Well, its been over a year again and so much has happened. But I’ve finally got a few days off and wanted to share a couple of easy recipes that I have made over the holidays.
I volunteered to smoke the Christmas ham this year and I ordered a 5 Kg pickled pork leg from my butcher. When the DB went to pick it up for me, it had somehow grown into an 8.3 Kg leg. That was enough to feed both families and heaps leftover. The ham was in the smoker for about 10 and a half hours and I was a bit worried it would be dry, but it ended up being a wonderful juicy and flavourful (is that a word?) ham.
Here is what I did with some of the leftovers:
Makes 1 x 20 cm pie
Ingredients:
Rough Puff Pasrty:
125 g plain flour
½ tsp salt
125 g unsalted butter, soft, but not melted
70 ml cold water
Pie:
¼ red onion, finely sliced
½ cup leftover ham, diced
¼ cup frozen peas
8 eggs
salt & pepper
¼ cup shredded cheese (any melting cheese is good, mozzarella, tasty or a mix)
Method:
Rough Puff Pasrty:
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
Roughly break or chop the butter into small pieces and rub loosely into the flour. Don’t worry if you can see bits of butter, that is a good thing.
Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in most of the cold water. Mix until you have a firm rough dough and add the remaining water if needed.
Cover and leave to rest for 20 mins in the fridge.
On a lightly floured surface, knead gently until the dough comes together. Roll the dough in one direction only, to make a rectangle. Roll until the dough is three times the width (about 20 cm x 50 cm). Try and keep the edges straight and even. Don’t overwork the butter streaks; you should have a nice marbled effect.
Fold the top third down to the centre, then the bottom third up and over that. This will give you square again with three distinct layers.
Give the dough a quarter turn (so that the folds are at the top & bottom and (what was the long) end of the pastry is n the left or right.
Roll the pastry out again to three times the length. Fold as before, cover and refrigerate another 20 mins before rolling to use.
On a floured surface, roll out your pastry to cover your pie tin, with the edges overlapping. You can trim there once the filling is in.
Pie:
Preheat oven to 180°C.
Directly onto the pastry in your pie dish, sprinkle the onion, diced ham and peas.
Gently whisk the eggs, salt & pepper together with a fork and pour into your pie dish.
Sprinkle with cheese and bake in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, until the egg is cooked through.
Leave to sit for a few minutes before cutting, if serving hot. Otherwise, leave to completely cool and serve cold with a garden salad.
