I was proud of these skirret pasties I cooked last night as they were my own invention and were both unique and delicious!
Ingredients: Skirret roots (maybe about 200g), 3 young Babington leeks, handful of chives, handful of everlasting onion, 1 elephant garlic clove, large handful sea beet leaves, bunch of fresh thyme sprigs, olive oil, salt and pepper. For the pastry: 150g wholemeal flour, 150g white flour, 60ml olive oil, 120ml water, 1 tsp salt.
I experimented with olive oil pastry for these pasties using the recipe on this blog which I was pleased to discover for its good Mediterranean recipes too. (I'd like to have a go at growing oil seeds and pressing my own oil so I like to learn about baking with oil rather than margarine. Also I can't buy margarine without buying plastic.) I put the pastry in the fridge whilst I made the pasty filling.
I roasted the skirret roots with olive oil and salt and pepper. They took only about 10 minutes in a hot oven.
The chives, onion, garlic and leeks were sautéed in olive oil and the slightly shredded sea beet leaves were wilted on top before adding the fresh thyme leaves and the roasted skirret.
A side plate (18cm diameter) made a good template for cutting out the pastry circles. A smear of water around the edge.....
makes the sides of the circle easy to squeeze together for crimping into the classic pasty shape.
At this point I realized I'd forgotten to put any salt in the pastry so I glazed them with salt water and sprinkled a little extra salt on top! They were baked in a hot oven for about 25 minutes until golden brown.
They were very good. Skirret is so sweet and it tasted great with the very slightly bitter sea beet. The pastry turned out a little hard though, acceptable but not luscious!
Stew and I ate three between the two of us and the fourth one has gone to work with him today!
N.B. I sell a range of perennial vegetable plants on my website. 
