May 3, 2022
I don't have the appetite for new recipes that I once did. Two pandemic years (not to mention my own recent COVID bout) have oriented me towards plainer comfort foods, and that typically means reliable, repeat recipes. This recipe for broccoli-stuffed pasties, which recently appeared on Green Gourmet Giraffe, offered some reassuring flavours plus an easy pastry technique that I hadn't tried before... a gentle way to try something new.
I didn't check back to the original recipe inspiration on goodfood until writing up this post. It's by Helen Goh, a favoured name in this household due to her book Sweet. Johanna GGG adapted the recipe to add potatoes, and she cooked her vegetables in the microwave rather than using Goh's original blanching approach. I staged out this recipe, asking Michael to pop our broccoli and potatoes into the oven one night early when he already had it on for other reasons. I sautéed the garlic and shallots, too, so that the filling would need minimal extra work on the night that I made the pastry and baked the pasties.
The novel pastry technique here is the use of boiling water when cold butter, hands and work surfaces are usually the expectation. I assumed the purpose of this was to conveniently melt the big butter chunks, but Goh actually instructs us to do the messy work of rubbing butter into flour anyway. I didn't, and I seemed to get away with it - the heat from the water and some careful work with a wooden spoon got me to the pliable, slighty greasy dough she said I should aim for. My pastry shells were thin and crisp, buttery and crumbly, sturdy from a wholemeal flour boost.
The pasty filling was great - a bit less cheesy than I expected, plenty salty, and bright with lemon. It's not at all vegan, and could be adapted (I'd add lots of nooch!), but an easy alternative is to go straight to Smith & Deli's cheesy broccoli pie recipe instead. I'd estimate that we had twice as much filling as our pastry could hold (perhaps due to the bonus potatoes?), and I'm planning puff pastry pockets and toasties for the leftovers. Michael made Brazilian slaw to eat alongside - it's also a large quantity and lasts for days, so it might see us through all three incarnations of this filling.
Cheesy broccoli pasties
(slightly adapted from a recipe on Green Gourmet Giraffe,
where it's credited to goodfood)
pastry
1 cup plain flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
160g butter, diced
120ml boiling water
filling
400g broccoli, diced
180g potato, peeled and diced
2 teaspoons olive oil
3 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
150g mature cheddar cheese, grated
50g parmesan, grated
1 1/2 tablespoons white miso
zest and juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon salt (I used a herby salt mix)
1 teaspoon pepper
a little milk, for brushing the pastry
To make the pastry, stir together the flours, salt and pepper in a large heatproof bowl. Add in the diced butter, which the original recipe instructs you to rub in by hand (I didn't). Pour the hot water over it all and use a wooden spoon to bring the mixture together into a smooth dough ball (I found that the heat from the water was sufficient to melt the butter). Drape a teatowel over the bowl and set it aside.
Use your preferred method to cook the broccoli and potato under just barely tender: Johanna microwaved hers in some water, Helen Goh used broccoli only and blanched it in salted boiling water, and we popped ours into the oven for 25 minutes the night before alongside a different meal.
Sauté the shallots and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat until soft, about 15 minutes. I wish I had thought to add the miso at this stage, so that it would soften in the heat and distribute evenly through the mixture. In a large bowl, stir together the broccoli, potato and shallot mixture (this is when I actually added the miso). Add the cheeses, lemon zest and juice, salt and pepper, and stir everything together to combine.
Preheat an oven to 200°C and line two baking trays with paper.
Retrieve the dough and divide it into six balls. Lightly flour a work surface and roll out a pastry ball into a circle 2-3 mm thick. Scoop 1/3 cup of the pasty filling onto one half of the pastry and fold the other half over, crimping the edges securely. Transfer the pasty to a baking tray and repeat with the remaining dough to make six pasties.
Brush the pasties with a little milk and gently make a couple of incisions in the top of the pastry with a sharp knife. Bake the pasties for 30-35 minutes, until golden brown.
