Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
To make pastry, rub together flour and fat to make a coarse meal. Add 8 tablesppons ice water all at once. If dough crumbles, add more water. Refrigerate to rest one hour before rolling out.
Roll dough to a circle ¼ inch thick and cut into 6 inch rounds. Re-roll and scraps and cut into additional circles.
To prepare filling, cut ingredients into uniformly small pieces. It's important to have the potatoes and the meat cooked during the same time period since they will be cooking together, so cut to appropriately sized cubes to effect that end result.
Combine ingredients in a bowl to mix evenly. Put ¼ cup of the mixture into the center of a rolled out pastry.
Moisten pasty edges, fold in half, and crimp to seal. Place on a buttered baking sheet and brush lightly with egg wash. Make 2 slits in each pasty to allow steam to escape.
Bake at 400 degrees F 15 minutes, reduce heat and continue at 350 degrees F until golden.
Serve hot or cold.
A fun idea for preparing these is to use two kinds of filling in each pasty – one sweet and one savory. For example, put an apple filling on the right half. Eat your way through from dinner to dessert! To identify which side is which, initial one side to indicate its contents.
Submitted by: CM
