Cooking Cheap

The recipe isn’t mine. I got it from Emirl I’ve used it to enclose all kinds of leftovers (roast beef hash, leftover pork in chipotle&tomatillo, whatever). These hand pies freeze very well. Just pop a frozen one into a 225 or 250 oven for an hour. A nice lunch entrée.

It does take forever to make a dozen or even a half dozen if you do a shallow pan fry as I do. Create the filling the day before and make the dough, fill, fry, and freeze the next day. Then again, leftovers have never tasted so good. Sadly, there’s no way to tell you how much filling you need

Experienced bakers (not really me) might see what’s happening in the ingredients. To me, it’s a rich dough but not too heavy and surprisingly doesn’t taste of the lard in the dough or the oil it was fried in. It would probably work for sweet fillings too, but I don’t do sweets.

I often do a half recipe (beat 1 egg really well and divide that). Here’s the full recipe.

3 Cups flour (all purpose)
1.5 tsp salt
.75 tsp baking powder.
6 Tbl of lard
1 egg
.75 Cup milk

Turn on the burner to heat the skillet of oil (7 or 8 on the knob for me on the small electric burner in an 8″ skillet with 1/4 to 1/2 inch of oil).
Mix flour , salt, baking powder in a bowl.
Cut lard into dry ingredientss until until course meal size (its a pie dough, maybe a bit finer, don’t worry).
Beat egg and cold milk together. Gradually add to dry ingredients, mixing into a thick dough. You could let it rest a few minutes if you feel the need.

Divide into 12 pieces. Roll each into a 5 inch circle (or rectangle or some other shape). You may need a floured surface or rolling pin. May not. It’s more like biscuit making than pie dough. In the center add 1/4 Cup of your filling. Seal edges with egg wash

Fold and crimp with the tines of a fork or what ever you pastry sealing technique you prefer. I roll and and pinch (may not need the egg wash, just saying)

Fry in the oil until a medium golden brown. Turning once. A few minutes per side. Depending on the burner and pan and amount of oil you might have to turn the burner up, or down. Not to worry, even the bad ones are pretty damn good.

[Update Oct 23, 2009]
I did a batch of 12 turnovers and I fried 6 and baked 6. The baked are OK, just not as good for a couple of reasons: Frying seals up the seams quickly. Backing gives them the chance to pull apart at the seams and ooze the insides onto the hot baking sheet which means smoke (alarms) at 350F. Taste wise, they were fine. Different but fine.