Top Blog Recipes

17 Oct 2016

EMPANADAS LAMB (red wine) BEAUJOULIS PASTY'S

Gorgeous little flaky buttery short crust parcels of joy...
Stuffed full of slow braised leg of lamb in beaujoulis villages red wine with red currents, rosemary and a stock vegetable reduction giving your tastebuds that WoW Nom Nom I want another mouthful with each bite.  These are one of my party/picnic nibbles that I am infamous for and I know my friends always look forward to these and a gift bag of extras to go home with too, one of the reasons that I love cooking.

Pastry Prep Time 5 minutes / Pastry Chilling Time 30 minutes / Pasty Cooking Time 25-30 minutes
Slow Braised Lamb Cooking Time 3 hours


Ingredients
(makes 15)

The Best Ever Flakey Short Crust Pastry
900g plain flour
220g butter grated
200g lard diced 
10g Himalayan sea salt 
(home rendered down lard with crackling is the most flavoursome, recipe below)
360ml ice cold water
1 beaten egg for wash

Place all the ingredients except the water in a large mixing bowl and roughly combine, add the water and bring the mixture to a ball, wrap in parchment paper and pop in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

Home Made Lard
1 kg pork back fat
1 side pig skin

Heat your oven to 220 C / 385 F, place the fat and skin in the pan, cook for 1 hour, remove from the oven and drain off all the crispy crackling infused lard that has rendered down, that's it you just made lard!  I drain my lard into a 1lb loaf tin, pop in fridge to set then cut into a couple of bars, wrap in parchment paper and store in the fridge, you can also store your lard in a glass ball mason jar.

For The Slow Braised Lamb
1 leg or shoulder of high welfare lamb
1 bottle beaujoulis villages/burgundy red wine
500ml  water
1 tbsp red current jelly
1 onion quartered
2 carrots peeled
1 bulb garlic halved
1 stick celery halved
1 leek halved
2 sprigs rosemary
1 pinch Himalayan sea salt 
1 pinch black pepper

   
To Slow Cook The Lamb 
Pre heat your oven to 200 C, place all of the ingredients in the pan, place in the oven and let the lamb brown off for approximately 30 minutes, reduce the oven temperature down to 160 C, cover the roasting tin and leave to slowly cook for around 2.5 hours, the lamb is perfectly cooked when you can pull on the bone and it just easily slides away from the meat.  Leave the lamb to rest for a while, remove the whole vegetables from the roasting tin, using two forks or your hands pull the lamb apart, mix well in the cooking stock.  The lamb is now ready to be used.

To Make The Pasty's
Pre heat your oven to 200 C / 385 F, roll out your chilled pastry nice and thin, not to thin, I use a 4" pastry circle cutter, but you can make these any size, but I find the smaller pastys more yummy, brush a little egg wash around the rim of the pastry place a large tbsp of lamb in the centre, pull up the pastry from each side and pinch in the centre on top of the lamb, then repeat bring the sides up together down the left side, then right.  Place on a baking tray, I like stone, egg wash and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until golden.


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