Recipe : Quick Cheese Straws

I must declare that I have a more than passing affection for party food, and Cheese Straws are right up there with my favourites.  I've always bought them before, but we had friends coming for dinner and drinks so I thought I'd try and make some.  There's oodles of recipes out there requiring you to make your own pastry (sigh), but I found this fabulously easy one that uses store bought puff pastry - yippee!

Store bought puff is easy to keep in the fridge and cheap to buy.  I pimped it out a bit by grinding some cracked pepper and dried chilli on top of the cheese before I folded it, and that just added to the yumminess.  Just warning you that these are scrumptious, but even better when they're fresh and warm out of the oven, they've very hard to stop eating once you start.  Okay, let's cook, as usual my notes are in italics.

Quick Cheese Straws

• 350g ready rolled puff pastry
• 4 handfuls of grated parmesan (I used less)
• Handful of flour to roll pastry on
• Cracked pepper/dried chilli if you wish

1. Heat oven to 220c
2. Unroll puff pastry
3. Scatter over a couple of handfuls of grated Parmesan and fold in half (I ground cracked pepper and dried chilli over the top of the cheese, and then pressed it all down a bit into the pastry with my hands before folding it over)
4. On a lightly floured surface roll out to the thickness of a one pound coin (any fat coin will do)
5. My puff pastry came rolled up in non-stick paper so I did everything on that paper, I didn't use a floured surface (much less mess!)
6. Cut into 1cm strips, then twist each strip 3-4 times
7. Lay on a baking sheet and scatter over more cheese
8. Bake for 12 minutes, or until golden
9. Eat one, burn your mouth, eat another one, and then maybe another one ...