Frugal War Rations recipe Wednesday – bacon turnovers

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Yum - bacon turnovers with almost fat-free pastry!

Saturday night is bacon and sausages night here at Chez Green. We’re fortunate enough to have a local farm that sells organic meat and their sausages are second to none.

Invariably I deliberately buy and cook ‘too much’ in order to make a casserole later in the week (providing Mr Green doesn’t knock up a Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato sandwich in the meantime!)

This week, however, I decided to use the bacon for a delicious sounding war time recipe – bacon turnovers.

Turnovers

Making turnovers was a way to make the meat ration go further and turnovers were created as a ‘portable meal’ – providing everything you need for a hearty meal in an easy-to-carry form. Of course, if you’re vegetarian or vegan, this recipe can be easily adapted.

The pastry was unlike any pastry I had made before, due to the lack of fat, and I had terrible trouble handling and rolling it. It kept breaking and was frustrating to work with, BUT it was very light and crumbly when cooked and went down a treat. It didn’t look pretty, but it tasted decent 😉

Here’s the recipe I used, taken from Marguerite Pattens ‘We’ll Eat Again”‘

Recipe for 4 bacon turnovers

pastry ingredients

12oz Self raising flour
pinch salt
3 oz fat (I used butter, but the recipe calls for bacon fat or ‘cooking fat’)
water

filling ingredients

4oz fat bacon rashers
2 cooked leeks, finely chopped
8oz cooked potatoes, diced
1/2 tbsp chopped parsley

method

Sift the flour and salt and rub in the cooking fat. Bind with water until you get a dough and leave to rest.
Grill and chop the bacon rashers and mix with the leeks, potatoes and parsley.
Roll out the pastry and cut into 4 large rounds
Put the bacon mixture in the centre of each round, moisten the edges of the pastry and fold into a turnover shape while sealing well.
Bake in the middle of a hot oven for 25 minutes until golden (I did 170 degrees in my fan oven).

I put a little gravy in mine as well because the mixture looked very dry and unappetising without it.

So far three of our readers have shared recipes for me to try. We’ve eaten Jean’s Grandma’s Fat Free sponge, Hazel has challenged us to eat Woolton pie and Maisie has introduced us to wacky cake. Do you have a recipe for us to try – something that is from the war era or is a frugal idea?

filled with hearty goodness and ready to eat on the move

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