Hand pie or pasty

Over the last two years LJ and I have slowly but surely become soccer fans.  Since moving to western Washington we've listened to every Seattle Sounders match on the radio. LJ supports Tottenham Hotspur (I knew it was serious when she liked their team page on Facebook) and I enjoy Swansea City in the English Premier League (EPL) which we began following after stumbling across The Men in Blazers podcast on the Grantland Network.  At first we could barely understand what they were saying, because of the English accents mostly but also because we had no idea about the teams or players they were referring to.  However, since they were so entertaining we were drawn in and have become fans of the sport.

At this point the loyal blog reader (dad) may be wondering what this has to do with our blog where we write mostly about food and occasionally about sewing.  On the most recent Men in Blazers pod, they interviewed someone from the Pukka Pies company, who issued a challenge for the pod listeners to create their own pie.  As someone who considers himself a serious master baker, and a GFOP, I knew I had to take up the challenge.

After studying the Pukka Pie offerings, I settled on attempting a Pasty.  We had steak in the freezer and potatoes and onions on the counter so I was set for the filling.  After some Googling LJ found this recipe which I mostly followed.

The recipe called for 8 tablespoons of butter, but I replaced half of that with homemade lard because I thought it would make the pie even more delicious.  It was a good decision.

 

I put the dough in the fridge to firm up while I worked on putting the filling together.

At this point I had basically a thick stew.  I put it in the fridge to cool down as the initial recipe suggested and I highly recommend this step.  Letting the filling completely chill makes the creation of the pies much easier.  I wasn't quite as patient as I should have been because I wanted to eat a pie.

 
I forgot to get a shot of the closed up pies before they went in to the oven, but below are a number of shots of the finished pies (may be NSFW:  Pie Porn)

The money shot

They were hearty and delicious.  We are going to try a couple of different fillings in the future (chicken curry, lamb and potato, steak and ale) and will report back with the results.