I’ve had the idea in my head for a while now to make and saffron puff pastry and use it for seafood pies – so I did. This is the first time I have made puff pastry from scratch. If you haven’t made it before I reckon don’t bother – it’s a pain in the arse – just buy it. However I suppose you have to make it if you want to put saffron in it.

Anyway….with the commercial scallop season maybe drawing to a close soon I thought I would make some scallop pasties.

For the Saffron Puff Pastry

Just use a standard puff recipe like this but into the iced water bleed around 10 saffron threads.

For the Filling

Ingredients:

250g Fresh Scallops
16x Spears of Asparagus
Juice and Zest of 1 Lemon
Pepper and Salt
Fresh Thyme
1 Cup of Grated Mozzarella

Method:

1. Roll the pastry flat to about 5mm thick and using a large soup bowl cut out circles of pastry.

2. On one side of the circle of pastry, leaving 1 cm around the edge for when you fold, place a little cheese, then 4 spears of asparagus cut to the length the of the pastry, 5 or 6 scallops, pepper and salt, a few thyme leaves, a sprinkling of lemon zest and a squeeze of lemon juice and a little more cheese.

3. Then wash with egg around the edge of the pastry, fold over, then press down with a fork to seal. Prick the top of the pasty to let steam out.

4. Refrigerate for half and hour then put in an oven at 200 C for about 25mins or until golden.

5. Serve with tomato relish – you might want to add a bit of extra vinegar to your relish as the pasty is pretty full on.

Makes 4