As you may have noticed, I've been on a bit of a savory campaign. What's up with that? Here's another food that my only experience with has been sweet: Rugelach.
I grew up on Bea's Bakery's chocolate chip rugelach. I was especially fond of the chocolate chip, but there were lots of other flavors as well: apricot, cinnamon sugar, cherry, and prune. Yes, prune. But for Jews' love of prune filling, I suspect that it would be a thing of the past. But thanks to Jewish bakeries across the world, prune filling is alive and well and thriving in a bakery near you.
My mother was a lover of bakery. That's what she called it. Bakery. Once a week, usually on Fridays, she would go to Bea's and stock up on bakery. Sometimes she would buy a coffee cake, sometimes those delicious little butter sandwich cookies that were spread with raspberry jam and then dipped thickly in chocolate. And often, she would buy my favorite: chocolate rugelach. (She called them delcos. Why? I'll never know because the ladies at Bea's called them rugelach.)
Anyway, although my love affair with rugelach/delcos began years and years ago., I had never, and I mean never, had anything but sweet rugelach.
That is until the other day, when this recipe for pumpkin rugelach appeared on the Food 52 website.
So, I'm going to skip over what a pain in the ass making rugelach is. They're little tiny rolled cookies. Of course they're labor intensive and a pain in the ass to make. That's a given. So let's move on to why you should make these.
You should make these rugelach because they are so delicious that they're worth the effort. It's that simple. They're worth it. You're not going to find anything like these in your local bakery. They're too, shall we say, outside the box. It doesn't matter. They are divine. And they are worth all the mixing, rolling, and more rolling.
Trust me on this. Go ahead. Set aside an afternoon. Thing of it as a adventure into a whole new savory culinary world. You won't be sorry.
Recipe: Pumpkin Rugelach with Sage and Walnuts
Food52
Makes 32 small rugelach
Ingredients:
2 sticks unsalted butter
8 ounces cream cheese
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup fresh sage leaves, chopped finely
2 large shallots, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)
1/4 teaspoon aleppo or chile flakes
1 cup pure pumpkin puree (or squash or sweet potato puree)
2 healthy pinches kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup walnuts, finely chopped
1 egg
1 teaspoon water
flaky sea salt or finely shredded parmesan, for sprinkling
Directions:
Prepare the dough. Cut the butter and cream cheese into tablespoon-sized pats and let soften for 10-15 minutes. Pulse the flour and salt in the food processor, and then add the semi-softened butter and cream cheese and pulse several times, until the mixture has formed large crumbly chunks (this can also be done very easily with a pastry knife, if you've got a sleeping baby and don't want to use the food processor). Gather the dough together into two large balls, flatten into disks and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for two hours or up to overnight.
While the dough is chilling, prepare the filling. Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat until shimmery. Toss in the chopped shallots, sage, and aleppo and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the pumpkin puree and cook for 5 minutes more, to help evaporate some of the water in the pumpkin. Season with two healthy pinches of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Remove from the heat to cool down (the filling should not be hot when you spread it on the dough).
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. When the dough has chilled, roll each disk into a 12" circle on a well-floured board. Make sure you flour the underside of the dough often, so that it doesn't stick. Spread half of the cooled pumpkin filling onto each disk, and then distribute half of the finely chopped walnuts over each disk. Using a bench scraper (or knife, or pizza cutter), cut the dough into 16 triangles. Roll up each triangle, starting from the base, to form a crescent, and place on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.
Beat the egg with a teaspoon of water and brush lightly onto the rugelach. Top each rugelach with flaky sea salt or finely grated parmesan (I prefer the sea salt, my husband prefers parmesan, so I make half of each kind). Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve warm, if possible.
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