Recipe Share: Roast Pork Pastries

I have to confess, I’m a sucker for recipe out of a box. Literally, that is, recipes printed on a box (or can) of whatever we bought at the store – flour, cornstarch, milk, etc.

Why not?

Over the years since I started cooking and baking, these recipes were proven easy to follow and really delicious. I found my best Thai lumpia recipe from a free booklet I got when I bought an oyster sauce. My embutido and lumpiang shanghai was from a can of tomato sauce.

A few weeks ago, I chanced upon a recipe from a box of cornstarch (Golden Harvest) I bought to make homemade dough for the kids. It’s a pastry dough recipe with only 3 to 4 ingredients tops – flour, water, shortening and egg. You can fill it up with whatever you like. I divided the dough in batches for hotdog, pork belly and cheese fillings. 

Roast Pork Pastry: 

Water Shortening Dough

300g. (2/3 lbs.) Flour

150g. (1/3 lbs) water

75g. (3 2/3 oz.) lard or shortening

Flaky Dough

225g. (1/2 lb) flour

112g. (1/4 lb) Lard or shortening

the flaky dough, a little more yellow than the water shortening dough

1. Mix and knead the 2 doughs separately. Divide each into 25 equally sized portions. Wrap one portion of flaky dough inside each piece of water shortening dough.

2. Roll out each piece of dough until thin and fold into thirds. Repeat this process 2 more times. Roll thin.

Filling:

I didn’t follow the recipe on the box of Golden Harvest cornstarch. I instead used my own pork belly recipe.

Pulled Pork Belly:

500 g. pork belly

1 medium potato, peeled and cubed

¼ cup cooked green peas (optional)

2 tbsp. soy sauce

2 tbsp. oyster sauce

1 ½ tbsp. brown sugar

1 tsp. fish sauce

2 bay leaves, crushed

whole peppercorns

pinch of salt

½ cup water

zest of lemon or calamansi (optional)

chopped basil or coriander

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a pot except for potatoes, peas and chopped basil/coriander. Place the pork belly in the middle of the pot and slow cook until tender and meat starts to fall apart. You may need to add more water in the middle of cooking if the liquid starts to dry.
2. Add the vegetables – add potatoes once pork is halfway done and green peas a minute before you turn off the fire.
3. Once cooked, transfer on a plate, add chopped basil and let cool. Shred the pork into strips with fork once it’s cool enough.
4. Wrap some filling in each piece of dough and lightly flatten. Brush some lightly beaten egg yolk on the top of each pastry.
5. Bake at 200 degrees C (390 degrees F) or until golden brown.

In the oven they go. I placed them in a muffin pan because I'm not sure if they'll hold together since it was my first time to try this recipe. Thankfully, they did :)

The finish product. I honestly didn't expect what would come out of a pastry recipe without egg and all the other ingredients I normally use. Now I know - pastry with a little crunch; texture somewhere in between a hopia and an empanada. 

I'm definitely doing this recipe again, probably put more filling as I now know that the elasticity of the dough can hold the filling in place. Plus the kids had fun doing their own pastry dough.