Savoury strudel with pumpkin, speck and cheese

Sometimes we don’t even use words most of the time.
Sometimes a scent just speaks louder than a word.
And it tells you there’s someone that cannot wait you come home.

There is the puff pastry, there is the melted butter fragrance, crispy and warm.
There is a linen table cloth, fresh roses in a pot. There is a Yankee candle burning, fluffy towels scented – and only Mike Kitteredge could invent it.

There is the gift of a special person. Half pumpkin and the oven switched on.
There is the magic of a dinner made with love, the magic of perfumes. There is an homemade savoury strudel.

Savoury strudel with spek, pumpkin and cheese – the recipe

INGREDIENTS

• 250 grams of puff pastry
• 100 grams of speck ham
• 200 grams of Scamorza cheese
• 150 grams of cream cheese
• Pumpkin q.b.
• Extra virgin olive oil, salt and black pepper q.s.
• Egg q.s.
• Seeds q.b. (I used sesame, poppy and sunflower)

While tasting listen: The sun smells too loud, Mogwai

PROCESS

1. Slice the pumpkin, remove the peel and place on a baking tray lined with oven paper.
2. Drizzle with oil, salt and black pepper. Bake at 180° C for a quarter of an hour (or, however, until the pumpkin become golden).
3. Take a frying pan and cover it with the baking paper. Pour the puff pastry and spread over it the cream cheese (leaving 1 cm free per side). Now lay on a the speck ham.
4. So is the time of Scamorza cheese, cut it to thin slices. So, add also the roasted pumpkin.
5. Close the strudel giving it its typical shape.
6. With a knife, gently make small diagonal engravings – but without punch the pastry.
7. Beat the egg slightly and sprinkle the surface of the savoury strudel. Now scatter the seeds.
8. Bake at 180° C for about twenty minutes or, however, until golden.
9. The savoury strudel with speck, pumpkin and cheese is ready, smell and eat it.

Ph. Sara Cartelli
© The Eat Culture