Mutton Curry Pies with enriched shortcrust pastry

We've lived north of Manchester for over 22 years now but, originally, my husband and I hale from South Africa. One of our favourite takeaway pastries was a mutton curry pie. Mutton used to make it's appearance regularly on UK plates but after WWII started to fall out of fashion, not so for South Africa. Since moving here, we've sought maturer lamb meat out and it continues to make it's appearance on our table. If you want to try it, it is readily available as hogget (lambs that are slaughtered in their 2nd year) from butchers just before spring lamb makes it's appearance. Just check with them. Hogget has the flavour of mutton with the tenderness of lamb and is a great compromise. You can buy mutton but this is not so readily available except by special order and is classed as sheep meat older than hogget or slaughtered in their 3rd year or more. But back to hogget, which with it's full flavour, makes the most awesome curry......and the best pies ever!

Being diabetic, pies have been off the menu for me but since discovering FiberFlour, the world has opened up again. Of course, you can fill your pies with whatever you want, the process is exactly the same. The carb count will be different so you'll need to work that out.

I used the shortcrust pastry recipe as provided on this website, https://www.lonjevity-foods.com/copy-of-apple-pie with a couple of small changes. I opted to use half butter/half lard as the fat. So here's what I did to make 4 individual pies:

• Ultra-Fine FiberFlour                          200g

• Butter, cold, grated                               50g

• Lard, cold, grated 50g

• Salt                                                        3g

• Baking Powder                                      6g 

• Lemon Juice 4g

• Egg, YOLK ONLY 1 egg

• Water                                              30-60g

• Pie filling, thickened, cold 400-500g

Add Ultra-fine flour, butter, lard, salt, baking powder,lemon juice and egg yolk into a food processor (as per the original recipe). Slowly adding tablespoons of ice water as you pulse the mixture until is comes together as a ball.

Roll out on a surface floured with a little more Ultra-fine flour or to make it a bit easier, onto a sheet of greaseproof paper. Roll out to about thickness of a £1 coin.

Line some individual pie dishes with a disk of greaseproof paper (to make removal a little easier or use a foil pie dish) and line the tin with a layer of pastry. I did get a few cracks but pressed some spare bits into the cracks and these held (I thickened my gravy with a little Ultra-fine flour so it wasn't too runny).

Fill the pie generously with cold filling, moisten the edges of the pastry overhang with a little water, add a pie top, press into place and use a fork to seal then cut some vents. I did re-roll this pastry quite successfully from left over bits of pastry.

At this stage I froze the pies for later use.

To prepare for eating: preheat oven to 180degC and glaze the top of each pie with beaten egg. Place pie tins onto a baking sheet and bake for 35-35mins till golden brown and the filling is thoroughly cooked in the centre.

Remove from oven when ready and leave to cool slightly in the tins before turning out as this allows the pastry, which is quite short and crumbly, to set a little and hold it's shape.

Each pie crust has approximately 8g carbs

Just out the oven

Just out the freezer and glazed with beaten egg