Back with Pasties!
I was really in the mood to cook something cool today, but having baked sweet stuff on the last few weekends I thought it was time to bake something for our tea. I started off with a basic savoury pastry – simply plain flour with half the quantity of butter mixed in the food processor until it created crumbs. Next I added a pinch of salt and a couple of teaspoons of water until the dough started to come together slightly. From here I was able to press it together with my hands into a smooth ball, which I put in the fridge while I prepared the filling.
We have tonnes of veg in at the moment, so I was spoiled for choice as to what to fill my pasties with. I finely chopped or diced 2 onions, 3 cloves of garlic, two small potatoes, a small courgette, half a carrot and began softening them off in a frying pan with a teaspoon of oil. Once they had softened I added a handful of roughly chopped savoy cabbage. To make them a bit ‘saucier’ (again, not in a nipple way) I threw in a splash of passata, half a stock cube, a splash of boiling water, some dried herbs and a good pinch of salt. When this had reduced and thickened, I took it all off the heat and stirred in a dollop of soft cheese and a dollop of chunky hummus – because that’s what I happened to have in!
I rolled out the pastry and cut it out using a side plate. Turned out that 300g flour and 150g butter in the pastry made 4 circles, with a little left over for making poncy leaf shapes for decorating the top. I put a large spoonful of the mixture on one half of each circle, folded the top over and used my fingers to crimp round the sides. Turned out my nails are a bit too long to crimp properly without scratching the pastry so it was a bit of a half arsed job!!
While they were baking for about 25 mins on 180’C in the oven, I prepared some veg and some cauliflower, carrot and potato mash. This was also an interesting experiment. I make vegetable mash a lot, but not tried it with cauliflower before. The results were a big thumbs up all round and with all the veg either having come from the market for £1 for a big bowl, or reduced from the supermarket, it didn’t break the bank either! I was really happy with the taste of the filling too. The hummus was a bit of a gamble, but definitely worth a go. It kept everything lovely and moist too.