CookEat Recipe
Fried Pastry Parcels with Fruit Mostarda
Thin paired pastry discs filled with thick Italian fruit mostarda, fried and dusted with sugar.
Method
Steps
Step 1
Gather the ingredients: 220 g plain wheat flour, plus a little for dusting; 30 g butter; A pinch of salt; About 100–120 ml milk, adjusted as needed; About 250 g thick Romagna-style fruit mostarda suitable for pastry filling, or the homemade version below; not ordinary table mustard; About 600 ml suitable frying oil, or enough for the chosen pan; only part is absorbed; About 2 tablespoons sugar for dusting.
Step 2
Mix the flour, butter and salt, adding the milk gradually to make a rather soft but rollable dough. Start with about 90 ml and add more as needed. Knead thoroughly by hand until smooth, about 8–10 minutes. Cover and refrigerate for a 30-minute rest.
Step 3
Roll on a lightly floured surface to about 1.5–2 mm thick. Cut matching scalloped discs with a small cutter, about 5–6 cm across. The source gives 80 discs making 40 filled pieces as an example, not a guaranteed yield.
Step 4
Put a small amount of thick fruit mostarda in the centre of half the discs. Moisten their borders with water, cover with the remaining discs and seal carefully, keeping the filling away from the edges. If the fruit preserve contains large pieces, chop them small before filling.
Step 5
Heat the frying oil to about 170°C in a suitable deep pan, leaving plenty of headroom. Fry in small batches for about 3–5 minutes, turning, until the pastry is fully cooked and golden and the filling is hot. Drain and dust with sugar before serving. The fruit filling should stay sealed inside rather than leaking into the oil.
Step 6
For the homemade alternative from recipe 788, use this quarter-size batch: 500 g sweet white grapes, 250 g peeled cored firm apples, half a large peeled cored pear, 60 g vin santo or white wine, 30 g finely chopped candied citron peel, 10 g food-grade white mustard powder and a very light pinch of ground cinnamon. This makes more filling than the parcels may need. The original also permits one-third black and two-thirds white grapes.
Step 7
Wash the grapes, crush and press them immediately, then strain the juice. This adaptation omits the historical 1–2 day spontaneous fermentation. Thinly slice the apples and pear and simmer with the 60 g wine until absorbed, then add the fresh grape juice. Bring to a boil and simmer, stirring frequently, until the fruit is broken down and the mixture is thicker than a usual fruit preserve, about 45–75 minutes; the time depends on the fruit and juice yield.
Step 8
Cool the cooked fruit promptly in a shallow container. Mix the mustard powder with a little additional hot wine, about 1 tablespoon, then stir it and the chopped candied citron into the cooled fruit. Add the light pinch of cinnamon at the surface if storing the extra mixture, as in the source; it is a flavouring, not a preservation treatment. Refrigerate covered at 4°C or colder and use within 2–3 days. This is a refrigerated cooked fruit filling, not a tested shelf-stable preserve. Use about 250 g of the cooled thick mixture for the parcels and allow roughly 90–120 extra minutes to make and cool it.
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