Totally winging it with beef

Sound like fun? It was! Because it worked!

So, every other week or two I buy a largish roast, one out of which I can get two meals. I braise it one night for the typical roast beef, potatoes and carrots meal and then the next night I dice up the leftover meat and do something oh so clever with it like beef pot pie, cottage pie or vegetable beef soup.

Last night it was the soup. But this time it wasn't all that soupy. It was good, but not really a proper soup. I had made it in a hurry (trying to finish before we all had to leave for church) and had thrown in a bunch of alphabet pasta, both of which may have contributed to its bulk. Anyway, after church when we were all comparing notes on our weird dinner, I said I should probably use the stuff to...well...stuff something. Then The Viking went, "Meat pies! You could make pasties!"

That man is a genius. We had pasties in England and loved them! They're simply meat pies that are meant to be held in your hand, not eaten with a knife and fork like pot pies are. And they're hard to find over here; good ones are anyway. Anyway, the amount of "soup" I had leftover would not have been enough for another meal on its own, but stuffed into some pastry, I thought it just might give us a third meal from the same hunk of beef. So I did some looking around.

I found a pasty recipe online. It was quick and easy and I had all the required ingredients. So I mixed some up.

I filled six circles of dough with the remains of the soup which had gotten even less soupy (which I didn't think was possible) overnight in the fridge. Really, what else could I have done with it?

And lo! My first attempt at pasties! I had read somewhere that you're supposed to fill the pasties with cream by pouring it into the vent slits but I figured that required a level of hand-eye coordination that I simply do not have. And I am out of cream. So into the oven they went!

Redheaded Snippet performed a little drum roll on the counter for me as I took them out of the oven and they came out looking better than I had hoped for. None had exploded or oozed all over the place (what was there to ooze, really, there was no liquid left in them!); nor had I burned them beyond use.

I was happy as a clam, having a pasty for dinner accompanied by a cold Stella Artois drunk from my newest favorite toy: the Stella Artois Chalice (for it must always be capitalized for importance) I got free with the purchase of a 12-pack of aforementioned Stella Artois. I drink everything out of it now; the kids think I'm barking.

And I must say, they were pretty dang good! Man-Cub was unhappy about the presence of vegetables, asking if I could make a pie with just meat in it next time, but Redheaded Snippet was very complimentary. The Viking hasn't had one yet as he had band practice at church tonight and missed dinner completely. I thought the pastry was nice and flaky, but it may have been a bit too dry. It didn't hold together as well as one would expect from a food that's meant to be eaten with one hand while halfway down a mine shaft. All that crumbling all over would never do among miners. So I'll have to work on that. But in the meantime, I've got yet another meal I can make with leftover beef.

WINNING!