For the pastry:
175g butter
250g plain flour
pinch of salt
beaten egg to glaze
For the filling:
Basically you can use anything you want as long as it’s not too wet, I use:
Some bacon, cut up into small pieces
some potatoes (with skins on, good way to get rid of tiddlers) cut up into small pieces and cooked
several onions and garlic
grated cheese
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon mustard powder
Play around with quantities and take out or add anything you like, carrots (diced), peas etc…
For the pastry, the butter needs to be rock-hard from the fridge, so weigh out the required amount, wrap it in a piece of foil, then return it to the freezing compartment for 30-45 minutes. Meanwhile, sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. When you take the butter out of the freezer, open it up and use some of the foil to hold the end with. Then dip the fat in the flour and grate it on a coarse grater placed in the bowl over the flour. Keep dipping the butter down into the flour to make it easier to grate. At the end you will be left with a pile of grated butter in the middle of the flour, you’re supposed to use a palette knife to mix it all up and not touch with your hands, but I’ve ignored this after the first few loads I made, as it’s a faff and it doesn’t seem to make any difference if I use my hands, it just speeds the process up. Basically you are making a crumble mix. Next, add enough cold water to form a dough that leaves the bowl clean, using your hands to bring it all gently together, if you end up using too much water, add some more flour, you only really need a dribble of water.
Put the dough into a polythene bag and chill it for 30 minutes in the fridge.
For the filling, cook what needs cooking and then put everything in a mixing bowl and stir it all up making sure the spices are evenly distributed.
Then roll out the pastry on a floured surface to form an oblong (as thin as you can). Place a dollop of mixture evenly spaced apart and cut the shapes you want leaving enough space around each dollop to fold each pasty either in half or to meet in the middle, crimping the edges as you go.
Coat each pasty with beaten egg and bake in pre-heated oven until golden
I usually get about 12 small pasties out of this mixture….enjoy
ourlifehandmade 
