More from my Great-Grandma’s 1930s recipe book today. It’s Meat and Potato Turnovers, a pastie in other words.
Ingredients
1 lb flour
6 oz lard
1 tsp salt
A pinch cream of tartar
Filling for turnovers:
1 1/2 lb potatoes
2 oz meat minced
A little onion
Season with pepper and salt
Scatter a little flour in and boil until done.
Method
Rub lard into flour and [add] all other dry ingredients. Mix to a nice paste with cold water. Weigh 2 1/2 oz paste for each turnover. Roll out, out in the filling, fold up, egg wash, bake 25 minutes good hot oven top shelf.
As this is a 1930s recipe, the meat saving element is very much to be seen with 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes to only 2oz of meat. I upped the meat to about 300g and reduced the potatoes to about 500g, browned with a fried onion, flour stirred in, just enough water to cover everything, and cooked until the potatoes were tender. There was too much filling for the amount of pastry I ended up with, but that’s fine – meat and potato leftovers are easy enough to use in other dishes, or just to eat by themselves, Nigella-style in front of the fridge.
I wasn’t sure what shape there were supposed to be, so made them in traditional half-moon pastie-style, and cooked them at 200 degrees for 25 minutes. As my daughter has an egg allergy, I brushed them with milk instead of egg.
As you’d expect they tasted comforting and old-fashioned, the lardy pastry feeling very traditional. Best eaten warm, and on an old plate – I got out my 1950s Ridgway Homemakers Woolworths plate for the occasion.
