Today’s comforting pastry is super-adaptable and superb for utilizing up immoderate leftover bits of cheese. The classical homity pastry filling of potatoes, onions and pick works beautifully with a jumble of food ends – cheddar, stilton, taleggio oregon immoderate pungent blocks and rinds are lurking successful your fridge drawer; it’s besides a fantastic basal for utilizing up different basal vegetables too potatoes – celeriac, for example, bring earthiness, beetroot turns the full filling a vibrant purple, portion salsify adds a nutty note. Use immoderate you person to hand, and discarded nothing.
Homity pastry with food ends and seasonal roots
This is simply a long-time household favourite. Mum utilized to marque it for maine arsenic a kid and present I marque it for my ain children. This is an updated mentation of a look from my archetypal book, The Natural Cook, specifically designed some to usage up food ends and to beryllium much flexible. Whether you’re utilizing a substance of potatoes and celeriac oregon experimenting with beetroot for a striking purple pie, this makes a a precise sating, affluent and flavourful repast that would besides enactment arsenic a centrepiece. Serve lukewarm with a crisp greenish salad, dressed with a crisp dressing to chopped done each that affluent cheese.
Serves 6
For the pastry lawsuit
200g wholemeal flour (spelt for preference), positive other for dusting
A pinch of oversea salt
100g acold diced butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
For the filling
500g caller potatoes, oregon different basal vegetables (carrots, celeriac, parsnips, beetroot, say), scrubbed clean, if request be
1 ample onion, peeled and thinly sliced
2 ail cloves, peeled and astir chopped
A fewer thyme leaves (optional)
2 leeks, acheronian greenish tops only, thinly sliced, oregon 1 full leek, thinly sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
4 sprigs parsley, astir chopped from stem to leaf
150ml treble cream
200g mixed food ends (cheddar, stilton, taleggio), grated oregon chopped
Sea brackish and cracked achromatic pepper
Olive oil
Mix the flour and brackish successful a blender oregon ample bowl, adhd the food and enactment the premix until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Mix successful the ovum and conscionable capable acold h2o (you’ll astir apt request betwixt 3 and 5 tablespoons) to bring everything unneurotic into a steadfast dough, past screen and chill for fractional an hour.
Roll retired the dough connected a lightly floured aboveground and usage it to enactment a high-sided tart tin oregon pastry dish, mildly pressing the pastry into the corners and letting it overhang each astir the edge. Prick the basal each implicit with a fork, chill for different 10 minutes, past unsighted cook connected a tray astatine 210C (190C fan)/410F/gas 6½, until the tart lawsuit starts to crook golden. Take retired of the oven and trim the edges neatly with a breadstuff weapon (the trimmings marque an fantabulous snack, incidentally).
Meanwhile, chop the basal veg into chunks, past boil them successful salted h2o until tender. Drain and permission to steam dry.
While the roots are cooking, mildly saute the onion, garlic, thyme and leeks successful the olive lipid until brushed and caramelised. Stir successful the drained roots, parsley and cream, play generously, past heap into the pastry case. Scatter implicit the grated food and nestle immoderate chunks of brushed food successful and astir the vegetables – the filling should beryllium heaped and rustic-looking. Return to the oven and cook until the apical is bubbling and golden, with the unusual charred spot present and there.
Remove and permission to remainder and acceptable for 10 minutes, past portion and service warm, astatine country somesthesia oregon adjacent consecutive from the fridge, wherever it volition support for up to 5 days.