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Hot Water Pastry

Hot Water Pastry

About 8 years ago I helped out at a butchers in Selby and apart from learning to link Sausages by the mile and some basic butchery skills, I also anded up manning the Pie oven. Initially they were buying their Pork Pies ready filled and just cooking them. I suggested we get a casing former from Dalziels (A national Butchers equipment wholesaler) and make our own. After a few experiments we created our own recipe and pretty soon we were selling 120 pies by mid-morning which was the most we could make using the equipment we had.

We developed quite a reputation – In a good way!

Your traditional Pork Pie has a small amount of Sodium Nitrite added to the meal before cooking. This is a curing salt, but in Pork Pies it’s just added to preserve the pink colour in the cooked meat. We don’t (Yet!) have any curing salts, so my filling isn’t the traditional pink colour – Sorry!

But the filling is up to you really. Hot Water Pastry is actually pretty easy once you’ve forgotten everything you previously knew about pasty making….

Ingredients:-

110g of Lard
280g of Water
500g of Plain Flour (Gluten free in our case)
2 tsp salt
Egg, beaten

Method:-

(1) In a pan add the Water, Salt and Lard and bring to a simmer.
(2) Turn the heat off.
(3) Add the Flour a little at a time and mix thoroughly as you go.
(4) Once all the Flour has been combined transfer your still hot dough to a floured surface and roughly roll out.
(5) Add dough to your pie casing and using your hands press into shape.
(6) Add whatever filling you are using allowing a little space around the sides.
(7) make a lib with remaining dough and press a hole through the middle. You can be arty and decorate the lid with additional pastry decorations if you like. Just make sure you use a fork to press the joint firmly together or your lib is likely to come off when you cook your pie.
(8) Brush generously with beaten Egg.
(9) Cook in a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes at 180c. If you have a probe you are looking for an internal temperature of 80c.

My filling was far from traditional, but that’s how we roll here! The Pork mince had sliced pickled Garlic, Chilli flakes and whole grain Mustard added. I also made a Sage and Rosemary Aspic to pour into the hot Pie once it was cooked. When the Pie cools the Aspic sets around the meat. Which is kind of cool!!!
 

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Gluttony Burger

This is more a tale of generosity combined with an excess of food humour and low Vitamin D levels! Not a recipe as such.

The generosity element is derived from a large tray of products we were given and which has kept us in high quality Meat, Fish and Cheese for the best part of this month. We generally try to give more than we take however we have several friends who are connected with various Food Banks. Sometimes we are offered vegetables and bread which is well past its use by date and is destined for composting. If we can salvage it we are always grateful. But this was something a bit different for us. When items which need refrigeration are donated to Food Banks they can present problems. When things like Veal, Venison, Aberdeen Angus Beef, Sea Bass and high quality Cheese are donated they really do create issues. Much appreciated as I’m sure they were. Dried and ambient produce is much easier for them to store and distribute. So when a friend offered us a green catering crate of goodies we were extremely grateful.  The food humour element and Vitamin D levels refer to our best solution to the winter blues. Laughter is the best cure and the enjoyment of cooking together is at least 50% of the benefit of a good meat!

So let’s not be too wordy here. When we ran the Bistro Sue’s hand pressed Bistro Burgers were a major part of the menu and people travelled considerable distances to try our rotating specials. We had a pack of Aberdeen Angus minced Beef in the goodie tray and time on our hands.

Ingredients:-

Gluten free bread bun which was the frozen result of a Tony error and was initially supposed to be a Pizza base!
Home Made Marie Rose Sauce.
Hand cut Salad.
4 Hand pressed Burgers.
Sliced Gherkins.
4 Eggs
4 rashers of Bacon.
Chilli Cheese slices.
1 Polish Smoked Sausage.
1 Large white Onion (For Onion Rings)

Method:-

(1) Wing it.
(2) Laugh a lot.
(3) Enjoy over 2 days!

Joking aside the assembly of the various layers in your burger really are up to you. But that monstrosity you see on the top was part of the joke. “Shall I batter the last Polish Sausage and use it as a centre for the Onion Rings?” - Is the sort of conversation only we have in the kitchen I guess?

Although this truly was a “Gluttony Burger“ all we actually bought specifically for it were the Cheese Slices, A Cannonball Onion and a Tomato. So technically we did shoehorn this into our budget!!!!!

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