You may not be lucky enough to live by the sea like Gill Meller, but you can still head outside for picnic fun. Raised pies, pasties, scotch eggs, pickled beetroot, seasonally summery British salads… He’s worked his magic on them all. Just add sunshine
PHOTOGRAPHS ANDREW MONTGOMERY STYLING GILL MELLER
Courgette, chard, basil, parsley and goat’s cheese pasties
Makes 4-6 Hands-on time 1 hour 35 min, plus cooling and chilling Simmering time 15-20 min Oven time 45-50 min
DON’T WASTE IT If you find yourself with leftover pastry and filling, make some extra, smaller pastries.
For the filling
• Bunch chard (about 200g)
• 4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 onions, halved and thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 6-8 small courgettes, sliced into 1-2cm rounds
• Finely grated zest 1 lemon
• Large handful basil, leaves picked and chopped
• Handful flatleaf parsley, leaves picked and chopped
• 150-200g soft goat’s cheese (see Gill’s introduction)
For the rough puff pastry
• 250g unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
• 500g plain flour, plus extra to dust
• 200ml iced water
To finish
• 1 medium free-range egg, well beaten
• 1 tsp black onion seeds
1 Start by making the filling. Strip the chard leaves off the stalks and give everything a wash. Roughly chop the leaves and cut the stalks into 1cm pieces. Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and add the stalk pieces. After a minute or two, add the leaves and cook for a further 2 minutes. Drain, allow to cool, then squeeze out the excess liquid from the chard. Set aside.
2 Set a frying pan over a medium heat and add half the extra-virgin olive oil. When it’s hot, add the onions, garlic and a little seasoning. Sizzle the onions and garlic for 5-6 minutes, stirring regularly so they don’t catch. Add the courgettes, stir well and cook for 15-20 minutes – you want the courgettes to begin to break down a bit and lose some of their excess moisture, so keep stirring them as they cook. When they’re tender but still retaining some shape, take the pan off the heat and stir in the chard, lemon zest, basil and parsley, plus some more salt and pepper. Allow the mixture to cool, then crumble in the goat’s cheese and gently mix. Keep the filling cool while you make the pastry.
3 For the pastry, combine the butter cubes with the flour and a pinch of salt in a bowl, then add just enough of the iced water to bring everything together into a dough full of big pieces of butter. On a well floured surface, roll out the dough in one direction (away from you) into a rectangle about 1cm thick. Fold the 2 short ends into the middle
