This quick recipe from last weekend was the outcome of a reduced-to-clear packet of ready made pastry from the supermarket and the results of a thought process that started with a ‘how hard could be it?’. Pasties make for good, portable food and haev a tradition stretching back many years. You can stick just about anything inside, but this one is a fairy simple yet still acceptable variant on cheese and onion.

Ingredients

Makes 2

Half a packet of ready made pastry
2 or 3 new potatoes
3 big or 4 medium shallots
100g mature cheddar
half a teaspoon smoked paprika
a medium egg

Cheese and Onion Pasty Ingredients

Method

Boil the potatoes for about 7 minutes, or until they’re just tender all the way through, but not falling apart

Whilst they’re cooking, finely slice the shallots and start to gently sweat them off in a bit of olive oil or butter.

Chop up the cheese into thin slices

Split the pastry into two, and roll out into circles about 5mm thick. Not too thin, so that it can support its own weight when holding in your hands but not so thick you can’t fit any filling in.

When the potatoes are cooked, drain and leave them to cool, then slice them thinly.

Cheese and Onion Pasty Assembling

Build up the filling in the middle, piling up the layers to get as much filling and as little air in as you can. Add a pinch of paprika on top to give a little colour.

The final step is where the controversy begins, how one folds and crimps one’s pasty is akin to how one wears one’s baseball cap. Allegedly.

I went for the fold it over horizontally and then crimp from the edges back towards the filling approach. Others heavily favour the fold both edges towards the middle and crimp across the top.

Cheese and Onion Pasty Sealed

Thoroughly beat the egg and use a pastry brush to coat the topside of the pasty, including sealing the crimp. This also helps give a nice golden finish.

Bake in a moderate oven for about 25 minutes

I found a handful of good youtube videos showing how to do the traditional Cornish Rope ranging from expert presenters in their own kitchens to a commercial scale piece. You’ll just have to use your imagination for how I did mine (it’s the same, but on its side)

Mine turned out perfectly edible both fresh from the oven and cold for lunch the following day, but this recipe breaks from my tradition in that the readymade shortcrust pastry isn’t as good as properly home made lard pasty pastry for holding its own weight and texture.

Cheese and Onion Pasty

About 4 minutes into this video is a good close up of the process:

Parathas are a unleavened Indian flat bread that are pan fried rather than baked. This recipe is a fun way of preparing a Paratha that’s similar in a number of ways to puff pastry and can be made nice and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, perfect for scooping up a juicy curry. The base recipe is from the Hairy Bikers, but I’ve fiddled with it a bit to make it more interesting (and also because I just cannot leave well alone..). I might try adding a few toasted coriander or yellow mustard seeds next time instead of the cumin seeds. Don’t use ground cumin, it would just get lost in the bread.

Ingredients

Makes 4

250g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 beaten egg
2 tablespoons of sour cream or creme fraiche or yoghurt or something
140ish ml milk
1 heaped tablespoon of cumin seeds
50g melted butter

Method

Mix up the ingredients apart from the butter into a thick dough and knead it for a minute or so until it’s nice and smooth. Don’t add all the milk at once, add it slowly until you get a nice workable consistency. It should not be sticky.

Cover and put it in the fridge for half an hour to rest.

Break the dough up into four and roll it out thinly

Rolled out

Now for the sticky part, brush a very thin layer of melted butter over the top of the dough and concertina it up so that it looks like a fan. Curl the edges of the fan round so that it forms a circle.

Folder and curled up

Roll it out again until it’s quite thin. Thinner than we managed.

Ready to cook

It should just about fill a frying pan, but still be thicker than a pancake. Give it about 1 to 1.5 minutes on each side until it’s golden and crispy. Don’t cook it so quickly that the outside burns and the inside’s still raw though.

Parathas

For a taste of the festive, I’ve been baking these muffins. They’re a step beyond the usual and, if you catch them at just the right time are gooey and delightful. Black Forest Gateaux are supposed to be the essence of summertime in a cherry orchard, with fresh cream of course, but these work well in the cold months too.

First Google yourself the double chocolate muffin recipe of your choice. Mine isn’t quite my own yet, so I can’t republish it here just now.

Prepare a thick cherry syrup mix with cherries, sugar and a teaspoon of kirsch or rum if you’ve got some. You don’t need much, 1 or 2 cherries per muffin and a teaspoon of syrup is plenty. Or just open a tin of ready made cherry pie filling (it was half price and just leapt into my shopping basket…).

Black Forest Muffins In Progress

Once you’ve made up the muffin batter, put two large tablespoons into a muffin casing and make a well in the centre (a pair of chopsticks works well for this). Into the well, place one or two cherries and a teaspoon of the syrup, then cap it by placing another tablespoon of muffin batter on top. Repeat.

Black Forest Muffins

Bake in a medium oven for 15-18 minutes, leave to rest for 3-5 minutes depending upon willpower and then serve slightly broken open with the cream of your choice. Whipped cream would be traditional, I would go for either clotted cream or creme fraiche.

Finished muffins