National Pie Week; a very rustic steak pie.

It’s national pie week. Apparently. I didn’t know that such a thing existed until Friday night when we saw an ad in the pub, but I’m not one to ignore a cookery based bandwagon I could jump on!

Now this is quite laborious, particularly in comparison to last night’s mussels and chips. This was a full on apron wearing, hours in the kitchen, job. It’s not very traditional, but check it out nonetheless:

I used shin of beef for this, because Delia reckons it’s the best for stews and things.  I didn’t follow her recipe, but did follow her advice on that, and it was dirt cheap (I got over a pound for about three quid!)

First, I took about a pound of beef and tossed it in some seasoned flour. I then browned it all off bit by bit in some hot oil. You want it to caramelise on the edges and go nice and brown, and try not to worry about the state of the bottom of your pan! So eventually you have a plateful of lovely browned meat, and a messy looking pan.

Add little more oil to the pan, then fry off two onions. I used one red and one white onion, but that wasn’t for any fancy reasons, just because I have red onions to use up.  Add a load of mushrooms and let it fry for a bit. Then put the meat back in, add some red wine (I had about a third of a bottle left over) and a dash of Worcestershire sauce (I had to google that to check how to spell it.) Top up with a bit of water, and stick in a bay leaf and let it bubble for about two hours. Take this opportunity to have a cup of tea/glass of wine/start writing your blog… I know that normally it would be ale or stout in this, but I didn’t have any.

It reduces down lots and lots:

I can’t claim to be a pastry expert, and I know that steak pie is the best ever when made with suet pastry, but I don’t have suet, and if I bought some it would sit in the cupboard forever more. So I’m just going for a bog standard short crust as per the BeRo cookbook: http://www.be-ro.com/index.asp I left it to rest for half an hour in the fridge.

I buttered and floured a pie dish.  I think ideally the filling should be allowed to completely cool so the pastry doesn’t go soggy, but I was running out of time! So I had to just go with it. I lined the pie dish with half the pastry, and filled it with the stew mixture. I used a slotted spoon so the gravy stayed in the pan, to stop it going soggy, and saved it for serving. Roll out the other half of the pastry, put it on the top, and mash down the edges a little bit with a fork. Put a hole in the middle so the steam can get out. And put in the oven at 180 degrees for about forty five minutes. It all looks a bit haphazard, but let's call it rustic:

I don’t have a rolling pin, but do have lots of empty wine bottles:

We had it with curly kale and lovely buttery mash, served the gravy at the table to pour over the top of this: 

 

Whilst making this I mostly listened to: Elbow, the Seldom Seen Kid. However, that ended when I was only about a third of the way through the process, so then I switched to 6music.

This weeks soup: “spring minestrone” At least that’s what I’m calling it. It used up all our leftover veg, had some bacon, a tin of borlotti beans and some home made chicken stock.