Camping food - Cheese & Marmite Pasties

We had another camping trip this weekend. A quick one in that we didn't head off till Saturday morning, and didn't go far - just to where we keep a sailing dinghy on Southampton Water. The view is not beautiful (Fawley oil refinery, although it does have a certain industrial beauty) but it's situated in a lovely country park, and there is a camping field attached to the club. Nothing grand, but a flat sheltered field - and frankly that's all you need.

Anyway, now we have Daisy the campervan, which is fully stocked and ready to go at a moment's notice from a 'kit' point of view, my main concern (well, isn't it always) is food. Clothes too, but I've long since learned that for a weekend trip, there's no point packing much in the way of 'changes of clothes'. I just try to make sure there's a jumper and some waterproofs, for any inclement weather that might be rude enough to strike, and appropriate easy access footwear (crocs or wellies). If you were looking for it, I can't really offer much more advice than that on the packing front as far as clothes are concerned. I also don't have a 'master camping list' to share with you - of a type which I once saw passed from one friend to another, kept as a reference document for future trips. As long as I know there's gin on board, I can live with out a dustpan and brush...

Not just gin, but treats. Some form of cake (this weekend, there was brownie). Bacon, for sandwiches on Sunday morning. Proper coffee (Daisy has her own stovetop coffee maker - yes, I know, proper coffee probably smacks more of glamping than camping, but I don't care - you can't beat an alfresco bacon buttie with a mug of proper coffee of a morning). This weekend, we also had cheese & marmite pasties.

Pasties are a great thing. What's more, I don't know a man who doesn't find his food infinitely more attractive if it's wrapped in pastry. I might try wrapping myself in pastry one of these days and see what reaction that provokes - or may be not.

Despite dashing the collective male hopes in the RJ household when the response to the question "Have they got meat in them?" garnered the response "No.  Well, they do have Marmite", the verdict was that they were pretty good.

They started out as  Good Food recipe, but frankly, I am always suspicious of pasty filling quantity these days, having over produced on several occasions, despite having followed filling to pastry ratios in a number of recipes to the letter. So I reduced the filling ingredients to something I thought more likely, and added in a good handful of chopped parsley.

Cheese & Marmite Pasties

Made 7 decent sized pasties and a small one.


500g shortcrust pastry
350g peeled, grated potato
100g grated cheddar
60g fresh breadcrumbs
4 spring onions, finely chopped
1 large handful of flat leaf pastry, finely chopped
1 large & 1 medium egg
salt & pepper
1 good tablepoon of Marmite Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.

Pre-heat the oven to 160C/140 fan, and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.

Mix together the grated potato, cheese, breadcrumbs, spring onions and chopped parsley with the large egg and a good grind of salt and pepper.

Roll out the pastry on a floury worktop and cut out 16-17cm circles of pastry (our cereal bowls are the right size) - as many as you can: hopefully you'll get about 7.

Melt the Marmite in a saucepan with a splash of water, and brush onto the pastry rounds, leaving a border all the way round of about 1-2 cm. Divide the filling between the pastry circles, placing in the middle of the rounds. Beat the remaining egg, brush lightly around the border of each circle, then draw up the sides and squeeze together to make your pasties. Brush with the remaining beaten egg*, then place on a lined baking sheet and bake for between 50-60 minutes (mine took 55) till golden brown.

In an effort to come over all vintage picnic chic, I packed my pasties in my favourite cake tin, lined with a tea towel. Wrapped in foil, or in a plastic bag would do just fine.

I'm linking up to a new blog challenge - Four Seasons Food, which looks like fun!


Four Seasons Food hosted by Delicieux and Chezfoti




*The original recipe states that these can be frozen once the pasties are formed but before you brush them with the beaten egg, and then baked from frozen till the centres are piping hot. I didn't but it's a top tip, guaranteed to elevate you in the pasty queen stakes...

Pink soup and a not so blue Blue after all

Soup of the week is roasted beetroot without horseradish cream. I am hoping (perhaps over ambitiously) that the pink-ness of the soup will appeal to Pink and get her over her dislike of this particular root vegetable. I have to say that she enjoyed it more than the Husband and Blue when made into the beetroot variation of Hugh’s Pumpkin and Raisin tea loaf. I think I mentioned this in an  earlier post. I had over-ordered on the beetroot front and was looking for recipes to use it in. A friend had recommended the tea loaf recipe (although not the beetroot variation) so I thought I would give it a go. Hugh promises purple marbling. My version was more ‘pink flecking’, but it tasted great, and not a hint of the earthiness which I think puts Pink off. I say that it is without Horseradish cream because at the time of writing, the horseradish is still in the ground and the ground is frozen solid. Chances of extracting are virtually zero (and that’s better than the current outside temperature). That said there might be some in the freezer. I will need to investigate. The soup isn’t for eating till tomorrow so there may yet be time for horseradish cream.

I had far more success on the root veg front this week with the swede and potato pasties out of Veg Everyday. Blue is continuing to lobby for more meat back on the menu, and looked particularly cheated when I advised him that the pasty did not contain meat. I had tried to avoid actually spelling this out to him, but he likes to know where he stands so his questions became more specific as my answers became more and more vague, until he eventually pinned me down. “What is in the pasties?” (this on the way home from school) . I told him. “Oh”. Then “I thought when you said ‘pasties’ you meant like those ones you cooked with meat in them.” Oh dear.

Despite my recent saga with Sainsburys over packets of bought puff pastry, I pushed my pastry boundaries and made the rough puff for these little babies (the bought stuff is for a Hugh onion tart, culled from Sarah Raven and included in Veg Everyday). I think I have made a sweet variation of this before out of Domestic Goddess, and used it to make a lovely tarte tatin type pud. Actually, I think the other half of the pasty that I made for that is languishing somewhere, unloved and unlabeled at the bottom of the freezer. I have a vague memory that almond danishes were on the cards at one stage. I must re-investigate.

Back to the pasties, though. This pastry is really easy and I write as a pastry-phobe. I am getting better with practise, and it’s experiences like this that boost my confidence. It all worked, and rolled out brilliantly. You have to do lots of rolling because the butter starts off as cubes in the flour, and you have to roll it out, fold it over itself and then turn it a quarter-turn, and do it again - 5 times.

first rolling!

cubes of butter - the unrolled dough

I made double quantities, which gave me 4 large pasties and then 6 smaller ones to go in lunchboxes, and there was plenty of filling (just a tiny bit too much in fact).

unbaked

If you’re interested, I did add the ‘optional’ cheddar. For me, cheese is never ‘optional’. But then, I am not a ‘swede-purist’, unlike Hugh (that’s what he calls himself – it’s there in print.). I was very gratified to see that Pink had eaten her pasty almost before I had sat down, faffing around as I was trying to do 100 other things. She had another half, too, Blue pronounced it ‘pretty good actually’ and they both wanted to take a cold one in to school for lunch today.

baked!

I’ve had a mad cook this evening – over the course of today (well starting last night) I have made some loaves with my newly revived sourdough starter following the River Cottage Bread Handbook’s method (‘My Sourdough’). It’s looking pretty good, although I think my starter (and so sponge) was a bit sloppy so the dough was similarly. Not good for the stress levels trying to do a first knead at the same time as you should be walking your small daughter to school with the dough showing no sign of becoming smooth and satiny. In the end I just had to say b******s and leave it to rise. Still - apparently no harm done. I retrieved the second half of the cookie dough that I’d squirreled into the freezer last week and baked some more cookies – I was interested to see if this ‘freeze half the dough’ thing would work – well what do you know, it did! And as the oven was on, I managed too roast the beetroot for the soup – or was it because I’d planned the roast beetroot that I baked the bread and the cookies. I can’t remember, but now the oven's off, the kids are in bed and it's G&T time. Happy Friday!