Jamie Oliver is one of my cooking TV boyfriends (Mimi only started loving him when he chubbed up, but he's always been in my harem), and I can't help finding his accent and ridiculous hair charming. On a recent episode of "Jamie's Kitchen" he had this "dead simple, quick easy" recipe to make little flaky crispy pastry things (part of the Quick Rhubarb Fool recipe). Basically you defrost a packet of puff pastry, and then cover a cutting board w/ powered sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle the top of the pastry w/ more powered sugar. Roll the pastry out until it is thin and then cut it into big pieces. Cook in a hot dry non stick pan until brown on each side. Quick, crisp and delicious. I had visions of eating these flaky, buttery, cinnamony treats along with homemade ice cream. Mmm...
The reality was very different. The first batch burned on the outside and were raw on the inside. Which led to me cursing mightily, sprinkling more powdered sugar everywhere, and re-rolling the dough (not rick rolling it) so the puff pastry was quite thin. I also had find a cooling rack so the finished little crispy things wouldn't get soggy.
I eventually managed to get the puff pastry to cook through, and crisp up somewhat. Of course that happened about 30 minutes into the "quick and easy" "done in five minutes" enterprise. Worst of all, the little cookies didn't even taste good. The cinnamon got burned and bitter, and the sugar got gummy (quite possibly because US powdered sugar has cornstarch, while UK icing sugar does not).
I ended up covered in sugar, grumpy, hot, sticky and filled with scorn for Jamie Oliver. Clearly Alton Brown is the blond cook I should trust.
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