too much content on my mental clipboard.  :-)

* * click here for a printable recipe version * *

Wild Rice Salad

Serves 4-5

Master Recipe Ingredients:

2 cups water or low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup uncooked wild rice
3 cups cooked turkey, chicken, pork, beef, duck or pheasant, cut into bite-sized cubes
2 cups chopped spinach or arugula
½ cup toasted pecans or walnuts (coarsely chopped) or toasted slivered almonds

 - plus -

Fruity Version:

¼ cup champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar
1.5 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
2 teaspoons fresh orange rind
¼ teaspoon dried basil
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
¼ cup dried cranberries
1 cup fresh fruit (halved grapes, blueberries, halved pitted cherries, etc.)
1/2 cup crumbled blue or goat cheese

- or –

Vegetable-y Version:

2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ cup rice wine vinegar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 green onions, sliced
½ red pepper, diced
2 oz sugar snap peas, cut into 1” pieces
1 ripe avocado, peeled and cut into chunks (or ½ cup crumbled blue cheese)

Rinse and drain the wild rice.  Bring water or broth to boil in a medium saucepan.  Add the wild rice; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45 minutes.  Check to determine if grains are swollen and most are split.  If not, check again every ten minutes until done (typically 55-60 minutes total).  Remove from heat, drain, and set aside to cool. (May be prepared up to two days in advance.  Keep covered and refrigerated.)

To prepare the vinaigrette, combine the first 8 ingredients from the fruit version or the first 7 ingredients from the vegetable version in a food processor or shake in a jar.

Combine the cooled wild rice, meat, spinach or arugula and (version1) fruits or (version 2) vegetables (not the crumbled cheese, avocado or toasted nuts) in a large bowl.  Add the vinaigrette and toss well.  Serve topped with toasted nuts and avocado or crumbled cheese.