A pastry is a container for something that matters.
This seems obvious. It is not. Most people think the pastry is the point, because the pastry is what they see first and hold first and eat first. They are wrong in the same way a general is wrong when he focuses on the armor and not the man wearing it. The crust is how the filling gets to the person it was made for. The crust is the transport. The filling is the reason anyone made the trip.
I learned this from a baker in the Cragtooth Highlands, in a village two days east of where I had been, doing other things. She did not know who I was. She was making pastries when I came through, and the smell reached me before the village did. I ate them standing in her doorway. She had not made them for me. She made them for the people who lived there. I happened to be one of those people at that moment, for that hour. That is the point of a pastry. It does not ask who you are. It asks whether you are hungry.
The onions go on first and they go on long. This is where most people fail — they give it ten minutes, call it done, and wonder why the pastry tastes of raw onion. Thirty minutes. Low heat. You are waiting for gold, not blonde. There is a difference and the difference is in the flavor of everything that follows.
Savory Hand Pastries (Caramelized Onion and Cheese) Makes 8. One is a serving. Pip will take three.
For the crust:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup cold butter, cut into small pieces — keep it cold until the moment you need it
- 5 to 6 tablespoons ice water
For the filling:
- 2 large onions, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, or ½ teaspoon dried
- 1 cup hard aged cheese, grated — sharp cheddar, gruyère, or aged gouda
- Salt and black pepper
- 1 egg, beaten, for brushing
Begin with the filling, because it has to be done and cold before you touch the crust. Put the onions, butter, and a pinch of salt into a wide pan over the lowest heat you have. Leave them. Come back every ten minutes and stir. At twenty minutes they will look like they haven’t changed. At thirty minutes you will see the gold starting. At thirty-five to forty minutes they are done — soft all the way through, deeply gold, the smell sweet and nothing like raw onion. Stir in the thyme. Take the pan off the heat and leave it alone until it is completely cool. Not warm. Cold.
While the filling cools, make the crust. Put the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the cold butter. Work it in with your fingertips, rubbing, not pressing — you want flat pieces in the flour, not paste. When the largest pieces are the size of a small pea, add ice water a tablespoon at a time, mixing with a fork after each. Stop when the dough holds together when you squeeze a handful. It will look rough. This is correct. Flatten it, wrap it, put it in the cold for thirty minutes. The cold does the last of the work.
Heat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Roll the dough on a floured surface to three millimeters thick — about the thickness of a coin. Cut circles twelve centimeters across; a small bowl makes a clean template.
Combine the cooled onions with the cheese. Taste for salt and pepper. Put a generous spoonful on one half of each circle, leaving a border of one centimeter. Fold the other half over and press the edges firmly together. Crimp with a fork. Cut one small vent in the top. Brush with the beaten egg.
Bake twenty-two to twenty-five minutes, until the crust is deep gold across the whole surface — not pale in the middle, not patchy. Deep gold. Cool five minutes. Not three — five. The filling holds heat long after the crust has stopped, and at one minute it will scald; at five minutes it is merely very hot, which is what you want.
They are good cold, the next day. Most things that take time are.