Back with Pasties!

I’ve had to have a bit of a break from the old blog, but I’ve decided the time is ripe to return. So I thought I’d say *hello* with pasties. This is clearly a good point to confirm that this is not the olde traditional aniseed booze, pastis, or indeed the circular glittery oojits that one sticks over ones nips, although they are also spelled pasties. I mean the good, filling something baked in pastry, pasty.

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.