Sausage Hand Pies

No utensils necessary, you can take these handy hand pies anywhere! On a picnic, for example. Which is just what Eric and I did this evening.

This recipe is from the halloween Martha issue. I halved the recipe.

Pate Brisee

5 cups all purpose flour

2 t salt

2 t sugar

1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons

3/4-1 cup ice water

Combine flour, salt and sugar in food processor, add butter and pulse until only pea sized chunks remain. (or rub the butter in with the flour with your hands if you haven't gotten your food processor yet.) With machine running, add water slowly in through the feed tube only til the dough starts to come together. Pull dough into a ball and divide into three disks. Wrap these in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour. (I only did for about 30 min, and nothing bad happened.)

1 lb sweet italian sausage, casings removed.

1 large onion, diced (1.5 c)

1 t minced fresh thyme

1/4 t fresh ground pepper

1 T plus 1 t flour, plus more for dusting

3/4 cup chicken stock (I completely forgot about this when I made the recipe.)

1 medium Granny Smith Apple, cut into 1/2 in cubes.

Pate Brisee

1 large egg, slightly beaten.

Cook sausage in a skillet, breaking it up as you go, until the pink is gone. Transfer the sausage to a plate, leaving the grease in the skillet.

Cook the onion, pepper and thyme until the onion is translucent.

Add flour to the pan, stirring about 30 seconds. Add the chicken stock, stirring until thick, about 1 minute. Stir in apples and sausage, let cool.

Preheat oven to 375.

Roll out each disk of dough on a floured surface until it's about 1/8 in thick. Place them on parchment paper and refrigerate for 15 min.

Using a 3-3/4 in round cookie cutter, cut rounds from the sheets of dough. Place 2 T filling in the center of half of the rounds. Brush edges with lightly beaten egg. (you can either cut interesting shapes from the remaining rounds and replace the shape, slightly off, or cut little slits like I did.) Top the filled circles with the slitted circles, pressing down with a fork to seal. Place on parchment lined baking sheet and refrigerate for 15 MORE minutes. (I did not do this step). (Alternatively, once you get to this point, you can freeze the pies and bake without defrosting at a later date. They will cook in the same amount of time, according to Martha.)

Brush with egg and bake, rotating the sheets halfway through, until golden brown, about 40 minutes. Serve pies warm or at room temp.