Friday Pie Day: A Lesson Learned from the Puff Paprika Pie

'Puff' Paprika Pie?

Yeh, I know, mine did not puff.

This week's pie is a bit silly to be honest, because I was just thinking about pie ideas in general, and suddenly the name just popped into my head. Ah, alliteration is great, isn't it? I thought, so I figured I'd try and create a pie of that name.

I happened to have some leftover homemade puff pastry in the freezer, so whipped that out to defrost. The idea was to keep the filling quite simple, but with a marvellous puff pastry hat.

As you can see though, this clearly did not happen.

What I had forgotten was that I hadn't frozen the pastry properly. If you've got leftover scraps of puff pastry dough, you can't just roll it altogether and stick it in the freezer like that. Puff pastry is folded in a certain way to create layers in the dough which is what makes it puff. So when leftover dough, you need to roll it out and fold it the puff pastry way before freezing.

I don't think I need to spell out to you what I did.

In any case, the pie was not ruined, thank goodness. The ratio of butter to flour in puff pastry is a bit higher than in shortcrust pastry, so it just ended up like an extra buttery shortcrust pastry top! Perfectly salvageable.

Puff Paprika Pie (v)

Print-friendly recipe

Serves 4 (using 350ml pie dishes):

250g puff pastry (try making your own with my Quick Puff Pastry recipe)
2 tbsp paprika
200g greek yogurt
8 tomatoes, diced
75g frozen peas
50g sweetcorn
2 tbsp lemon juice

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Roll out the pastry onto a lightly floured surface and cut into 4 oval or round shapes to the size of the top of your pie dishes.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the paprika and yogurt. Add in the tomatoes, peas, sweetcorn and lemon juice, gently mixing together. Divide the mixture evenly into the 4 pie dishes.
3. Line the top of each dish with a puff pastry top, and use a knife to cut off the excess overhand, then use a fork to crimp around the edges.
4. Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes until the pastry is puffed and golden.

Pie out.

Read my other Friday Pie Day adventures.