Lamb and potato pasties - oh yes please!

Here we go then!  The last recipe that takes care of the leftovers from the beautiful rolled lamb shoulder that I used for the Minty Aromatic Pulled Lamb Pittas and the Crunchy Lamb Spring Rolls.  Well, if you discount the socking great - and delicious - cold roast lamb and mint jelly sandwich I had for lunch with the very last bits, that is.  Many, many thanks go out to Farmers Choice (Free Range) Ltd, for providing such a versatile and delicious, top quality piece of lamb.

This was another of hubby's bright ideas, that - in my opinion - worked even better than the Spring Roll recipe did.

Because it was a simple recipe - just the pre-cooked lamb, potatoes and a few small peas - I pondered for a while over how to inject more flavour into the whole thing.  I was concerned that the gentle flavour of the lamb, together with the relative blandness of the potato, would all be too wishy washy to stand up to the pastry.  I'm sure you're all well  aware of how a large quantity of pastry can obliterate even the heartiest of flavours.

Adding flavours to the lamb wasn't a good idea as it had been cooked for a long slow cook originally and had received quite enough cooking time, especially as it was about to go back into the oven in the pasties.  Because of the spicing of the lamb, it carried a good pronounced flavour already.  So that basically just left the potato.  What could I do, to cheer up the potato?

I remembered how, in the past, I would cook new potatoes and add a teaspoonful of mint sauce - the vinegary one, not mint jelly - to them before serving.  I had to stop doing that when my son developed a hatred of vinegar, but I crossed my fingers that just a teaspoonful in the pasty filling mixture wouldn't offend.  It would give a nice background minty flavour, whilst the vinegar would give a high flavour note to broaden the depth of those already there.  Well, it sounded good to me.

I wanted to keep the potato in chunks - cubes, if we're being pedantic - so mixing anything with it that would break the cubes down into mash would be bad.  So the only other route to flavouring the potato was to cook it in something.  The obvious thing was to break out the Essential Cuisine Lamb Stock that is always at the ready.  Providing a lovely lamb stock to cook the potatoes in would ensure that they absorb great flavour and enhance the lamb side of things, which after all was the star of the show.  If you've not been converted to Essential Cuisine's stocks, do feel free to use a lamb stock cube.  I would heartily recommend you use a low salt one, for obvious reasons.

I had always intended to par boil the potato - so as to prevent any nasty crunchy potato crises in the finished product - and this was the perfect answer.

In fact, it worked beautifully.  To eat a cube of potato on its own, the lamb flavour wasn't all that big and "in your face", to quote the vernacular.  However, when put in conjunction with the lamb itself and the mint - which was entirely in context in this use - it all came together in a harmonious and flavoursome whole which stood up perfectly to the domination of the pastry.

The pastry could bear some discussion here, as I chose to use shortcrust pastry.  Just because the only commercially produced sausage rolls and pasties you can buy use puff or flaky pastry, does not mean that it is the only pastry that should be used.

So the long and the short of it is the advice that if you prefer puff or flaky - or any other kind of pastry - then by all means use your preferred type.  So long as it encases the filling satisfactorily, it matters not.

The quantities given below, filled three pasties of approximately 8 inches across.  So if you are intending on making more, you'll need to increase the quantities accordingly.

They really are the most uncomplicated things to make - and if you retain the liquid from cooking the potatoes, then add some gravy granules to it (I heartily recommend Bisto's Best Lamb Gravy), you will have a tasty gravy for those who enjoy gravy with their pasty.  Yes, I know, there will be sharp intakes of breath all around because of the encouragement to use gravy granules - but as a swift and effective means to a tasty gravy, it will forever beat the other more long winded ways of achieving the same end result - that of some tasty gravy.

Now I'm not particularly a pasty kind of a gal, but I really enjoyed mine.  On a scale of one to brilliant, these pasties rate right up there on the brilliant side.  Son and heir gave his the thumbs up too - and even took care of the last one for lunch the following day.  Hubby was out that night and didn't indulge, so I'm afraid we can't ask his opinion on the taste test!  Oh and incidentally, son and heir didn't notice the use of the mint sauce in the pasty beyond suspiciously asking whether I'd used mint jelly (he hates that too) in there.  Once reassured that it was mint sauce, not mint jelly, he was appeased.  Well, he had to have been - he ate two of them!

I served our pasties with oven baked salt & pepper potato wedges and a side of mushy peas.  Well, it seemed fitting to go with humble food.  By all means serve yours with a salad, or with steamed vegetables if that's what you like.  The pasties won't mind!

LAMB & POTATO PASTIES   (serves 3)

Ingredients :

340g shortcrust pastry
1 egg yolk
1 large potato, diced small
1.5 tsp Essential Cuisine lamb stock powder or a low salt lamb stock cube
1.5 tbsp (or thereabouts) Bisto Best lamb gravy granules
250g roasted lamb shoulder, diced
2 tbsp petits pois
half a tsp mint sauce.

Method :

1.  Using just enough water to cover the potatoes in a medium sized saucepan, bring the water to a boil and add the stock powder.

2.  Stir the stock until dissolved, then add the potato and simmer for 5 minutes or so, until the dice are just tender.

3. Using a slotted spoon, remove the potato to a bowl and reserve to cool.  Retain around a quarter of the stock and add just enough gravy grains to thicken it.  Set it aside to cool.

4.  Dice the lamb and place into a bowl with the cooled potato, two spoonfuls of the gravy, the petits pois and mint sauce.  Stir gently to combine.

5.  Roll out the pastry and cut out three 8" circles.

6.  Using the egg yolk, paint a little onto the edge of one half of each pastry circle.

7.  Divide the filling between the three pastry circles, placing it on the un-egged side of the pastry.

8.  Fold the egged side of the pastry over to encase the filling and press down lightly to seal.

9.  Follow around the edge of the pastry with a decorative pattern, pressed in to fix the pastry properly, and cut a hole into the top to let the steam out.

10.  Place onto a baking tray and give the pasties a good covering of egg wash.

11.  Bake at 190degC/375degF/Gas5 for 30-35 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown and crisp.

Serve with potato wedges and mushy peas.

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Crunchy Lamb Spring Rolls

Okay, so you remember the lamb shoulder that I slow cooked for the Minty Aromatic Pulled Lamb Pittas?  Well, I only used half of the joint of lamb in the pittas and put the other half into the freezer while I pondered on what to use it for.

Today's Crunchy Lamb Spring Rolls is the first instalment of "making the most of a socking great piece of rolled lamb shoulder - the leftovers".

Now I've never made Spring Rolls before, but I've eaten plenty of them!  As a result, I had a pretty good idea of how they are supposed to taste.  However, I've not had a lamb version of them before, so that was something new.  Plus of course, the lamb had been marinated in about a thousand different spices before being slow cooked, so I very definitely wasn't looking for something that needed a lot of spice, or a lot of cooking.  I wanted to be able to taste the spicing on the lamb and certainly didn't want to dry it out.  All those points ruled out a lot of options that you might classically use when dealing with roasted meat leftovers.

The quarter of leftover lamb, prior to being shredded. Such leanness!

I have to say that the idea of putting it into Spring Rolls wasn't mine, it was my hubby's.  However, I liked the idea immediately and could see how it fitted the short cooking style and capitalised on the spicing of the lamb.

I'd make a rubbish cigar roller!

Before we go any further, I just have to say a few things about the wrapping.  Yes, I used filo pastry and no, I didn't use spring roll wrappers.  Why?  Well because filo pastry is easily accessible from the supermarket and spring roll wrappers aren't.  Simple as that.  I know that, in the past, I've used some bizarre ingredients that aren't generally available but as with the original recipe for the lamb, I wanted everything to be easily accessible so that the majority could have the opportunity of enjoying these recipes.  If, however, you have a shop on your doorstep that sells spring roll wrappers then by all means use them!  I'm all about accessibility, even if not authenticity.

I had 640g of lamb left from the joint (it really was huge!) and a few Spring Rolls weren't going to use all that, so I cut it in half (again) and the remainder is in the fridge awaiting its fate - Lamb and Potato Pasties.  Yum.

As it turned out, the 320g of cold lamb was perfect for 9 of these rather oversized Spring Rolls.  I think in future, instead of cutting the pastry in half, I'll cut it into thirds so as to achieve rather shorter Spring Rolls.  However, the length didn't matter one jot from a cooking point of view - it's simply a visual thing and an ease of eating thing.  Being so long, it did make the dipping of them an interesting operation that was resolved with a paper napkin under the chin - but being shorter would solve that problem rather more elegantly.

The stir fried veggies with shredded lamb and five spice.

I was concerned that the veggies would be cooked sufficiently so as to retain a bite, but not be super crunchy.  After all, there was carrot in there and you know how hard carrot can be.  I didn't want hard pencils of semi raw carrot to detract from the soft gentleness of the lamb.  As such, don't feel tempted to skip the stir frying part of the recipe.  It really doesn't take long (far shorter than prepping the vegetables did!) and is very important in bringing the right kind of texture to your Spring Rolls.

I didn't include the meat in the stir frying, as having been cooked once it didn't need any extra and the heat from the baking would be sufficient to heat it through.

So - cook's tips.  The rolling up of the things didn't go quite according to plan initially, but I did get better as we went on and the last two were perfect.  It is well worth folding the edges in before the last two turns, so as to achieve a neat pocket that prevents the filling from escaping.

Also, don't feel compelled (if you are using filo pastry) to bathe the things in oil once they are rolled.  Just a smattering brushed over the top is sufficient to achieve a nice golden colour and crisp pastry.  Too much oil can result in a greasy Spring Roll and as we're oven baking them, that would be a shame.

Because the lamb I used was quite highly spiced in its original incarnation, I only used a teaspoonful of five spice in the filling mixture.  However, if your lamb, chicken or prawns (all of which would be fab) don't already carry spice, I would increase the five spice by a half a teaspoonful, or perhaps a little more.

If you have one, I can recommend using a mandolin for the carrot julienne.  Makes it so much quicker unless your knife skills are pretty darned hot.

They (spring rolls, not mandolins) really are the easiest of things to produce - and I'll be tempted to use the leftovers from our next roast chicken for the next batch.  I'm sure that would be just as scrummy. I served mine with vegetable & egg fried rice plus a Chinese style dipping sauce, but they would be just as good with a sweet chilli sauce.  Equally, they would be great with salad or as picnic food (when the weather improves!).

CRUNCHY LAMB SPRING ROLLS  (makes 9 large sized, 12 smaller)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp peanut oil
8 good sized spring onions, chopped diagonally and including as much of the green as is possible
Half a Hispi or Pointed sweet cabbage, shredded
1 carrot, peeled and julienned finely
2 big handfuls of beansprouts
1 tsp Chinese five spice
a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
300g cooked, roasted lamb, shredded
200g filo pastry sheets
2 tbsp olive oil.

Method :

1.  Prepare the vegetables prior to needing them and heat the peanut oil in a wok until really hot.

2.  Stir fry the vegetables, keep turning them to prevent from browning in any way, until the carrots are just tender.

3.  Tip the veggies into a heat proof bowl and set aside to cool a little.

4.  Chop and shred the lamb.

5.  Add the five spice, pepper and lamb to the veggies and stir to combine.

6.  Cut the pastry pieces to size.

7.  Brush a little oil onto the edges of the top half of the first sheet.

8.  Place a spoonful (or more if you are making larger rolls) of the filling onto the lower half of the pastry sheet.

9.  Gently start to roll the filling into the pastry, keeping the pastry as tight as possible without splitting it.  Roll up to the oiled section, then fold in the edges to seal the filling into the tube.

10.  Continue to roll until the pastry sheet is taken up.  The oil should help the last bit to stick.

11.  Gently place onto a baking sheet and continue with the next pastry sheet.

12.  Once all are rolled, place into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/340degF/Gas4 for 25-30 minutes or until the rolls are golden and crispy.

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