Cooking phases: the pie

The Sweeper

I bought a 7" loose-base flan tin about three weeks ago, and I've been making pies ever since. I use a simple shortcrust pastry (flour, butter, pinch of salt, iced water) with an egg wash over the top.

Pie content favourites include a courgette and spinach pie and a bacon, spinach and mushroom pie. I've spotted a pork pie of Delia's I fancy trying out, but has anybody got any good pie recipes? I find pies of this size, between two of us, these last two meals with a huge side salad full of veggies so it feels healthy (shortcrust pastry notwithstanding).

All recipe suggestions welcome!

olaola

What about a beef and mushroom?
My Mum made this casserole the other day - you could make it in pie form instead?

Onions,
Tomatoes (peeled)
Stewing beef
Mushrooms
oxo cube
And I think that was about it -
She browned the beef, and cooked the onions in the pot after the beef.
And then kinda lashed it all in the pot again together with water + oxo cube.
I suppose you could do that for a while, and then put it into the pie crust?

Minder

Not sure if these are suitable. It sounds like you are making a flan, then putting a lid on. These are suitable for a ceramic pie dish with only a pastry lid.

Lamb and turnip
Rabbit and forcemeat balls
Chicken and mushroom
Chicken and ham
Steak and mushroom
Steak and kidney
Steak and oysters
Celeriac and rabbit
Turkey and ham
Chicken and leek
Cod, leek and parsley
Duck and date
Dragon Pie

Choose your filling. Then think about the type of gravy you want with the pie. A milk based sauce is good with fish and chicken. Stock based sauces for meats and game. Cook the meat fillings in stock before adding some of the liquid to a roux to thicken the gravy - this prevents the sauce from catching during the long slow cooking.

Cold roast chicken (If such a thing exists in your house) makes a great filling for a quick pie - add mushrooms or cooked ham.

Beef, rabbit and duck will take a long time before the filling is tender enough to cover with a pastry lid. Duck is best bought cooked, confit or other roast duck will have little fat and be easier to use than fresh bird.

Force meat balls are a mixture of suet, breadcrumbs, chopped rashers of bacon, parsley and egg to bind. They were traditionally used to bulk up the portions when meat was scarce. Sit them on the top of the filling before covering with pastry. They are particularly useful if using puff pastry. Puff pastry will shrink if placed on top of a hot filling giving a pasrty raft rather than a lid. The forcemeat balls help keep the pastry off the gravy ensuring a crisp lid.

Dragon may be a little difficult to obtain. Substitute beef and add chillies and green peppercorns to the sauce to increase the heat.

Both Sophie Conran and Tamsin Day-Lewis do recipe books for pies. If not to buy, a browse through the books in the bookshop will give many more ideas.

The Sweeper

Yeah I'm making "wholly encased" pies in the flan tin. It works quite well because you don't get a crust on the side that's thick and overcooked while the rest of the pie is fine. I haven't bought a proper pie tin, though I've looked for some online. For some reason i'd rather buy one in the shops than online, because I'm finding it difficult to find a 7-7/5" dish - any bigger and it's not suitable for just the two of us.

Is the pastry lid to go on the above list better off as flaky pastry?

Minder

No, short crust works just as well.

I have not tried these as fully encased, do you blind bake the base ?

Tamsin Day-Lewis' book - Tarts with Tops on or How to Make the Perfect Pie is available to browse on Amazon The available pages include the full recipe index. Some of the pics show fully encased pies with a gravy so you might get some inspiration there.

Good luck

The Sweeper

Interesting... The flan tin I'm using is one of those super-conductive jobbies, so you don't need to blind bake the base before adding fillings. Most of what I cook goes in the oven for 50 mins on average, so the top is golden brown, the filling's cooked and the base is cooked, though a little pale in colour.

I dunno if you'd need to blind bake the bases before doing the meatier pies - I could see the base getting very soggy if you didn't. I'll have to experiment.

EXCELLENT!! I can use my lentils as baking beans. FINALLY!! A USE!!!

tSubh Dearg

I make quite a tasty chicken pie with leftovers from roast chicken.

I tend to put the chicken together with some bacon, mushrooms, peas, sometimes a tin of sweetcorn. If I'm feeling posh I'll use pancetta instead of rashers and dried porcini mushrooms instead of field. I also put in a healthy amount of garlic.

Then I make the sauce out of the leftover gravy adding some cream and then either white wine or mustard.

I tend just to put a lid on my savoury pies as I don't like eating a lot of pastry. Though when I'm making apple pie it will be fully encased.

Kolodny

My mother used to make a delicious vegetable pie containing carrot, broccoli, courgette and mushrooms (and sometimes other veg she was trying to use up - I think some turnip made it in on one occasion) with a light vegetable gravy sauce. It had a lovely, slightly nutty taste which I later discovered was due to a very thin layer of chestnut puree spread around inside the base before she added the filling. We would have it with a bit of mashed potato on the side and extra gravy.

The Sweeper

There are some interesting ideas in there - thanks guys. For some reason I hate pastrys that are just a lid on a dish. I always think "why not just have stew". Hence I'm after the encased versions. I'll try some things out, if anything works particularly well, I'll post up a recipe... Loving that chestnut puree idea. Waitrose is fabulous for these little jars of wonderfulness - they do something around mushrooms too which is marvellous in a beef wellington, time to raid the shelves...