Variation · to nibble
Crunchy mini-pies
Wheat pastry with tapioca starch scalded in hot olive oil: light, and it crackles like a Brazilian biscoito de polvilho. Spiced meat inside.
- ~20 pies
- 1 h prep
- 30 min in the oven
You'll need
Pastry
- 150 g sour tapioca starch (polvilho azedo), or sweet
- 100 ml olive oil + 100 ml water
- 150 g plain flour
- 1 egg and 1 tsp salt
- 1 egg yolk, to glaze
Filling
- 400 g beef or mutton, chopped fine with a knife
- 1 large onion, chopped, and 2 tbsp olive oil
- ½ tsp pepper, ½ coriander seed, ¼ cumin, 1 cm ginger, a pinch of cinnamon
- 80 g cooked chickpeas, crushed, and salt
How to make it
- Filling first. Cook the onion in the oil over medium heat until golden. Turn up the heat, fry the meat until browned and dry, add the spices, crushed chickpeas and salt and cook 3 minutes more. Spread on a plate and let it cool completely.
- Scald the starch. Put the tapioca starch and salt in a bowl. Bring the oil and water to the boil together and pour over the starch in one go, stirring with a spoon: it turns into a thick, glossy paste.
- Finish the pastry. When cool enough to touch, add the flour and the egg and knead until smooth, soft and not sticky. Too dry: water by the spoonful; too sticky: a little flour. Cover and rest 15 minutes.
- Assemble. Heat the oven to 190 °C. Roll the pastry thin, 2–3 mm, between two sheets of baking paper. Line 6 cm tartlet tins (or mini-muffin tins), fill, and cover with a disc of pastry, pinching the edges. Prick a small hole on top.
- Bake 25–30 minutes, brushing with the yolk beaten with 1 tsp water halfway through, until deep golden and firm.
- Cool on a rack, out of the tins, so the bottoms crisp up. Keep them uncovered or under a cloth, never in a closed box: steam softens the crust.
The story behind it
Our own creation, built from period pieces: the converso meat pies, and Soares writing in 1587 that in Pernambuco the Portuguese made “muito bom pão, e bolos” from manioc, “em lugar da farinha de trigo”, instead of wheat flour.