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Cheese, Onion & Potato Pies.

September 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Fitz’s second birthday is galloping towards us at pace, & we have sensibly decided not to have a party. At least not one that involves other people and children running around on a sugar high, but we will have a small family party, here at home.

Since I expect he will be too excited to eat too much, I’m keeping it simple. It’s the same reason we’ve been opening birthday presents as they are given, rather than saving them up for a big overwhelming morning of paper ripping. The table will have:
  • cheese, onion & potato pies
  • cocktail sausages
  • breadsticks, carrot sticks & hoummous
  • bear shaped jellies
  • blackberries
  • a chocolate cake
I want it to look like a party table, but not be groaning. If there are too many leftovers I’ll be the one eating them, since Fitz will be back on his usual healthy fayre, and I have no need of extra cheese on my hips.

These little pies are perfect for adding a little rib-sticking stuff to slow down the progress of sugar into the bloodstream, but still not something I would feed him every day. As the recipe is available online, I include it here, in case you want to give it a try.

Cheese, Onion & Potato Pies

I won’t the recipe for shortcrust pastry since everyone has their favourite, & mine is from Tamsin Day-Lewis (Sorry, Nigella, but yours is so unnecessarily fiddly), but you will need a quantity of shortcrust made with 10-12oz of flour. And I’ve had equally good results with bought shortcrust so no snobbery about that particular shortcut either.

I do follow Nigella’s suggestion to use a yorkshire pudding tin (the kind with four shallow indentations) as I like the kind of rustic pasty they produce. You will need two of these, or you could always use individual flan tins.

 

For the Filling:

500g waxy potatoes, diced
125g Cheddar or double Goucester, 75g grated, 50g diced
50g Red Leicester, grated
2 tbsp Parmesan, grated
6 Spring onions (about 100g), sliced
4 tbsp creme fraiche
2 tbsp chopped parsley
  1. Prepare your pastry: separate into two, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
  2. Boil the potatoes in water for about 10 minutes until cooked through, then drain and set aside.
  3. In a large bowl combine the cheeses, spring onions, slightly cooled potato and parsley. Bind with the creme fraiche and season with salt & pepper.
  4. Roll out one pastry disc and cut out 8 rough circles slightly larger than the indents, and push 4 into the first tray. Fill generously with an eighth of the mixture. Use the remaining circles as lids for the pies. Seal the edges with a knife, pulling the base edge up and over the edge of the lid.
  5. Repeat with the second lot of pastry and the second tray. Brush both lots with egg or milk if desired.
  6. Cook in the oven for 20 minutes, until a pale golden colour. Let the pies cool in the tins a little, before easing them out of the tin.
Terrific eaten warm, but equally good cold.

Taken from How to be a Domestic Goddess, by Nigella Lawson

Available online, with US measurements at the Food Network.

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Scones

August 14, 2011 By 3 Comments

The joy of scones is that, like playdough, you can play with all of your cutters, but unlike playdough, you get a tasty thing to eat at the end of it. With playdough you mostly just get bits trodden into the carpet, and while the enthusiasm of Fitz’s rubbing in did mean there was a good deal of flour to sweep up, I know which task I’d rather have at the end of playtime.

The recipe was from the British Book of Baking, and they were “amazing”, according to both husband and child. Normally I’m not a fan of sweet scones (I prefer cheese) but these were outstanding.

Can you spot both a penguin and a misshapen cat on the plate? I’m so taken with the idea of animal scones I might never go back to plain old circles.

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Bready Scrolls

June 23, 2011 By 3 Comments

What to do with a small boy who is twisty, tired and hungry and it’s still only 11 am? The answer is do a bit of cooking, surprisingly. I came across the My Daddy Cooks blog last February, when we were thinking of weaning Fitz, and was encouraged to see how a baby led approach had worked out for them. Nick and Archie seemed to have such fun hanging out in the kitchen, and Archie was willing to try anything and everything. This was the kind of adventurous attitude I wanted for my child.

Fast forward fifteen months, and I find myself in an embarrassing rut when it comes to feeding the wee one. Yes he loves pesto, and yes, it’s Double Gloucester not mild cheddar, but otherwise I seem to be presenting the same things again and again. Perhaps this is a problem that hits all mothers if they stay at home and by default become responsible for the meals, laundry, house cleaning. Inertia, boredom.

So today we made bready scrolls, a recipe taken from the My Daddy Cooks cookbook. More accurately I made an omlette first to quell the screaming, and then we made bready scrolls. It’s a great name for what is essentially a savoury sliced swiss roll, made with a quick dough and whatever you fancy putting into it.

Fitz helped me rub in the butter, and then started wiping flour over his face. Then he helped grate the cheese, which he loved doing. This is just as well, since he then proceed to eat a lot of it while watching me finish off the dough. My filling was pesto and Double Gloucester, unsurprisingly, and once we’d rolled it up and sliced it, Fitz was delighted to brush the scrolls with milk.

Sadly they weren’t cool enough for him to eat before his nap, and besides, he had already had some omlette, a small cheese mountain and a fair punnet of strawberries, but we passed a happy hour noodling in the kitchen together and there wasn’t even that much mess. Except on his face.

On his behalf I’m very happy to report that they are delicious, and they will be brilliant for shoving into the rucksack for a snackbreak in the park. Much less trouble than scones, or baking bread, and there’s a nice glow of satisfaction to be had from making something new. I could go on about how guilty I feel for not being able to come up with things like this for myself, or for getting into a dreadful rut in the first place, but I just don’t have the time. Better that I keep quiet and eat another one instead.

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