Giant Pasty
1. Assemble the ingredients. We went with the following:
2kg shortcrust pastry
4 eggs
1.5kg mince
4 large onions
1kg potatoes
Some peas
1 sweet potato
680g carrots (cubed! V important, for pasty authenticity)
680g peas
2 stock cubes, salt, pepper and Worcester sauce
Vegetable oil
Too much time on our hands
Large flat surface – really large
Large buttered tin.
2. The first step is to chop like an absolute mother – for the ultimate in authenticity, ensure you are chopping to scale, and to the correct shape. The last thing we wanted would be a massive cornish with miniature ingredients. That would just be silly.
Cat didn’t want to her hands to smell of onion so she used gloves. It’s a fetish thing I think.
3. Then you need to roll out that pastry – we needed to make sure it was thin enough to cover the ingredients, but thick enough to hold back the might of the meaty filling within. This involved rolling out each individual pack of shortcrust (we were feeling lazy so we brough pre-made stuff), then joining them together on as large a surface as we could find.
We found a kind of oval shape worked best.
4. To avoid the inevitable bouts of chronic diarrhoea from undercooked meaty goodness, we decided to cook the filling first.
The onions were nicely browned and in went the mince and other veg (including peas – don’t forget to add peas ferchristsakes. We nearly did. Oh how we laughed).
5. Once that lot was cooked, we added a little egg to the mixture to bind it (a stroke of genius I reckon), and added it to the pastry, which was handily spread out on a baking tray.
6. Next, we had to close that bad boy up. For authenticity, we want to get the all important crust along the top, so it was a good job we’d cut the pastry oval big enough so we had some foldage at the top.
She was then brushed with the leftover egg, and popped in the oven for about 25 mins.
The result, one big ass pasty. Estimated size and weight, that of a baby, or possibly a small dog. Needless to say it tasted delicious, and fed us for over a week.
