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.