Brie en croute with porcini and thyme

This is lasciviously heavy. But it's easy to prepare and satisfies the most insatiable fat-tooth. If you like sweet stuff, you can replace the porcini/thyme with honey and toasted almonds or dried cherries or et cetera.


Ingredients

• 1 wheel of brie
• 1 sheet of puffed pastry (thawed)
• some porcini (reconstituted if dried; cleaned and chopped if fresh)
• fresh thyme, 1 tsp or to taste
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
  
• one egg, beaten
  

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Wash and stem the thyme and saute it in olive oil with the porcini for a couple of minutes.

Half the brie along the flat side to produce two slabs. Set one slab creamy-side up in the center of the puffed pastry. Place the mushrooms on the brie and close the other slab on top. Fold the puffed pastry around the wheel as decoratively as you can manage. Make sure you don't tear the pastry; otherwise brie will ooze uglily out.

Brushed the outside of the brie-filled pastry wheel with the beaten egg. Transfer the wheel to a cookie sheet or casserole dish or whatever and bake it for 20 minutes at 400ºF. Then turn down the oven to 300ºF and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Serve hot.

I'm not sure how many people this serves. If you try to split the entire wheel between two people, make sure to sleep with the windows open.