in honor of southern food heritage day we visited with a local chef and had her teach us how to whip up something easy and delicious in the kitchen. some would say she was killin’ it.

mary ergul is a student at the university of georgia and a master in the kitchen who almost made it onto the tv show master chef… casual, we know. the first thing mary said to us was “beauty encourages productivity.” we couldn’t agree more. when the things around us are beautiful it certainly encourages us to do life better.

thawing out the puff pastry is the most tedious part, it will take about 10 minutes so take it out before you get all of your ingredients out and you’ll be in good shape.

once your puff pastry is thawed separate them into squares and put a dollop of fig jam on them (yes, “dollop” is a technical measurement here in the south) and a one inch square of brie, sprinkle a spring of rosemary on top. mary was just as entertaining as she was informative. “and then the jam sometimes oozes out and it’s sexy” she said as she folded the puff pastries over into triangles.

if you’ve watched enough food network you know what’s next, brush the puff pastries with egg wash for that pretty golden color and then if you wanna get real fancy throw some vanilla bean sea salt over the top of them, mary did warn us that it’s pricey, but worth it. 

et voilà! throw them in the oven at 425 for 5-7 minutes and then take a peek through the oven window, once your pastries have puffed bump the temperature down to 375.

the beauty of this recipe is you can switch ingredients out, if you don’t care for fig jam (although you should, it’s quite tasty) you could use 1-2 blackberries and instead of brie, gouda is an easy replacement. bon appétit!