Scotch Egg Pasties

I have been wanting to know how to make Scotch Eggs for a while and actually only discovered quite recently (to my horror) that they are deep fried!!
OK, so a Scotch Egg is never going to be healthy, but these are a helluva lot healthier and actually they look a lot more appetizing than the bright orange balls you get when you’ve deep fried (or bought) normal Scotch Eggs…
Technically I can take some credit for making this old  this recipe a bit healthy.

So, you will need (hang on – confession – I didn’t make the pastry, the British Spring  is too short to be making pastry):

Ingredients:
1 pack short crust pastry
1 great big sausage of sausage meat
5 spring onions (finely chopped)
2 peppadew peppers finely chopped
Large slosh of Worcestershire Sauce
Lots of salt and pepper
About 4 sprigs of thyme (finely chopped)
7 medium eggs (JUST hard boiled)

Method:

• Put the Eggs in a pan of water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 5 minutes.
• Drain, refill the pan with cold water and leave the eggs to cool in that while you get on with the sausage.
• Heat oven to 200 degrees (if you haven’t got a fan then 220 degrees).
• Squeeze all the sausage meat out of the packet into a large bowl.
• Add the thyme, spring onions, peppadew pepper, Worcestershire Sauce and the seasoning.
• Squidge it all together, ideally with a hand, but i used a fork then a spatula to get it all off the sides of the bowl. Check it for seasoning – not by eating it – but by smelling it, you’ll just get this mouth-watering sausagey smell that will make you so impatient to hurry up and cook these flippin’ things.
• Roll out the pastry and cut round disks, measuring about the diameter of a normal cereal bowl.
• Carefully peel the eggs.
• Place the pastry disks on a floured surface
• Dollop and spread (almost to the edges) round a ball, ummm, bigger than a golf ball smaller than a tennis ball of the sausage mix. place an egg in the middle of each disk.

• Wet the edges of each disk and gently pull the edges together and you will see a pasty shape being formed.
• ‘Crimp’ the edges. I’m not sure if that is a technical term but it involves putting the thumb and forefinger together on one hand and using the knuckle from the forefinger on the other hand.
• Place the thumb and forefinger together hand on one side of the stuck together edges and the knuckle on the other side and gently push together forming a relaxed v shape. continue this all the way round and it will look a bit like this.

• Chill the pasties for 30 (ish) mins, brush over an egg wash and bake for 25 – 30 minutes

Now i really must say, that these smelt divine while cooking, were almost impossible to keep until the picnic (a mere 2 hours after cooking) and tasted utterly gorgeous hot and cold!!