Thursday 3 May 2012

Reinventing the Wheel

Rotola di Tortilla con Miele & Pancetta
Apple & Bacon Tortilla Pinwheel


It is amazing how many meals you can create from one bag of tortilla's if you happen to live alone! But this will be the last one for this week... the bag is now officially empty! Although I do have to say... this fun dish is kind-of the grand finale!

I have often read pretentious descriptions of meals, such as the wonderful seafood platter that was, "like a stroll on the beach- you could almost hear the gulls in the distance". Well, then I would describe this as a walk past the pig-pen on the way to steal apples from the neighbor's farm. In Mexico. Yes- that would be it in a nutshell!

As usual- this was very easy to make! The most important part, of course, is the apple and bacon filling- so I started with that first. I had a lovely sweet, but flavorful red delicious- I was very fortunate with it, as we all know how bland they can sometimes be... but you can use any kind of nice and crunchy apples that you prefer. I grated the apple and immediately squeezed a little lemon juice onto it, to prevent it from going brown so quickly. 


I then added a finely chopped Spring onion, a teaspoon of caraway seed, a tablespoon of mustard, a little salt, pepper and grated nutmeg, as hint of cinnamon and little squeeze of honey. I stirred everything together well and set it to one side,

I cut the tortilla into strips of about the width of the height (!) of the dish I was going to use... I hope you follow me! You can see what I mean quite plainly from the photos! I spread the strips of tortilla lightly with mustard and then arranged them in the baking dish in a roughly spiral formation. I then began to spoon the apple and spice mix in-between the layers of tortilla, as evenly as I could... but there is definitely no need to obsess over this!

Once everything is nicely filled, I sprinkled finely diced bacon on top and then squashed everything down gently. This caused the tortillas to soak up any juices that had accumulated so that they would be full of flavor. I baked it in a pre-heated oven at 350°F or so, for 10 minutes, by which time it was looking pleasantly brown and smelling delicious! I then took it out of the oven and added the tiniest, light drizzle of honey, before returning it and turning on the broiler for 1 minute to give it a beautiful golden color!

I am guessing this would taste perfectly fine cold as well... although it was so delicious there was no chance of any leftovers! I was able to cut the pinwheel into portions to serve it... of course it will not look as pretty for very long... but the flavor will remain the same... and I am pretty sure you will enjoy it!



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