Curried Smoked Sturgeon Pasties

Many of my pie cravings are inspired by the writers at The Guardian. Today's recipe is based upon The pie life: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's pie recipes. The "Curried smoked haddock pasties" described there seemed like an item worth baking for the Pint & Pie's first blog post.

French Butter & Flour Crust

First up, the crust. Given a choice, I often opt for the better quality ingredients when cooking and in this case had in mind to get some European-style butter. The grocery had an unfamiliar brand, Elle & Vire, from France that I couldn't resist giving a try. Probably overkill for a pastry crust, but just thinking about that Normandy butter makes it taste better!

After years of imagining making crusts were difficult, a couple tips from an Alton Brown video showed me how wrong I was.

Today I used a food scale which I had purchased recently to assist in homebrewing. Normally I would simply measure in cups and tablespoons but the recipe had called for 150g of butter and 300g of flour. The purchased butter was 200g so I increased the flour to 400g. (I did have leftover pastry at the end of the day.)

After mixing the butter and flour with a pastry blender and adding cold water until it's just barely holding together in a ball, the trick is to pop it into the fridge for an hour or so. The pastry recipe didn't call for this step, but they did add an extra one I hadn't tried before. They rolled out the dough, then folded it back on itself to roll again, repeating several times. After the original refrigeration I performed these steps and returned the dough back to the fridge. The resulting dough was fantastic to work with, without any crumbling or difficulties assembling the pasties.

Spices & Onions

The filling mixture was new to me and required a bit of shopping for the curry spice. The grocery had a red curry paste in the "international" section that seemed like the best fit. The generic dry curry in the spice section had ingredients that largely overlapped others already listed in the recipe.

Red Curry, Sweet Onion, Ginger, Garlic, & Spices

Before & After

Of course the star ingredient of the filling is the smoked fish. It was spotting the smoked sturgeon from the Locals Seafood newsletter that really convinced me to give this pastie recipe a try.

The 8oz portion I picked up at the pre-Thanksgiving farmers' market surprised me with its firmness. Being used to smoked salmon, which flakes easily along the grain, the sturgeon is very firm. I chose to crumble it into chunks, though thinly slicing it would have also been an option. It had a nice clean smoke flavor that was not overpowering. In this recipe the baking further reduced it and, in the end, was a perfect match.

Pint & Pie

The pint on hand to enjoy was my homebrew of Courage Directors Bitter from Clone Brews.

Pastry
200g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
400g plain flour
1 tsp salt

Filling
2 tbsp olive oil
1 thumb-sized piece ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground turmeric
1 large onion, halved and finely sliced
2 tsp red curry paste
100ml heavy cream 
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
225g (1/2lb) smoked sturgeon, cut into chunky cubes
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To make the filling, heat the olive oil in medium-hot cast iron skillet. Add the ginger, garlic, and spices and stir for half a minute. (Suggestion: Prep these ingredients into a small bowl prior to heating the skillet. Have the sliced onions ready in a separate bowl. It'll make things much easier.) Add the sliced onions stir until softened. Add the cream, stirring until thickened. Remove from heat. Stir in the cilantro. (Note: Original recipe called for white grape raisins and dried apricots, which I chose to omit.) Refrigerate.

After the filling has cooled completely, create the pasties and bake at 375F for 25-35 minutes.

Enjoy!