Good Kiwi tucker

I had about 300g of food processor pastry left over from my quiche the other day, so when I arrived home last night with no idea what I was going to have for dinner, I decided I should use it for mince pie (p126).

I didn't have enough pastry for the full recipe, which required 400g. The recipe is for a family size pie, and specifies a 22cm pie plate. I might have had enough pastry for my 20cm pie plate, but I felt like experimenting and decided to do individual ones in my muffin tins.

I checked my freezer for mince, but didn't have enough for the 3/4 recipe I wanted to make. Since it wasn't raining for once, this seemed like a good excuse for a walk. I wrapped up warm and wandered up to the Mad Butcher.

Returning home with mince in hand, I rolled up my sleeves to start making the filling, starting with chopping up an onion... except that when I opened the cupboard, there were no onions in there. I put my jacket back on and walked down to the supermarket to purchase a couple of onions.

Returning home with onions in hand, I again rolled up my sleeves, and this time was able to begin the filling. It's pretty basic; just fry up the onion with some garlic, then add the mince and brown it. Once the mince is cooked, stir through a bit of flour, then gradually add beef stock. Then you remove it from the heat, and stir through some tomato puree. Well, actually I didn't have any tomato puree, so I used tomato paste instead. Then I added a bit of seasoning, and set the filling aside to cool while I sorted the pastry.

I rolled out my pastry, and set about trying to find something about the right size to cut rounds for the muffin tins. I tried using one of my dessert glasses, but the rim was too dull to cut through the pastry, so I mostly ended up cutting around the glass with a knife. The first few rounds I made were way too thick, and I had to re-do them, but eventually I had a 6-muffin tray lined with pastry.

I filled my little pies, which actually used less than half of the filling I'd prepared. I'll have to do something else with the leftovers - I'm sure it'll make good toasties. Deciding to make half mince pies and half mince and cheese, I topped three of the pies with grated cheese.

I then moved on to rolling and cutting the tops of the pies. I really could have done with a little more pastry - I had to roll the pastry quite thin, and in doing so, stretched it too much so it shrunk down again when I was trying to fit them onto the pies

I got each pie covered eventually though, and after piercing the tops and brushing them with a mixture of egg yolk and water, I put them in the oven for 20 minutes (the recipe said 25 minutes, but that was for the family size pie. 20 was more than enough).

When they came out of the oven, they looked beautiful! All golden and flaky, and the cheese had oozed out of the mince and cheese ones. They tasted just as good as they looked: flaky, buttery pastry with a hot mince filling. Mmm...

Compared to bought pies, these are quite small, but two of them make a reasonable meal - one of each of course! The filling doesn't have as much flavour as you might get in a bakery pie, but that's something you could experiment with. It really doesn't matter though - nothing compares to eating your own homemade pies straight from the oven!