The only pastry recipe I ever use
Sweet or savoury, this simple method should be added to your repertoire.
A reliable, delicious and buttery pastry recipe is one of the greatest tools the seasonal cook can have up their sleeve. It’s a golden and flaky blank canvas that allows you to concentrate on those fleeting flavours that have just arrived in your kitchen. Whether it be for a sun-kissed strawberry galette on a golden spring day, a peach and fig leaf turnover in the height of summer or a prune and beef shin pie in the depths of winter - I turn to this recipe, for sweet and savoury uses, throughout the year.
This was the first coming-together of ingredients I ever felt truly protective over, my hand just gripping the paper a second too long whenever passing on the recipe to other cooks in the kitchen. After making it a hundred times or more, in restaurants and at home, I feel I really understand its workings - why it behaves in the way it does and how.
Pastry needn’t be something approached with timid thoughts and a lightness of touch. I hope that this recipe and the guidance therein will steady your hand and beckon you into the kitchen.