My self sufficient garden this part of the year is so rewarding and inspiring it is this time of the year that I find myself eating mainly vegetables that I trundle off down the garden each day to pick, seeing which vegetables are ready decides my meals for the day, today I felt inspired to make ratatouille but instead of in a tomato sauce I thought I would stuff old fashioned pastry empanadas with the ratatouille and serve a spiced tio pepe tomato dunking sauce, outstanding I had to fight my husband for them!
Ingredients
(Makes 10)
The Pastry
450g plain flour
110g cold lard grated
100g cold butter grated
Leg pinch of salt
180ml cold water
Ratatouille
What ever your garden or fridge offers
1 courgette sliced
3 beetroots peels, thin sliced
1 onion sliced
1 onion fine diced
1 clove garlic chopped
1 leek fine sliced
2 spring onions fine sliced
1 pepper fine diced
1 fennel fine diced
2 chillies chopped
4 radishes diced
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 egg beaten
Tomato Tio Pepe sauce
10 lrg tomatoes
1 tsp coconut oil
1 clove garlic chopped
1 onion fine diced
100 ml Tio Pepe
Salt and pepper
First make the pastry, place all the ingredients except the water in a large bowl and roughly rub together, you don't want to create a breadcrumb mix, keep clumps of fat and flour as this allows the pastry to be more like a light flakey puff pastry, this happens because as the clumps of fat melt during cooking they rise up creating air which in turn creates the light puff flakey pastry. Add the water and gently bring together to losely form a ball, wrap in paper and chill for around 30 minutes, while you make the tomato sauce and ratatouille.
Tomato sauce next, in a saucepan heat the coconut oil add the onion and garlic and soften for approx five minutes, mean while slice the tomatos in half and place face down in the saucepan to simmer away for ten minutes or so until softened, gently peel off the skins, they will come away in one pull, add the tio pepe and reduce by half. Mash down the tomatos and season with salt and pepper to taste.
And now for the ratatouille, first take the finely diced and sliced garlic, onion, leek, spring onion, pepper, fennel, chilli and radishes, place the coconut oil in a frying pan and add the chopped ingredients and gently soften for around five minutes, remove from the heat, season to taste and keep to one side. Take out the pastry now to come back up to room temperature while you make the ratatouille.
In the same frying pan add some more coconut oil and pan fry the sliced beetroot, courgette and sliced onion until just soft, season with salt and pepper to taste and keep to one side while you roll out the pastry.
Dust your work top with flour and roll out the pastry nice and thin cut circles out of approx five inches in diameter, place a teaspoon of the tomato sauce in the centre of the pasty, top this with some of the beetroot mix and then the diced ratatouille, brush half the pastry edge with the beaten egg wash and fold the pastry over the filling and pinch the edges together to make a seal. Brush with egg wash and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden. Serve warm with a side bowl of the tomato sauce for dunking this gorgeous little parcel of home grown satisfaction.
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