2012 Cooking Club Week 48: Beef and mushroom pies

I love pies. Really love them. I don't mean those awful pork pies you can buy in Tesco, but lovely rich meaty pies with proper gravy and buttery pastry. NOM. Here's how we make beef and mushroom pies in my house.



Note: This recipe takes quite a while to make, so not ideal for after work, but perfect for a Sunday afternoon. (Hence my posting it today rather than Friday )

Ingredients:

For the pie filling:
1 lb stewing beef
1 onion
1 large carrot
1 stalk of celery
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp flour
1/2 punnet mushrooms
1 Knorr rich beef stock pot
1 beef stock cube
1 tbsp worchestershire sauce
1 tsp English mustard
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
Salt, pepper

For the pastry:
250g flour
110 butter (cold)
Pinch salt
5 tbsp cold water



Method:

You want your pie filling to cook on the stove for a couple of hours, so let's get this going first.

Chop your stewing beef (we got large chunks from the butcher) into smaller pieces like so. You may also wish to pour yourself a whiskey and coke, as we did



Put all the beef into a plastic bag with a tablespoon of flour and shake it well, coating each piece of meat.



Get a large heavy pan on the stove, put in a generous glug of oil and whack the heat up full. Chuck in the beef when the oil is hot and and cook until browned.

While this is happening, get your veggies ready. Chop the carrot, celery and onion into small pieces.



You want to have roughly the same amount of carrot, celery and onion. Also chop your garlic.

When the beef is browned all over, turn the heat down to medium and add the chopped veggies to the pot and mix well.



Put the lid on and leave to cook for 10 - 15 mins until the veggies are tender. In the meantime, half and slice the mushrooms. Add to the pot and put the lid back on for another 5 minutes.

Don't panic if there is a crust on the bottom of your pan - this is from the flour we coated the meat in. This will lift off later when the stock has been added, and will give loads of flavour to the mixture. Here's what our pan looked like:



Now time to add the stock. Mix one beef stock cube with one Knorr rich beef stock pot (these are amazing) and 1 pint of boiling water. Add the whole lot to the pot, stir and bring to the boil. Once boiling, knock the heat down to low and leave to simmer with the lid off for 1 - 2 hours (the longer the better if you have time), stirring occasionally to lift the lovely crust off the base of the pan.

Now's the time to get your pastry made. Of course you can always opt for shop-bought pastry, but it's so ridiculously easy to make I'd urge you to have a go at your own. The trick to pastry is COLD BUTTER. Also use cold hands to mix with.

Put the flour in a large mixing bowl with the salt. Cut the cold butter into cubes and add to the bowl. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs, like so:



Now add 5 tbsp very cold water and use your hands to bring the mixture together into a dough. Don't be afraid to really get stuck in there and use some elbow grease. If the mixture is slightly too dry to come together into a dough, add another bit of cold water to bind it together.



Wrap the pastry in cling film and put it in the fridge to chill.

Now fast forward 1 - 2 hours. Your pie filling has been bubbling away happily on the stove and is ready for the last bit of flavour. Add the worchestershire sauce, English mustard and wholegrain mustard, as well as salt and pepper to taste. Mix well.

Put a sieve or colander over a bowl and tip the pie filling into it, so the meat and veg stay in the sieve/ colander and the liquid runs into the bowl underneath.



Pour the liquid back into the pan and put it back on a gentle heat; this will reduce and be your gravy. Leave the pie filling to cool in the colander while you roll out the pastry.

Heat the oven to 190 C (fan oven).

I always use this mould from Dunnes for my pies, I think it's called a Giant Muffin mould or something like that. Each mould is around 3 inches in diameter. You can use any mould you like or even just make this as one giant pie in a large dish. Grease whatever moulds/ dish you are using.
This is what I use:



Remove your pastry from the fridge, unwrap it. Flour your counter top and your rolling pin. Cut 1/3 of your pastry off and set it aside - this will be for your pie lids. I was making 6 pies so I ensured I had 6 pieces of pastry for the base and 6 pieces for the lids.

Roll out the pastry bases and line your moulds, like this:



It's important that your pastry is too large for the mould so that pastry comes up over the sides of the moulds. This will help you seal the lids later.

Spoon the cooled pie filling into each pie until full; don't overfill them.



Continued in next post...