Savoury flaky pasties
driving home this afternoon I caught a bit of Radio4s Food Programme about pasties and couldn’t resist cooking some up this evening. I’ve spent a week in Minsk with work and one of the things I’ve really enjoyed (and that reminded me of eating in Czech Republic in the late 90s) was the use of cumin, so I decided to break it out tonight.
I made up a simple vegetarian filling and then filled parcels with either chorizo or cumin and lemon peel. Premade pastry made this a doddle.
To make all the fine dicing easier I’ve been using my mandolin a lot more, piling up a thin slices and then dicing them.
You will need
- A couple of potatoes, finely diced
- An onion, finely diced
- Half a leek, finely sliced (green and white parts)
- A couple of carrots, finely diced
- A couple of big green cabbage leaves, finely sliced
- A pack of pre-made made puff pastry
- A handful of chorizo finely diced
- A heaped teaspoon of cumin seeds
- The zest of half a lemon
- An egg, beaten
- Salt and pepper
Do
- Stick the oven on 180oC
- Mix all the filling ingredients and pop them in the microwave for 5 mins until they’re softened
- Slice the pasty into even squares (in my case this was 6)
- Press cumin seeds into one half of the squares
- Pile chorizo into the middle of the others
- Add a spoonful of missing to every square
- Add lemon zest on top of the cumin ones, salt and pepper on all
- Brush egg round 2 sides of every square
- Fold each in half, nipping the edges together. Any filling will stop the crimp
- Brush the outsides with egg
- Bake on a sheet for around 20 minutes or until they are puffed and golden
Result
