On the 4th Day of Christmas, the Recipe Diva made for me...

Goat Cheese & Chorizo Rolls

Like yesterday, I decided to experiment with another frozen pastry dough; however, phyllo dough is not NEARLY as easy to work with as puff pastry.  It's very delicate and dries out rather quickly.  You need to keep it covered with a damp tea towel or paper towels while working. I thought I did at good job of this but still managed to waste quite a few sheets that were too dry to work with and breaking very easily.

I was inspired by a recipe a saw in a magazine and thought I would make a very 'Christmas-y' snack by using red, green and white for my filling - red: chorizo, green: chives, white: goat cheese.  Good in theory but like I said, this was filling... it tasted great but obviously no one noticed my brilliant use of Christmas colors.

You can play around with your own combinations and ingredients, but here's what I put together using packaged dried chorizo, goat cheese, fresh chives, thawed phyllo dough and some melted butter: 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  For my filling, I started by finely chopping dried chorizo (you can find it in the deli near the cheeses), that is until my common sense got the better of me and I threw it in the food processor - it sometimes makes an appearance on a rare occasion, my common sense that is... the food processor probably comes out more often.

Mix the finely chopped chorizo with goat cheese, chopped chives and freshly ground pepper - no need to add salt as the chorizo is quite salty.

Using thawed phyllo dough, lay out sheet of dough on your dry surfact and lightly brush with butter.  Lay second sheet on top and do the same.  Lay third sheet on top.  Cut in half lengthwise then into thirds to create 6 rectangles.  Place about a tablespoon of filling at top of each rectangle and roll, folding sides in as you go.  Place seam side down on a cookie sheet.

Brush rolls with butter and bake for about 20 minutes or until dough is golden and cripsy.  The tart goat cheese and smoky, spicy chorizo work perfectly together and the chives give that hint of freshness. 

I can see myself wanting to make these rolls again as they turned out delicious but next time I may try making one large log and slicing into rounds as rolling each of these ending up being quite time consuming. It will probably make for nicer presentation as well!

Not that it really gets any better than throwing them on a plastic tray shaped like a Christmas tree.