Pies

The big difference between british kitchens and mediterranean kitchens is that all british kitchens have an oven. I told afriend that my house in Morocco had no oven and she was shocked and said she would not be able to cook anything. I have since bought an oven  and the quality of our meals has improved enormously, partly because anything that needs slow cooking like a tajine ,a british cook does best in an oven.

So our "cuisine" consists largely of baked, roasted and casseroled dishes accompanied by boiled or fried vegetables. Of these the most various and a favourite is pies, being a baked pastry case with a savoury or sweet filling.

There are lots of different sorts of pastries for different pies



Raised chicken pie with hot water crust pastry




Steak and kidney pie with puff pastry

but the most useful is

SHORTCRUST PASTRY

The basic recipe is

200g plain flour
100g butter or other hard fat
1/4 teaspoon salt

Depending on the filling you may want to add any or all of the following

For a savoury pie

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
Shake of cayenne pepper
100g grated cheese
2 eggyolks


For a sweet pie

100g further butter
150g sugar
100g ground almonds
2 egg yolks
teaspoon lemion zest


In a large bowls add the dry ingredients to the fat and rub together with the tips of your fingers until it is a homogenous slightly crumby mixture.

Now stir in the other ingredients and mix to a very stiff paste.
Flour a board a rolling pin and rollout to desired thickness.
If the mixture is very rich and tends to break chill in the fridge for 30mins before rolling.

The simplest thing to make with this recipe is jam tarts. Just cut out the rolled out pastry into circles and place in shallow greased bun tins. Fill each with  jam and cook for 10 -15 mins at 160C-170C

Jam tatrs are often the first thing we teach children to cook but the jam filling is very hot and can burn when it comes out of the oven so they should be supervised until the tarts are cooled.