I have been fascinated by English pasties since I used to this show called "Two Fat Ladies". The show not only fascinated me about English food which I quite frankly thought was pretty plain before but also with traveling all over England/Ireland, their history, culture and food. And the ladies are super entertaining!
So on a very busy day like today when I get home and just want to plunk and do nothing, I was delighted to find some pasties I had made in the freezer. Oh yeah! They freeze well. Pop in the oven for about 20 mins and done.
I had made them last month when we had some out of town visitors and we went out to eat at an Irish pub and they were equally fascinated with pasties AND they had recently visited England. Did I really need a bigger sign than that? Oh if you are into Asian culture at all, it was fate! (More on that some other time!)
So what did I do? My usual... A little bit of this and little bit of that. Here are the details.
Pie dough: on yeah your basic pie dough or empanada dough recipe. I like the recipe found in Epicurious here.
Filling: I decided to make it with turkey so 1 lb gd turkey, 1 medium onion diced, 1 large or 2 medium carrots -diced, 1 small potato diced, seasonings (I used worcestershire sauce - wor. sauce, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper and some brown roux that I froze but feel free to add flour).
What I did?
In a pan add a little oil, sauté onion till translucent, add garlic and potatoes. Cook for about 5 min and add carrots, thyme and some salt and pepper. Cook veggies until a little tender and add meat. Break it up with you spoon and mix until there aren't any big chunks. Add wor. sauce, salt and pepper. Let the water dry from the turkey and to help with this add Roux or flour. Cook until water dries and it's done. Let it cool.
To make the pasties: Roll dough, add filling and crimp the edges. Make some small incisions and bake for 25 minutes until golden brown. Enjoy! Yumm...
