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Make these little cheese and onion pasties for a picnic with your family. If you don't want to eat all 12, they can be frozen and cooked right from the freezer.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 4 thyme sprigs, leaves picked
- 2 onions, sliced
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 150g mature cheddar (or a mixture of strong hard cheeses), grated
- 4 spring onions, sliced
- 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
- 250g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- large pinch of cayenne pepper
- 125g cold butter
- ½ tsp English mustard powder
Method
Make the pastry first. Spread the flour out in a bowl. Holding the butter block in its packaging, grate it right into the flour (you may need to dip the end of the butter into the flour occasionally if it becomes sticky). Mix in the cayenne pepper, mustard powder, and half of the beaten egg. Add a pinch of salt to taste. Use your hands to mix everything together until the mixture starts to stick together. Put the pastry on the counter and quickly knead it into a smooth ball, adding up to 3 tablespoons of cold water if it's too dry. Make a disc out of the dough. Cover and put in the fridge while you make the filling.
In a frying pan, heat the oil and cook the onions and thyme leaves for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the onions have softened and started to turn brown. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it cool. Mix in the grated cheese, mustard, and spring onions once the mixture has cooled.
Set the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and put baking paper on a baking tray. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the cold dough until it is the thickness of a £1 coin. You can use a cup or mug as a guide to cut out as many 10–12 cm circles as you can, then re-roll the scraps and keep going. You should end up with about 10 to 12 circles.
Put a mound of the filling in the middle of each pastry circle, leaving the edges empty. Working with one circle at a time, brush a little of the remaining beaten egg around the edge, then bring two sides up to meet in the middle to make a half-moon shape. Pinch the pastry together and seal it by making a crimped edge. Place on the baking sheet and do the same with the other pastry circles and filling. Brush some beaten egg on all of the pastries. The food will stay frozen for two months.
Bake the pasties for 20–25 minutes (or 40–45 minutes if they are frozen), or until the pastry is a deep golden brown. Leave to cool for at least 10 minutes before eating warm, or let cool completely and pack into containers for a picnic. Will last up to three days in a container that keeps out air.
Information
Vegetable oil:
Vegetable oil is a type of oil that can be eaten. Most vegetable oils are liquid at room temperature. Nuts, seeds, and other plant parts are pressed to make vegetable oils.
People say that vegetable oil was first used in China more than 3,000 years ago. India may have been the first place to cook with vegetable oil in the 5th or 4th century BC.
Europe didn't start making a lot of vegetable oils until the 18th century, when wood-burning stoves came into use.
Animal fats and other cooking oils like butter and lard have been replaced by vegetable oils because they are cheaper, healthier, better for the environment, more versatile, and don't have a taste when they are heated to low temperatures.
This is because, unlike animal fats, which are solid at room temperature and need to be heated or react with oxygen to become liquid, plant oils stay liquid even if they have been stored for a long time in cool conditions.
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