Pastie Italiano
Autumn is on the way so I’m taking advantage of the sun whilst it still lasts and getting outdoors at every possible opportunity. With that in mind, I’ve just re-created an old recipe that I’d invented some years hence for a forthcoming workday picnic with a friend down at the waterfront. This is a little something called “Pastie Italiano”* that I came up with (ultimately a Cornish pastie, only with Italian type bits in it).
* I’ve subsequently been told that this is akin to an empinada or patisco.
You will need:
For the pastry:
Self raising flour
Softened Butter or Margarine
2 eggs (one to bind, one to glaze)
Salt
For the filling:
Pesto
1 Red Pepper
1 Yellow Pepper
2 x B*llocks of Mozzarella
8-10 (preferably brown) button mushrooms* (you can be flash here and use porcini/ceps or something expensive, but I’d just use brown button mushrooms over grey ones personally).
Garlic
Butter
Olive Oil
Preparations: Preheat an oven to 200c and stick in your peppers on a baking tray that you’ve lined with a bit of greaseproof paper or foil. (I’ve got in trouble on several occasions for writing off someones baking tray with caramelized capsicum discharge, which hardens like concrete and is nearly impossible to scrub off). You want to cook your capsicum for 20-25 minutes, turning twice during cookage. They will get fairly black but that’s not a massive problem.
Pastry: 3:1 – pastry is easy for the most part: 3 parts flour, one part fat. Sieve your flour (approx. 3 cups) into a large mixing bowl and then add one third (let’s say - one cup) of the same quantity of butter or margarine. Tease this into the flour between your finger tips until evenly mixed. I’d season it here as well. Bit of salt and some white pepper if you have it. Don’t do try and do this with a fork or whatever: live a little – get stuck in with your hands. Once this is done, you will have a large, slightly floury lump that doesn’t stick together very well. Crack one of the eggs into a separate bowl, make sure that there’s nothing worrying in it, the beat it and add it to the pastry mixture gradually, stirring in as you do. The egg will get absorbed and you’ll be left with a big yellow ball of dough. Dust a board, smack him in the middle and roll that badboy out. You want circles of dough approximately 15cm’s in diameter and an even 5-6mm thick. I reckon you’ll get four or five out of this recipe. Once that’s done, grease a flat baking tray with butter and stick it back in the fridge so the butter doesn’t melt in the heat of your increasingly busy kitchen. Cover your pastie pastry with a tea towel for the same purpose.
Filling: I’ve put the recipe for pesto up elsewhere on this blog – either follow that (less the garlic) or use one from the shop.
Get your mushrooms and cut to an even size (I typically cut mushrooms for this kind of thing thus - if you were looking down on said fungus from the top with the stalk cut flat and against the board) in half from 0 to 180 degrees, then those halves into quarters, and those into eighths. Thus, you have eight equally sized cake slice shaped pieces per mushroom, with a bit of stalk on every one of them. Therefore, they will look nice and all cook evenly. Put a frying pan on the top on a medium flame with a knob (1 oz) of butter and a splash of extra virgin olive oil. Right when this first goes on the heat, add 2 pureed cloves of garlic to infuse the oils. Once it’s got its garlic smell on and the oil starts to sizzle: mushrooms on, back off on the heat slightly, then stir regularly, covering the mushrooms with the garlic oil evenly. Season them with a bit of salt and freshly ground black pepper and cook for six to eight minutes (until they have halved in size and are equally brown).
Your capsicums want to come out of the oven once done (they will be soft to the touch and the skin will be blackened and starting to come away from them) and get put on a board next to the sink for five minutes to cool. Pull out and discard the stalks (these will come away fairly easily) and be careful of all the hot fluid that’s contained therein. Your capsicum will break very easily into fillets, scrape any remaining seeds from the inside (the majority of these will have come out with the stalks) along with the white pith, and then scrape the burnt skin off of the outside of the fillets. Cut these into strips approx 1.5cm wide and put in a separate bowl.
Slice your mozzarella into 2cm thick slices and set aside.
Assembly: get your board with your circle pastie templates on it. This is your workstation. This is your church. This is where you heal your hurts.
Leave a 2.5cm gap around the edge for your forthcoming folding and tucking exercise. Paint the inside of this with a thin layer of pesto. Then spoon the filling into one half of the pastie, starting off with two slices of red pepper, two slices of yellow pepper, then two slices of mozzarella, two table spoons of the garlic mushrooms, all gently piled up in one half.
Beat the second egg in a bowl and brush onto the edges of the pastie, fold the empty half and squeeze and crimp the edges together with the egg glaze. Do the same with the other three and transfer to the cold baking tray that you’d stashed in the fridge when they’re all done, using the remaining egg glaze to go over the completed pasties.
Stick them in the centre of the oven (which will be nice and hot) and drop them to 180 degrees. Leave them in for about 20 minutes until golden brown.
Serve: It’s a Cornish Pastie, only with Italian bits in it. Leave them to cool and they’re good picnic fayre, or have them hot with some potatoes and roast vegetables: whatever yanks your crank.
Optional extras: olives, capers, you could griddle some courgette, aubergine or asparagus, I suppose. I’ve never actually really experimented with this recipe – it kinda just works as is.
