As you may know I am a real sucker when it comes to cheese-sweet-fruit-sauce-combination. A nice little cheese plate on a friday night when I had been to weekly farmers market, some slices of baguette or fresh ciabatta, this quince mustard sauce or this roasted damson sauce, a good glass of wine – let the weekend begin!
No wonder, I immediately fell in love with these cheesy filo pastries that are dipped into sweet-tart fig chutney, although I made some alterations to the original recipe I found in the LECKER magazine 12/13.
I swapped the goat cream cheese for a more flavour intense, aged creamy goat cheese I had just bought at my favourite cheese maker/seller on the market. I also gave it some fresh spinach as companion to get wrapped into the crisp filo pastry.
The recipe itself really isn’t difficult to make. Obviously it takes a bit of time to roll up the triangles, but that’s about the main work. If you can arrange it, I would suggest to make the chutney ahead so that it is at room temperature when you dip the cheese bites into it.
And so once again the filled bags from the farmers market made our friday night dinner – crips pastry filled with creamy cheese and spinach paired with this sweet fig chutney.
This is coziness!
On the picture above you can see how I folded the pastries up into nice little triangles. You can also have a look at the infographic here.
Cheesy filo triangles with fig chutney (makes 20 triangles)
[adapted from LECKER magazine 12/13]
ingredients
10 sheets filo pastry (30 x 30 cm, 250 g), 180 g fresh spinach (or 100 g cooked), 150 g creamy goat cheese (preferably aged), 1 garlic clove, salt and pepper
1 onion, 100 g dried figs, 1 orange, 50 ml white wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, salt, pepper
olive oil
preparation
– for the chutney
Squeeze orange. Dice onion and dried figs. Heat 1 teaspoon of olive oil in a pan, sautée onions over medium heat for 4-5 minutes. Add figs and sautée for another 2 minutes. Stir in brown sugar and let caramelize. Deglaze with orange juice and vinegar. Over low heat simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside and let cool out. Season with salt and pepper.
– for the cheesy triangles
Wash and roughly chop spinach. Dice garlic. Heat 1 teaspoon olive oil in a pan, add garlic and spinach. Sautée for 2 minutes until spinach has lost its water. Add salt and pepper. Set aside.
*Place one sheet of filo pastry on your working surface. Brush or spray with olive oil. Cover with second sheet of pastry. Now cut into 4 stripes, equal in size. Place a small portion of goat cheese and spinach at one end of one pastry stripe. Fold up into a triangle (see on the picture). Seel the end with some water. Now repeat this step with the remaining 3 stripes, the whole process (starting here *) with the remaining 8 sheets of filo – you’ll end up with 5 x 4 = 20 triangles (This may help you for portioning cheese and spinach.)
Place all triangles on a lined baking sheet. Brush or spray with olive oil from both sides. Bake for 10-12 minutes in the preheated oven at 180°C.
Serve warm or cold with fig chutney.
nadel&gabel 
I like the sound of the fig chutney! It would be dreamy with ripe goat cheese. Bookmarked for that bag of dried figs in the cupboard.
Of course you don’t have to bother wrapping the cheese into pastry – the chutney will be equally great with the cheese for itself.