recipe: beef & mushroom pie

There's something about a pie...could it be our national dish? This week's beef & mushroom pie, my version. I've decided I really do like the pastry lid option, having bought some good sized pie dishes a little while ago for the purpose. Puff pastry rolled & cut out for the lids, brushed with egg-wash, baked golden, couldn't be a more simple matter.

In many ways the pie this week is classical in method, a simple process but one which requires care & attention to detail to get the most out of each component to the dish. Classical method aside however, a touch of my own is the use of Javanese comet tail peppercorns & Balinese long peppers, ground in the mortar & pestle.

Parts to the dish:

1) the jus/sauce/gravy 2) the filling 3) the pastry

& then you put 'em all together = pie

Ingredients: the Jus:

beef stock 1l

onion/garlic/butter/

tomato paste/marsala/cornflour

mushrooms button flat shitake oyster, for me, but whatever is local is worth a look

loose quantites, a splash here & there a spoonful there, as long as the result is a rich & slightly thickened glossy smooth sauce

Method:

*start with a litre of hot beef stock, following this recipe (archives August 2011 'Kitchen Basics')

*separately in a small bowl or glass, mix a little stock with a heaped spoonful of cornflour til smooth; 

*in a saucepan, saute an onion & a few wegdes of garlic, season, then add a dollop of tomato paste;

*let the tomato cook out a little, then add a splash of marsala to deglaze the pan, forming a paste;

*add a little hot stock, & gradually more, stirring in & making sure there are no lumps!

*add the stock thickened with cornflour & stir in, then simmer gently to cook out the flour.

>in case of emergency, the sauce can be passed through a sieve to remove lumpy bits & if it gets too thick, just add a splash or two of water. Otherwise, the sauce will quite happily simmer away, reducing gradually, until needed)

*once the sauce is simmering nicely away, I add my chopped mushrooms: lots & lots & lots

Ingredients: the Filling:

1 each carrot/onion/celery stick/baby leek, chopped evenly & small

a bay leaf/some sprigs of thyme/peppercorns

beef fillet, cut into tornedos/steaks

Method:

*element on 50% heat, warm the pan, lid near by...sweat the chopped veg in butter, salt;

*cover & allow to soften, 5-10 minutes;

"meanwhile, on another element heat a fry pan til smoking hot;

*dice the beef fillet into small pieces, season & toss with oil;

*when the pan is hot add the died beef, in batches, not too much at a time;

combine diced beef with vegetables & correct seasoning to taste;

*pour hot sauce over the meat mixture 

>don't constantly move or shake the pan, just allow the meat to brown quickly on the outside, & toss

   

Ingredients: Puff Pastry:

butter/flour/water

Method: 

this will be the subject of a 'Kitchen Basics' post later this week...

having made that comment, there are some good packet options in the supermarket freezers, but nothing beats making your own in my opinion.

Assembling the pie involves:

* rolling out the pastry to an even thickness, not too thin, cutting rings out of the pastry, 

*applying eggwash to the underside which, layen over the dish to form the lid & pressed closed, 

*put into a hot oven, approximately 220° or something close

>when in the oven,the egg on the underside will act like an adhesive between pastry & crockery pie dish  - glue in other words, where as the egg brushed on the top of the pastry will go a lovely golden brown

>you may notice the oven temperature in my photos is lower than 220°; on but this is because my oven burns too hot. With any luck the pastry lid will be sealed & as the gravy heats up inside it will start to steam, quickly cooking he beef

Wearing the hat of chief QC officer & Taste Tester, I snuck into the garden to scoff at a discrete moment, only to be caught red handed - Watties Tomato Sauce? How did that get there!