Paneer and Onion Masala Rolls!

It's been a while... but I'm back now!

Once again I've found myself pretty burnt out. Usually I'd just dedicate some time to my favourite hobbies (baking and reading!) to make myself feel better. However, I've been finding myself too tired to focus on either at the minute. 

The burnout has clearly had an impact on my baking (see my Peach Bellini Cake failure, which I'm attributing to the burnout!). However, with a long weekend last weekend and four days of annual leave to look forward to next week, I can feel the brain fog lifting.

I needed a bake that was challenging enough to refocus my efforts but not too challenging as to put myself off. Enter then these Paneer and Onion Masala Rolls, courtesy of Chetna Makan's 30 Minute Indian! 

You've gotta respect the swirl!

These rolls consist of homemade puff pastry with two filings; a peanut and coriander chutney, and a paneer and red onion mixture. 

Chetna calls for the use of ready-rolled shop-bought puff pastry, however I decided that preparing my own puff pastry would be the suitable challenge I needed! To start with flour, a little salt and water are gently combined until a dough forms. The dough is left to chill, then rolled out into a rectangle. Chilled butter is then gently flattened and rolled out to the size of a postcode, and placed into the centre of the dough. 

Packed full of filling yet still 
holding its shape, amazing! 

Both sides of the pastry are folded across the butter to seal it in. To create the layers, the dough is folded like a book, rolled out, and the book fold is repeated. The dough is chilled for 20 minutes, before the rolling, folding twice, and chilling steps are repeating at least twice more. The pastry is then left to chill for an hour before using, giving me plenty of time to prepare the fillings. In the past, I've fallen foul of warm butter; if you don't chill the pastry properly the butter in between the layers will begin to melt, and the layers are more likely to tear, leading to leakage during the bake.   

Whilst preparing the puff pastry is somewhat time consuming, and rather challenging, the fillings couldn't have been easier to make. For the peanut and coriander chutney, dry roasted peanuts, green chillies, onion, garlic, mint, coriander, sugar, salt and water are added to a food processor (ideally I would have used my stick blender but I broke it last week!) and blitzed to a smooth chutney. For the second filling, grated paneer, chillies, red onion, amchur (mango powder), salt, chilli powder, and more coriander are mixed in a bowl and set aside until the pastry is chilled. Simples. 

The chutney ready to blend!

With all the components ready to go, it was time to prepare the rolls to bake. The dough is rolled out, spread with both fillings, and rolled into a log. The log is then sliced into the individual rolls before baking! 

It's safe to say I was over the moon with the finished result. The layers, textures and flavours were all amazing, and the rolls looked just like Chetna's did in the book! And during the bake, there was absolutely no butter leakage! 

Admittedly not the most 
uniform! 

These rolls did the trick! My burnout induced baking slump seems to be at an end, and now I have the rest of the weekend to get some more baking done! 

Gibby x