#Ava’s Bacon and Egg Pies

[askwhatsforlunch]

Ava’s Bacon and Egg Pies

On Wednesday, I took Ava to one of my favourite places, and after a walk in the woods and an amble around the ponds, we sat for a picnic by the water, with swans, coots and grebes gliding past us. After a stroll in my garden, she’d decided she’d make the main, and baked these absolutely scrumptious Bacon and Egg Pies! My girl is a fine cook, and biting into the crisp pastry, and the rich, fragrant, juicy filling was a sheer delight! 

Today, Ava is gone; Mum is back from Vienna and we are driving to a restful holiday in the midst of Auvergne’s old volcanoes. Perhaps with a couple of these beauties for lunch! Happy Sunday!

Ingredients (serves 2):

1 ½ cup plain flour

½ teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

½ cup ice water

225 grams/8 ounces thick-cut smoked streaky bacon rashers

2 Green Onions

a small bunch fresh Garden Chervil

1 tablespoon White Port

1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

2 large eggs

¼ teaspoon fleur de sel or sea salt flakes

½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

1 egg, lightly beaten

Generously butter two 13cm/5″ individual pie plates. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Rub butter into flour mixture between your fingers, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually add ice water, until a soft ball forms. Knead pastry lightly, 5 minutes, wrap in cling film and flatten into a disc. Place in the refrigerator for at least, 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Cut bacon into thick lardons, and place into a medium bowl.

Finely chop Green Onions and Garden Chervil, and add to the lardons. Season with black pepper. 

Drizzle with White port, and toss well, with clean hands, to combine and mix. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 200°C/395°F.

Divide pastry into two portions: one third, and two thirds. Divide the latter into two equal portions and roll each onto a lightly floured surface into a circle. Fit each pastry circle into prepared pie plates, letting the pastry overhang on the edges.

Divide remaining pastry into two equal portions, and roll each on a lightly floured surface to make the pastry lids.

Fill prepared pastry cases generously with Port and herb bacon filling. Gently dig a well in the middle of each pie and carefully break an egg in. Season with fleur de sel and black pepper. 

Brush the edges of each pie with water, top with the pastry lid and, gently but firmly pressing to seal. Trim off excess dough and crimp. Cut four slits on each pie, avoiding piercing the egg yolk, and brush with beaten egg. Cut out little hearts in trimmed-off pastry to decorate the pies, and brush with egg wash as well. 

Place in the middle of the hot oven, and bake at 200°C/395°F, for 35 minutes or until evenly golden brown.

You can serve Ava’s Bacon and Egg Pies hot immediately, or let them cool slightly and wrap them for a picnic.

[aardvark-123]

~Excessively Twee Borderlands Headcanons: Cuisine Edition~

Gaige has a big appetite, yet can easily forget to eat when she's busy vault hunting or tinkering with robots. It usually fell to Axton to remind her to eat; while he may not be the maturest of men, he understands that the body needs fuel. Gaige has made some attempts at cooking, but her marshmallow and crisp spaghetti carbonara proved to be an acquired taste.

Amara loves Partali's spicy, aromatic cuisine. She laments that few of the Six Galaxies' take-away dishes come close to the authentic taste of dhal makhani and a keema paratha. Her appetite is enormous, however, and she could eat a kilogramme of lamb biryani while complaining it isn't as good as her personal chef's.

Claptrap can bake. He hands out a lot of side-quests to fetch him ingredients, which he turns into delicious, albeit messily constructed pies, cakes, biscuits and loaves of bread. If you're nice to Claptrap, a surprisingly tall order for some people, you'll seldom find yourself without something in the cupboard.

Moze likes soup.

Ava is a veritable gourmet. As a homeless child, her favourite foods were "not rotten" and "provided willingly", treats which she didn't always manage to scavenge. When Maya adopted Ava, she made sure to feed her up, and Ava's palate broadened to the full extent of Athenian cuisine. Now she is an adventurous eater who loves trying new dishes, but will pretty much eat anything within two basic criteria: "not rotten" and "not too many olives".

The basics of cookery are also known to Ava. Although it's hardly her favourite activity- hardly, perhaps, the sort of activity she'd admit to enjoying- she can make pasta, okonomiyaki, salad, scrambled eggs and other simple dishes with aplomb. She used to send Maya anonymous Mothers' Day breakfasts, for which she'd refuse to admit any responsibility, because no way was she ever going to be cute. Food love stories, brought to you by the Crimson Raiders.

Lilith enjoys spicy food and is quite good at cooking. She isn't a fancy chef, but can be relied upon to make a lovely fried breakfast, tossed salad, or burger and chips.

FL4K doesn't eat, but they take great pains to secure good food for their pets. Meat-Thief loves fish and chips, Broodless likes a fruit salad, Mr Chew has a taste for Lancer tyres, and Ms Loader Bot partakes in only the finest Lithium Ion Batteries.

Salvador is quite the chef, a barbecue expert and master of Mexican-influenced-part-of-Pandora cuisine. He can be very particular about his ingredients; no, you can't use skag liver instead of bullymong chops, it'll ruin the flavour profile of the whole meal. And what do you MEAN ketchup's another kind of mole?!

Tannis has seven perennial favourite foods: boiled eggs, carrot cake, toast with peanut butter, bananas, rice balls, Salvador's famous bullymong pancita, and sausages. She used to love bacon, but gave it up for personal reasons.

Roland was always an accomplished sandwich artisan, with the ability to house delicious combinations of ingredients between two slices of bread. Sometimes he took it to strange excesses such as the pie sandwich (or Wigan kebab), the spaghetti carbonara sandwich (or Sloppy Giuseppe), and the full English breakfast sandwich (or Sandwich That Annoys Lilith Because It's Just Missing the Point).