Who doesn’t love a pork pie at Christmas? If you’re a fan of the humble pork pie, why not give this festive version a go. Plus, it’s a way of using up any left over turkey!
Ingredients:
For the filling
250g pork
100g sausage meat
125g turkey
25g dried cranberries
25g smoked bacon
5g dried sage
For the pastry
You could use ready made pastry if you liked, or for those of you who want to make your own, here’s what you need.
125g lard
175ml water
300g strong white flour
1 egg
Salt and pepper to season.
You can always adapt this recipe to make it gluten free if need be by swapping out the flour, you could also use butter instead of lard if you prefer.
For the ingredients, you can use pork, sausages, bacon and turkey from one of these local meat producers and grab your eggs and butter or lard from a Dorset farmshop.
Method:
Start with making the filling.
Finely chop the pork, turkey, bacon and sausage meat and add to a bowl. Add in the cranberries and sage and mix everything together.
Leave the filling to the side and start on the pastry. If you’re using ready made pastry, you’ll just need to follow the instructions on the packaging and rollout to the suggested thickness on the packet.
If you’re making your own pastry, place the lard (or butter) and water into a pan and heat gently until the lard has melted.
Once melted, pour in the flour and season with a little salt. Mix until combined and a soft dough has formed.
Grease a muffin tin or something similar and place a ball of pastry, around 50g in size, into each hole in the muffin tin.
Shape each ball, keeping each one as even as possible and make sure there is a little lip of pastry above the top of each hole.
Pack the pastry bases with filling, pushing to keep the filling as compact as possible.
Take a ball of the remaining pastry, flatten into a disk and place on top of the filling, pressing the edges down onto the pastry lip, making sure they seal together.
In a new bowl, crack an egg and with a pastry brush, glaze the top of each pie. Make a small hole in the top of the pie with a knife.
Place in the oven at 160 degrees for 45-50 minutes until the pastry is golden and crisp and the filling is cooked. Allow to cool before removing from the tin and enjoy cold as part of a buffet.
