I thought a turkey and ham pie was a great choice for dinner yesterday. The only problem is that I like to mix the meat with various vegetables in a white sauce and, after making the pastry, that was all my unsalted butter used up. Normally, I’d make my sauce from a roux combining butter and flour. What to do?

Simple pastry is, of course, just fat and flour combined together with a pinch of salt and a bit of liquid (some milk and some water in this case). I decided to try cooking the trimmings from doing the pie topping and turning them into a white sauce. And, you know what, it worked pretty well. As I heated them, I broke the pieces up with a spatula and added milk. It did help having a stick blender – I took the mixture off the heat and mixed it well so there were no lumps before adding a little more milk and heating further.

I would say that the resulting sauce was as good as any I’ve made. It certainly did the job of unifying the pie filling and I think the top probably also benefited from resting before being applied (I had to get the sauce in first!). Overall, reconfigured pastry was a success.