By: Mrs Robot
I had my first-ever go at making hot water pastry over the weekend. Mr Robot got me a 'Simple Simon' pie mould* for Christmas and I finally got round to testing it out. The mould is cunning because you can rearrange the dividers to make one big pie, six little ones, or all sorts of configurations in between.
I followed the recipe in the Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook. I was a little apprehensive because of the time it said it took, but actually a good chunk of that was boiling two trotters to make the jelly. We had so much jelly left over I've frozen the leftovers – that should speed up any future pie making. The pastry was something else that seemed daunting but was surprisingly easy; I boiled the fats and water together and stirred it into the flour with the handle of a wooden spoon, by which time it was cool enough for my asbestos fingers to work with.
The recipe quantities were enough for three equal-sized pies in the Simple Simon, plus three more slightly smaller ones that I made in fancy metal cake/jelly moulds as that was all I had that looked the right size! The results weren't the prettiest, but I'm pleased with them nonetheless. When I make another batch I'll probably increase the amount of salt in both the pork and the jelly, and perhaps add more herbs or spices to the jelly too. These were nice, but with a little tweaking we could have pie magic.
*This blog is not monetised; the link is purely for information and we do not benefit from it in any way.
