Vegetable and Lentil Pasties

Inspiratioin from a Whitby Bakery.

Whitby

There’s a wonderful bakery called The Cornish Bakery on Church Street in the town centre. It’s just yards from the bottom of the 200 steps leading up to Whitby Abbey. They sell lovely fresh cakes and savoury bakes, and you can sit down and enjoy a coffee or two before you climb up to the abbey and see the wonderful views across the town harbour and the sea.

Their ‘award-winning’ Traditional Cornish Pasties are well worth trying and an inspiration for my latest recipe. Please pay them a visit and bring a few home with you to keep in the freezer.

Whitby is also the home of Whitby Jet, amazing sunsets and it’s the place where Captain Cook departed on HMS Endeavour to sail the south seas.

The beaches are spacious for families, dog walkers and those looking to find fossils. If you are lucky enough to find a 66 million year old fossil Ammonite - Link to Natural History Museum, on your first attempt at searching, try not to sound too excited next to someone who has spent years searching for one without success!

It’s Lunch Time

The Cornish Bakery Pasties inspired me to make my vegetable pastie version. The plan was to make enough to freeze for later. Ultimately, we ate some for lunch and some for tea the next day. They were that good. I will fine-tune this recipe at some point, but for now, I wanted to keep it simple.

The shortcrust pastry is a mix of white Spelt Flour and Spelt Wholemeal flour, mixed vegetables filling, using what I could find in the fridge, plus some leftovers from a previous meal. I added a handful of red lentils to bulk it up and add texture.

Vegetable and Lentil Pasties

• Serves 6

• Ideal for freezing

Ingredients

For the Shortcrust Pastry

• 200g Spelt white flour or plain white flour

• 200g Spelt Wholemeal Flour or any wholemeal flour

• 100g unsalted butter fridge cold cut into cubes

• 100g vegetable shortening such as trex

• Pinch of salt such as crushed sea salt

• 1 medium egg lightly beaten

• 2 - 3 tablespoons cold water

For the Filling

• 1 Tablespoon olive oil

• 55g fresh leeks roughly chopped

• Sweet Red Pepper roughly chopped

• 1/4 teaspoon crushed sea salt

• 1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper

• 200g Frozen mixed Vegetables containing carrots, peas, beans and sweetcorn

• 50g Red lentils (Use according to the packet instructions)

• 1 Vegetable Stock cube crushed

• 100ml boiling water

• 1 egg for egg wash

  • Tip: Make the filling using any leftover vegetables or whatever you can find in the freezer or fridge.

Method

Shortcrust Pastry Dough

Make the Shortcrust Pastry

Step 1:  Place the flour, salt, butter, and vegetable shortening into a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Step 2: Add the egg and enough water and mix until you have a smooth, firm ball of dough. 

• Tip: Do not add all the water in one go. Only add enough to bring the dough together to a smooth dough.

Step 3: Flatten the dough a little and wrap it in cling film. Place it in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes.

Make the Vegetable Filling

Vegetable and lentil filling.

Step 1: Gently fry the chopped leeks and sweet pepper in olive oil, and add the salt and pepper. Simmer until the leeks become translucent and the peppers have softened. To coin a phrase from Will Cooper’s post The problem with recipes, “It will be ready when it tells you. Not before”.

Step 2: Add the frozen vegetables, red lentils (according to the packet instructions), stock cube and boiling water. Turn up the heat and simmer until all the vegetables and lentils are cooked through and the stock cube has dissolved.

• Tip: Add any vegetables left over from the previous night’s meal. In my case, I added a few leftover carrots.

Step 3: Take the pan off the heat and leave the vegetables to cool completely.

Vegetable and Lentil Pasties

Step 4: Remove the pastry from the fridge and cut it into 6 equal portions. Roll each one out into a circle the size of a small plate about 7 inches across.

Step 5: Place a portion of the cold vegetable and Lentil mixture into the centre of the pastry, leaving about 1 inch around the edge.

Brush the edge with water, and fold up so that the edges meet in the middle and on the top.  Press the edges firmly together, making a decorated fluted edge with your fingers.  Note to self: practice makes perfect.

Unbaked Vegetable Pasties.

Step 6: Place each pastie onto a baking tray with a sheet of baking parchment, and place in the fridge for about 10 minutes for the pastry to rest a little before baking.

Preheat the oven to 180Cdeg (fan assisted oven).

Step 7: When ready to bake, brush each pastie with a beaten egg and add a few slits in the pastry to allow for any steam to escape during baking.

Baked Vegetable pasties.

Step 8: Place the tray of pastries on the middle shelf in the oven and bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until cooked through and the pastry is golden. 

Please let me know how you get on with this recipe, especially if you adapted it with your own filling.

As always, Happy Baking.

Lynn x