What to do with a bit of leftover pastry ...

As often happens whenever I indulge in making my own pastry, I wind up with a good quantity left over.  The steak & kidney pie was no exception and I seriously considered whether it would have been a good idea to have lined the pie dish wish pastry, instead of just giving it a pastry lid, there was so much left!

By then, however, it was too late to do so - which left me with a good fist-sized lump of pastry which I very definitely wasn't going to throw away.

The thing was, though, what to do with it?

This question was very quickly solved by the resident Chief Dustbin (a.k.a. son & heir) who, now he has ventured into teenager-land, is rapidly swallowing up every edible substance in the place (except Vegemite.  He's loyal to his Marmite, it would seem).

Upon first sight of the plateful of steak & kidney pie, he whistled appreciatively and said "hello, old friend!" to the pastry top.  So, when I mooted the question of what to do with the leftovers, he quickly suggested that I just stamp out biscuit shapes, bake them and give them to him to take to school for a break time snack.

Well, it was an idea.  ~shrug~  Not quite so healthy as a pot of melon pieces or an apple, but what the heck - it'd make a nice change for him.

I got to thinking that there was probably more I could do with the pastry to make it even yummier for him - and hit upon the idea of adding cheese.  Hubby reminded me of the technique whereby you grate uncooked pastry into a bowl and add grated cheese, then bring the whole lot back together as a dough again.  So that's what I did - adding some fresh chives and a leetle bit of cayenne along the way.

I gave each "biscuit" a milk wash and sprinkled them with a little sea salt, then popped them in the oven.

The 10 minutes I'd spent grating, was worth every second.  The little cheesy biscuits that came out of the oven were delightful.  For me, they probably could have used a little Parmesan and maybe a bit of English mustard powder in the mix - but for son & heir they were manna from heaven.

So he took 5 to school - gave half of one to his best buddy, who (apparently) did a little dance of appreciation, he liked them so much!  Aaah, it's nice to make a couple of teenagers happy - and all for the price of a little cheese, some chives, some time and a bit of electricity!

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