Cornish pasties, the easy way

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One of my cookbooks, Tastes of Liberty, features cuisines from much of Europe including Great Britain. Since a large part of our ancestry is from there, Don and I are fans of British food. We are especially fond of pot pies. (Ah yeah, so fond we had them for our 10th anniversary three years ago, but that's another story.)

Normally, when we have pot pies, they are the kind that are made somewhere else, frozen, then baked in our oven. Tonight, they were baked in our oven, but they definitely required some assembly beforehand. And that was such a good change, I'm blogging my version of them to have for future reference.

My version is simple. It uses just two ingredients. Because we still have half of both of them, I'm going to post directions that will serve four people.

One two-crust package of pie crusts
One 24-oz can of beef stew

Cut each pie crust in half. On one half of your now semi-circular piece of pie crust, place up to 6 oz. of stew. Fold crust over, and pinch every edge to seal. Bake in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, turn oven down to 350 and bake for 30 more minutes.

My recipe is inspired by one I saw in Tastes of Liberty. Some food from Great Britain comes from a region called Cornwall, so that food is known as "Cornish." Cornwall is probably best known for its game hens, but it's also home to the original version of these little pot pie tarts I made tonight, and is known there as a Cornish pasty.

The original way, as described in Tastes of Liberty, would be to make your own pie crust  and hand roll it into three 7" circles, to make three tarts serving six people. To that you would add fresh beef round chopped finely by you (not your butcher), potatoes, onions, turnips and carrots. This recipe would have you put all of this into the pastry raw and let it cook as the crust bakes, but I'm really not seeing how that would work, when my precooked, canned stew came out so good. So, I would at least partially cook the meat and vegetables into a stew.

But, the reality for me is Don and I right now have to rely sometimes on canned food. That's a whole lot more canned vegetables than canned meat, so Don hopes these tasty little pot pie tarts appear on the table again, but next time with fresh, cooked meat (he probably would prefer chicken) and canned vegetables.

Turn pork chops into juicy "carnitas" tacos

These are my original recipes, created by slightly modifying one of my cookbook's pork chop recipes and then majorly modifying another cookbook's recipe for carnitas. You will get at least two nights of meals from this. Since we are a family of two, we started with eight pork chops and were able to stretch the second night's meal into leftovers on a third night. If you eat light, make side dishes, or start with more than eight pork chops (or larger pork chops) you can feed more people, or have leftover pork chops before you move on to the "carnitas" tacos. You also can make a two-for-one meal by roasting pork according to your favorite pork roast recipe, then using the taco recipe here.

Spicy Pork Chops with apricots

8 pork chops

2 teaspoon each ground cumin seed, coriander and ginger

1 tablespoon olive oil

3/4 cup slivered dried apricots

3/4 cup orange juice

Mix the spices and coat each pork chop with the mixture

Heat the olive oil in a 12" skillet. Fry four of the chops for five to seven minutes on each side. They need to be not just brown on both sides but in the middle too. If you fry them on too high of heat they will not be moist on the sides, or they will not be done in the middle. The thicker they are, the lower the heat needs to be.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine the apricots and orange juice. Bring to boil, then simmer for about five minutes. You will have a thin syrup. Remove the pork chops, and place four them on up to four plates. Leave the pork chop fat in the pan, and mix in the juice/apricot mixture. Boil for one minute, then pour it over the plated pork chops.

Do not wash or rinse the pan before moving onto Step 1 of the next recipe. You will be refrigerating the four remaining pork chops after they're cooked unless you plan to eat both dishes at the same meal.

Orange carnitas

Fry the four remaining pork chops. You can grate some orange peel or add a little more cumin. You can also add orange juice to the pan if you wish, or more olive oil.

Slice the cooled pork chops.

Slice a small onion and fry them in olive oil until translucent.

Add the sliced onions and pork chops to a can of black beans and 3/4 cup of orange juice. Boil the mixture until the pork chops are fully heated, and the entire mixture is the desired consistency.

Place the mixture into up to eight warmed tortillas.

Add toppings. I added green onions, salsa, cheddar cheese, sour cream and radishes. Lettuce, carrots and black olives - whatever you like on tacos - would be good.

Can this become a well-read food blog?

I apologize to any faithful followers (if there are any left) for how much I have neglected this blog. Maybe about a year ago or more, I had high hopes this blog would become something of a more professional blog. If I am going to make it as a well-known niche blogger, I expect it to be this niche blog (my food blog) because I actually have more expertise in cooking than I do in paper crafting (the main focus of my other blog.)

However, for the last 10 years (this month) I have been very involved in TwoPeasinabucket.com, which is one of the largest online communities for scrapbookers. I have been a scrapbooker for 12 years. So, in my (too much) leisure time, I spend a lot of time online with other scrapbookers, learning, growing in my expertise, and sharing what I know with others. That sharing is primarily through Two Peas, and now Facebook groups for two art journaling communities I belong to. But it is also somewhat through the other blog. Which means that blog is the one that is getting attention, while this one is neglected.

I had been meaning to come here for several days, because this blog is still my go to place for when I create an original recipe and need to store it somewhere where I won't lose it. If it were not my original recipe, that place would be Pinterest for online recipes, and my "cookbook organizer" for those recipes I saw in one of my cookbooks. But this recipe I will be posting (next entry now) is for a combination of two cookbook recipes. I have to put "see my blog" in the cookbook organizer.

Today, I am toying again with what it would take to make this blog into something that pays money. I realize I probably won't become a celebrity blogger, but I think I have some REAL friends who could be persuaded that this is the blog they want to read. And I think if I work hard at it, I can make it good enough that they will tell their friends. So here's to my new dream of being a food blogger.