Help with 2 things.. Shortening and pasties!

[KarniF00l]

Hi all,

Can someone please tell me what shortening is ? and does anyone have a good pastie recipe ?

Cheers,

Lauren.

TIA

[Beany]

Shortening is vegetable fat. The one we use is Copha - white packet with blue and red balloons on it, sold right alongside butter.

[mum2charli]

Hey Lauren! I gave this one a go last week for the first time and they turned out really nice, YUMMY!

Serves 6 - 7 pasties
You need:

Pastry
4 large cups SR flour
150gms butter
2/3 cup cream
salt to taste

Filling
½ kilo beef mince
4-5 large potatoes
½ kilo pumpkin
2 medium carrots
1 1/2 sticks celery (stalks)
2 large onions
1 large white turnip
salt and pepper

Method:

Pastry
Using the 4 large cups SR flour rub in about 150gms of butter to the consistency of small bread crumbs and salt if desired - then stir well with fork to let air into mixture. Add 2/3 cup of cream and mix. If the pastry appears a bit stiff add milk to help make the dough pliable.

Filling
Mince all vegetable ingredients with a large cutter (a small cutter makes the filling too mushy), add mince, salt and pepper. Mix all the ingredients well together so they are evenly distributed, then fill pastry shapes which have been cut to the desired shape. Paint all completed pasties with milk (using a pastry brush) to give them a nice golden brown colour. Cook in an oven pre-heated to 180 - 200 degrees. Judge the cooking time by the size and look of the pasties.



(I just chopped all of my veggies really small becuase I don't have a mincer or blender and it worked out fine, just bigger chunks or veggies than normal, oh and I left the turnip out and used some pre-cooked sweet potato as well that I had left over from making Charli's food! Let me know if you give it a go!