I was going to call this recipe Chicken Cornish Pasties but apparently Cornish Pasties must be made from beef and be made in Cornwall UK. So I’m not going to argue.

Originally Cornish Pasties were made for tin miner’s lunches and they never ate the edge of the crust to avoid getting led poisoning from the tin on their hands.

This is another one of my creations; yes I made this up as I went. I like to see what I can create in the kitchen that is new and delicious.

The pasties take about two and a half hours to prepare from filling to serve. You want everything cold when you assemble the pasties so the crust comes out flaky.

Step 1: Filling Ingredients

1 onion diced

2 cloves garlic crushed and diced

115 g Mushrooms diced

1 lb. Ground Chicken

1 / 2 lb. peas and carrots

1 tablespoon corn starch

1 tablespoon Poultry Seasoning

1 /4 teaspoon black pepper

Step 2: Directions

Start by poaching the ground chicken.

One of the tricks I use to cook raw ground meat is poaching it instead of frying it, when you fry ground meat it can come out in large clumps and fatty. But if you poach ground meat you can stir the meat into the water so when it cooks it comes out in small bits you can mix into sauces more thoroughly. You can also separate excess fat by pouring it and the water off through a strainer.

Once the chicken is poached add the dice onions, mushrooms, crush and diced garlic peas and carrots.

Simmer until any excess water is boiled off.

Through a sifter add and mix in two table spoons of corn starch, then mix in the black pepper and poultry seasoning.

When the filling is cooked and mixed let stand to cool.

Step 3: Crust Ingredients

2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour

1/2 cup (125 mL) vegetable shortening

1/2 cup (125 mL) butter

1 egg yoke

1 tsp (5 mL) salt

1 tsp (5 mL) sugar

About 3/4 cup (200 mL) cold water

Step 4: Directions

Cold is your friend when you make crust dough, so try not to let the dough warm up.

Separate the egg yolk from the egg white; put the egg white to one side, you will need it later.

Mix flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl, and mix in egg yolk, add the butter and vegetable shortening, then cut in with the pastry cutter until mixture forms clumps.

Add the cold water slowly while mixing with a spoon to moisten dough.

Mixing and cutting in the butter can warm up the dough so you need to cool the dough before rolling it out.

Gather dough into a log and separate into eight equal parts, role the parts into balls, cover in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until dough is firm enough to roll out into pasty crusts. This can take about 30 minutes.

Step 5: Rolling Out the Pasties

When the dough balls are cool; roll out the balls of dough on a flour coated board, with a flour coated rolling pin.

Flip the dough and coat the dough, board, and rolling pin with flour, and roll again. Repeat this until the dough is the desired thickness and about six inches across.

Once the dough is the right size place three heaping tablespoons of the filling in the center of the rolled out dough.

Moisten the edge of the dough with the egg white and fold one side of the dough over top of the filling.

Fold the edge of the crust in and crimp the edge.

With a sharp knife cut an air vent in the center of the pasty to let the steam out.

Place the pasty on a flour coated cookie sheet and refrigerate while you prepare the other pasties.