Our plans for the day changed, which meant my plans for supper changed, too. I was no longer going to be home to supervise a long, slow oven roasting. Instead, I quickly grabbed some ground beef out of the freezer and hoped it would be thawed out by the time we got back (it almost was).
It wasn't until I got back home that I could stop and think about what I could do with the ground beef. It wasn't a large package. Extra lean. I never buy regular ground beef, if I can avoid it. With extra lean, there's no fat to deal with, and there's hardly any shrinkage during cooking.
A peek in the fridge showed me half an onion that needed to be cooked before it got soft, three button mushrooms (stuffer size), and some plain yogurt.
Thinking of Shakespeare's Kitchen, one of the many cookbooks I've borrowed from the library, I decided to make meat filled "purses." These sorts of hand-held pastries were a common street food for many centuries, and I believe they still are in some parts of the world.
This is what I came up with.
For the filling, I cut the onion into smallish pieces and started cooking them in butter. Then I cut and sliced the mushrooms into thin pieces and added them to the onion. When the onions and mushrooms got to about half done, I started adding seasoning. I could have just added salt and pepper and it would have worked fine, but I like to keep a variety of herbs in the pantry. I added garlic granules (because I didn't think to cut up fresh garlic earlier), oregano, sage, thyme, tarragon and paprika, simply because those are some of my favorites. Then I added the mostly thawed out ground beef and cooked it all until the meat was cooked through and any moisture was pretty much evaporated.
When it got close to being done, I mixed about a cup of plain yogurt with roughly a tablespoon of flour. If I'd had sour cream, I would've used that. If I hadn't had yogurt, I probably would have left the filling as it was. Some tomato paste or sauce would've worked well, too, as long as it was kept thick.
When the yogurt and flour was well combined, I stirred it into the meat mixture until it was heated through, then took the whole thing off the heat and set it aside to cool down and thicken a bit.
While it was cooling, I made a basic flaky pastry dough. For a small batch - enough for top and bottom for a 6" pie - you need...
1 cup flour
1/3 cup fat
1/3 tsp salt
2 Tbsp or so cold water
In the old days, the fat would've been bacon grease or lard. Personally, I like to use butter, but shortening will do as well. I suppose you could use hard margarine, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to. ;-) The important thing is for the fat to be very cold. The water needs to be really cold, too. I just put some in a little bowl with a couple of ice cubes and set it aside until I was ready for it.
This basic recipe is fine on its own, but modifies well, too. If it's going to be used for a dessert, try adding things like a bit of sugar, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, etc. to the dry ingredients. For a savoury dish, like what I had in mind, all sorts of dry or powdered herbs can be used. For mine, I added paprika. When I found this recipe only used up half the meat mixture, I made a second batch with ground sage and dried tarragon.
To make the dough, combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, then cut in the fat until it's quite small and the texture is like coarse meal. Then start adding the ice cold water, one tablespoon at a time, mixing well after each addition. When the consistency is right, shape the dough into a ball and divide into equal pieces. Because there are 4 of us, I split it into 8 pieces.
Start pre-heating the oven to 350F at this point.
For a flaky dough, it needs to be kept cold and handled as little as possible. I worked with 2 pieces at a time, keeping the rest in the fridge. I rolled out each piece to about 1/8th inch thickness, added some of the meat mixture to the middle (careful not to over fill - I'm forever adding too much!), and pulled up the sides to make a purse shape. A bit of water along the inside edge helps the dough stick to itself better. If you want, they can be shaped into crescents or whatever shape is more convenient.
After shaping the filled purses, I put them on a lightly oiled baking sheet and stuck them in the oven. Since the filling is already cooked, they only need to be baked until the dough is starting to get a bit browned on the edges and bottom. For my oven, which I'm still not used to yet, it took about half an hour or so. That was enough time for me to mix up a second batch of pastry dough with sage and tarragon.
And this is what they look like. The paprika makes for a lovely colour. The sage and tarragon dough looks pretty bland in comparison! *L*
I broke this one open while it was still steaming hot. It smelled so good!
Youngest definitely preferred the paprika dough, though not being a fan of mushrooms, she would've preferred I didn't use those at all. Eldest loves mushrooms, but she hates ground beef. *sigh* Ah, well. Dh and I liked both versions, though I liked the paprika dough a bit more, I think.
All in all, I'd say this was a success.
I wonder how it would work with the ground pork I've got in the freezer right now?
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