Food in pasty form is a favourite with the boys in this household. Its versatile enough to be eaten with veggie for dinner, with baked beans for lunch, or as a snack….. or even on a picnic.

When MrC makes any sort of meat filled pasty he tends to make a couple of trays worth, which when cooled, fit brilliantly in the tins I saved after christmas (roses and quality street tins, infinitely useful). They keep really well when I hide them when not being gobbled and make great in between lunch and dinner snacks on school days (its a big gap between school lunch at school and a 6/7pm dinner).

The fact that we can batch make these, store them and they taste great  hot, cold or reheated makes them a true wartime convenience food.

Ingredients

For the filling:

Bacon (the cheapest packet you can get your hands on), chopped finely

2 Leeks or 2 small onions, diced

1 Large potato (we used a baking potato), diced and cooked

2 carrots, diced and cooked

Half a stock cube (beef preferably although chicken or veg is good)

1 tsp gravy browning

Lard or a little bit of oil for frying

For the Pastry:

200g plain flour

70g Margarine

30g Lard

Water to mix to make into a dough

Method

Fry your bacon than add your leeks (or onion) until soft

Add the cooked and diced potatoes and carrots and stir

Simmer for 5 minutes then add the half stock cube and gravy browning

mix well adding a little water only if it gets too sticky

Leave to cool

DO NOT PUT HOT INGREDIENTS INTO PASTRY!!!

For the pastry:

Add all ingredients into a large bowl EXCEPT THE WATER

Using a knife, chop up and mix the fats with the flour or use fingers to rub the fats into the flour

Add small amounts of water at a time while mixing together with the knife

Continue until you get a soft dough, the less handling the better or your pastry will dry out when cooking

Remove from bowl and roll out to desired thickness on a well floured surface

Now cut our your shapes… we used 3 inch round shapes (from a big mug) and after filling them with a tablespoon of the filling, folded them over like pasties. The more traditional turn over was a square (with filling in the centre ) with the corners folded inwards slightly overlapping… like a parcel.

Place the turnovers o a grease proof tray (greased or grease proof paper… we use margarine) and pop in the oven on Gas mark 5 for 20 to 25 minutes or until the pastry turns a nice even colour.

/// a note on the lard to margarine proportions…. this is how we do it, but obviously you can change the %’s of either. If you add more margarine than Lard you will get a flakey pastry.///