Patois Pasties

Despite having had my A&C delivery today we still had half a pack of mince to use up, so I needed to think of something that would use that, and some of the wiltier looking veg, up.
I got the idea for these from the pattie recipe in Levi Root's book Caribbean Food Made Easy, I just made up my own filling. If beef goes in normal Cornish pasties, then why not Jamaican patties too?

 

To make the pastry itself is pretty easy, same as normal pastry but with a heaped teaspoon of turmeric to give it that lovely yellow colour plus a slightly spicy taste. In this case the quantities were 225g plain flour and 115g of cold butter, rubbed into breadcrumbs, brought together with a few tablespoons of water and left in the fridge, wrapped in clingfilm, for about half an hour.

For my filling I wanted to pair the beef with lots of vegetables but, the two things need cooking separately to avoid an unpleasant result of uncooked veg and soggy pastry. The beef went in a pan with a diced onion and a halved scotch bonnet, then once almost fully cooked I threw sliced mushrooms in. I kept it on a high heat to try and remove as much of the moisture as possible.

The veg (green pepper, frozen peas, very finely diced carrots and chopped potato) went into a saucepan of boiling water for several minutes - until edible but not really cooked through.

I mixed the veg and beef mixtures in together, making sure that the veg were very dry beforehand, then mixed in a handful of grated mature cheddar.

Time to roll out the pastry, and I warn you this stuff is a bit hard to work with. The first couple of pasties looked like something the cat hacked up so it takes a few goes; I think this is going to be one of those recipes that you get better with over time.

Anyway, a dollop of filling goes on top of each section, we got six pasties out of it. You definitely can't over pack these, as the pastry seems much less forgiving than normal, and you can't make big pasties either so aim for palm-of-your-hand size.

Give them a coat of beaten egg, stick them in the oven for 25 minutes and tuck in!