Cheese, Meat & Vegetable Twist

I don't buy or subscribe to very many foodie type magazines. A few years ago I signed up to receive What's Cooking, a free quarterly magazine put out by Kraft Foods. The magazine is wonderful presented with easy recipes using Kraft products. There are a lot of cooking and menu planning tips as well. I will admit to enjoying opening up a foodie magazine and immediately seeing something I want to try making.

The Steps

This recipe was originally called Easy Baked Cheese & Vegetable Twist. The presentation was quite appealing yet looked easy enough to duplicate. I took one look at the recipe then started tweaking changing the filling to include meat. I also wanted something with a bit more flavour which the original recipe didn't have. Here's my version.

Cheese, Meat & Vegetable Twist
modified from: Kraft Foods, What's Cooking. Festive 2009. Pp. 37.

2 cans refrigerated crescent dinner rolls
2 eggs
125 g (4 oz) Philadelphia Herb & Garlic cream cheese spread
2 c broccoli, rough chopped
8 mushrooms, quartered
½ roma tomato, seeded and chopped
1 green onion, sliced
1½ c ground beef, browned

Brown ground beef and drain. Prepare vegetables. Open the crescent rolls, separate and arrange on a baking sheet overlapping to form a circle (1). Mix the rest of the ingredients together then spoon around the centre of the circle (2). I found it worked best to use a large spoon then shape the ring as I went using the other hand. Pull up each triangle point towards the centre and tuck under (3). Continue in this fashion until all points are tucked under (4). Bake at 190ºC/375ºF until golden brown about 35 minutes.

Fresh from Oven

I was a bit surprised to see the ring did not keep its nice round shape but that's ok. Honestly I do have a crooked eye but do still know the difference between a circle and oblong. With a bit of practice I should be able to perfect this. The original recipe showed the finishd twist on a serving wood. This definitely would be a two person endeavour to get the baked ring onto any serving dish without breaking it.

What strikes me about this recipe is you really could use any filling you wanted to as long as the filling isn't runny when hot. It could be a savoury, meat filling as I used, a vegetarian filling or even a sweet, dessert filling. So it is the method and idea that is most important then tailor the filling to what you want.

Plated

Once the twist is cut for plating it really doesn't have the circular shape although there is a slight arc to the pieces. For presentation and serving it would be very nice to present the twist whole as that is when it is most impressive visually. I plated the cut twist very simply with a small garnish. An average serving would be 3 sections depending on the filling. It was quite tasty and very filling. I'm glad I substituted the Philidelphia Herb & Garlic cream cheese spread in place of plain cream cheese as that added a nice flavour element. The real trick is going to be substituting the refrigerator dough. I think puff pastry would be a good substitute so will try that the next time.