27 December 2005

And now the fun begins

Thank goodness for leftovers...and generous parents :)

Spent part of yesterday making turkey pot pies from the uneaten bits of Christmas Dinner. I declared 2005 "The Year of the Tart" and I was bound and determined to make a decent pastry. Well...I'm better than I was a year ago, but I still need more practise--don't have a food processor, so its all done by hand--I simply have to keep in mind that I'm not making bread dough (grin).

The pastry is a basic short crust--for eight "medium" meat pie tins: 600g pastry flour, 200g shortening, 100g butter and iced water. The filling was a combination of turkey, veg, gravy and a spoon of cranberry sauce in each pie. Brush the tops with beaten egg and bake at 350 until done.


I still have more turkey meat around...should get back at it...

cheers!
jasmine

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought I was the only food blogger missing the pastrymaking gene! I have vowed that I WILL learn to make edible pastry in 2006, so knowing that 2005 was your Year of the Tart is inspirational. The potpies look great, and I'm sure they taste totally yummy ... although I can't hear "potpie" without imagining South Park's Cartman shrieking "No, kitty, that's MY potpie!" :-D

jasmine said...

Hi Tania

Mum *hates* shortcrust pastry and always does a graham-type crust or a brown-betty kinda thing...so I never learned how to make pie pastry.

I've made pot pies, a caramel-apple, a lemon meringue a key-lime and a mushroom-spinach puff pastry tart (puff pastry courtesy of President's Choice)...

Between my friends Jen and Alison I've sorta figured things out.

If I may suggest something, get a copy of Tamasin Day-Lewis's _Tarts With Tops On_. It has a bunch of different pie recipes along with various crust types.

Happy baking!
j

Anonymous said...

I swear to God, I am gaining weight just reading about those. Mmmmmmmm.

Btw, just count yourself fortunate you can bake bread. Mine is always stupidly dense.