I grew up eating these babies in my home country of Venezuela. The traditional ones aren't vegan, as they use ricotta cheese to make the filling, but I could not let you continue living your life without getting a little taste of this South American treat.
Traditionally, people have them for breakfast with a latte or even chocolate milk. They are flaky, soft, pillowy, and so full of flavor. In today's video, which we created specially for our friends at Vegan Outreach, one of our favorite non-profits EVER, you'll learn how to make the perfect tofu ricotta, which can also be used to stuff shells, manicotti, as a filling for lasagna, or even eaten as is or in a wrap or sandwich.
You'll need some store-bought puff pastry, but as luck will have it, the majority of store-bought puff pastry sheets are vegan by default, just check the ingredients to make sure.
We're about to head right into making these beauties, but don't forget to check out the super cool content over at Vegan Outreach as well, we've created many videos for them which you can find in their blog and youtube channel, they offer great vegan guides, mentoring programs and so much more. All under the watchful eye of vegan dietitian nutritionist Jack Norris, one of the top professionals in the field. So yeah... we're fans! What can I tell you?!
Now on with the show! Enjoy the recipe, printable and video below and go make some Venezuelan "pastelitos de ricotta y espinaca" (aka, our vegan spinach and tofu ricotta puff pastries!)
SPINACH AND TOFU RICOTTA PUFF PASTRIES
Venezuelan "Pastelitos"
Yield: 4-6 pastries ⎮ Prep time: 25 minutes ⎮ Cook time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
- 4 cups spinach
- 1 package extra firm tofu, crumbled
- 1 shallot, finely diced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice and some of the zest
- 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
- 2 tablespoons tahini (sesame seed paste)
- 2 sheets puff pastry (about 500gr total)
Directions
- Pre-heat the oven to 425ºF (220ºC).
- Steam the spinach in a steamer basket for 5 minutes or until wilted.
- Place it in a colander and once it’s cool enough to handle squeeze as much liquid out of it as you can. Set it aside.
- In a bowl combine the crumbled tofu, shallot, garlic, onion powder, salt, lemon juice and zest, nutritional yeast and the tahini. Toss until well combined.
- Chop the squeezed spinach and add it to the tofu mixture. Toss again until everything is well combined.
- Set your sheets of puff pastry on top of some parchment paper and roll them out with a rolling pin if they’re too thick, until you reach the approximate thickness shown in the video. Trim the edges to form a square and cut it on the diagonal to form two triangles. You can cut it into smaller sections too if you want to make smaller puffs.
- Add some of the filling to one side of each triangle, fold the puff pastry to cover the filling, pressing the edges and folding them slightly to create a seal. Repeat until you’ve made all your puffs.
- Cut some slits with a knife on the top of each puff to let steam escape and place them on a shallow parchment lined baking sheet.
- Cover with foil and bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes.
- Remove the foil and bake for 5-10 minutes or until lightly golden. Enjoy!
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