about one or two small, cooked salad (waxy) potatoes, sliced but skin on 20g grated mature cheddar fine slices of raw white onion pinch of chopped fresh parsley sea salt flakes, like our Cornish Sea Salt Flakes beaten egg to finish
Freshly-milled wholemeal flour - using our range of BakeryBits UK-grown grains and our Mockmill home tabletop flour mill - gives these pasties a brilliant bold flavour, one bite and I thought “this is the way a great pasty is meant to be”. More strictly a turnover than anything related to a Cornish pasty, the name has stuck over decades and - for this particular filling - the rectangular shape has become traditional.
Having a layer of cream pie sauce spread inside the pastry when you assemble them means that, as the pasties bake, the cheese melts into the sauce and gives you a much more luscious filling than just cheese alone. The raw onion steams inside and creates that particular traditional cheese and onion flavour with the cheddar.
Roll the pastry our to about 1/3 cm thick with enough flour to stop it sticking. Cut rectangles roughly 15cm x 20cm (though they can any size/shape you like). I like to freeze the pastry once it’s in rectangles to slightly stiffen the dough so it’s firm’ish but malleable when I fill and fold the pasties.
Spread a ¼ cm layer of the cream filling on the pastry leaving a 1-2 cm gap around the cut edges. Brush around that gap with beaten egg. Lay slices of potato on the cream sauce, not too much, then top generously with grated cheese. Fold the pasty over to enclose the filling, and press the edges gently together. Brush with beaten egg, score the top with fine lines if you like, then cut two holes for the steam to escape. Then finish the remainder the same way.
Heat the oven to 180C fan. Bake on a metal baking tray lined with non-stick paper for about 30-35 minutes or until a rich bronze colour. They freeze very well once baked, just thaw and reheat in a moderate oven until piping hot again inside to serve.