Especially Good

A long time ago I wrote about using vodka rather than water in pastry. That was for pie crust and I guarantee if you use vodka rather than water, the pastry will be more crisp. But recently,  the abundance of good stone fruit here meant that I needed to figure out the best way to present this fruit.

Years and years ago (1989), Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins wrote a few best selling cookbooks that had a big impact. One of the recipes in The New Basics Cookbook was for a mock puff pastry. I made that a few times, back in the day, but I wasn't impressed by either the texture or the flavor. So now, nearly thirty years later, I revisited that recipe and substituted vodka for the 6 tablespoons of  ice water.

Okay, this is good--I definitely credit the cookbook, but you need to try it this way:

2 cups flour (not cake flour or self-rising)
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks)  butter
(6 tablespoons ice cold vodka
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice)
Mix those last two ingredients together

In your food processor or in a bowl mix the dry ingredients. Add the three sticks of butter cut into tablespoons all at once and process briefly until the butter is mixed in but stop before it clumps up. Then with the food processor working, pour in the ice cold vodka and lemon juice. Stop the processor as soon as you have finished pouring in the liquid.

Dump the mess out on a floured surface and work it briefly in to a solid mass. Wrap it in plastic and put in the refrigerator. After 20 minutes, on a floured surface, roll it out into a 14 x 7 inch rectangle, then fold up the bottom to the middle and the top over that. While everything is still cold, do that again. Then put it back in the refrigerator for twenty minutes.

Do that two more times and then decide if you are going to have an extravaganza of pastry or if you will just use some.

I used half of the recipe for the topping for a cobbler rather than biscuit dough. I also baked up some mock palmieres with some melted butter and sugar and they were fantastic. Everything, including the cobbler, was baked at 425F. The palmieres cooked for 25 minutes and the cobbler for 45.

It isn't the same as puff pastry, but it is close.