Cornish Pasties

Ingredients

• 500 g wheat flour
• 130 g butter, cold and cut into small cubes
• 130 g lard, cold and cut into small cubes
• 1½ tsp salt
• 1½ dl water, ice cold
• 400 g stewing beef, cut into 5 mm dice
• 300 g potato, peeled and cut into 3 mm slices
• 150 g turnip, peeled and cut into 5 mm dice
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1½ tsp black pepper, coarsely ground
• 1 egg, beaten

Method

1. 1.

   Make the pastry — Rub the butter and lard into the flour with 1 tsp of the salt until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs with a few pea-sized flecks of fat left visible. Add the ice-cold water a little at a time and bring it together into a firm, smooth dough — press it, do not knead it.

2. 2.

   Chill the dough — Wrap the dough and chill it for 30 minutes. This pastry has to be firm enough to hold a heavy raw filling for an hour in the oven without tearing, which soft, warm dough will not do.

3. 3.

   Mix the raw filling — Toss the beef, potato, turnip and onion together in a bowl with the remaining salt and all of the pepper. It should look aggressively peppered — the filling goes in raw and seasons itself as it steams inside the pastry.

4. 4.

   Roll and fill the rounds — Divide the dough into four and roll each piece into a round of about 20 cm and 4 mm thick. Pile a quarter of the filling over one half of each round, leaving a clear 2 cm border, and brush that border with beaten egg.

5. 5.

   Seal and crimp the edge — Fold the pastry over, press out the trapped air and seal the edge. Crimp it into a rope by folding the corner over and pressing it down with your thumb, working along the whole seam. Brush the pasties all over with egg and cut one small slit in the top of each.

6. 6.

   Start hot to set the crust — Bake at 200°C for 15 minutes on a tray in the middle of the oven, to set the pastry and start its colour before the filling begins to release steam.

7. 7.

   Bake low and rest — Drop the oven to 165°C and bake for a further 45 minutes, until the pastry is deep gold and a thin skewer pushed through the slit meets no resistance from the beef or the turnip. Rest for 15 minutes before eating — straight out of the oven the filling is molten.