Who Doesn't Like A Bit O' Irish In Them?

Steak and Guinness pie. I have been making my own version for a while now and thought I'd have a quick poke around on the internet to see how it compared with other versions around.  Having seen a version involving cheese, and one involving garlic and shallots etc (albeit on a French site) I thought I'd just go ahead and bang out the version that my family loves.  It's not a very precise recipe, as I tend to just bung these things together, but then there's no harm in that.

Here’s to a long life and a merry one, A quick death and an easy one, A pretty girl and an honest one, A cold pint, and another one!

 

Bob's Butter Crust Pork Pie

Serves: makes around 18-24 slices for a buffet, or can serve as a cold main dish with salads.

Pastry:

• 450g flour


• 1 tsp salt


• 275g diced butter


• 2 whole eggs, 1 egg yolk


• 2 tablespoons cold water

Filling:

• 6 hard-boiled free-range eggs


• 1200g fairly course-ground (but goood quality) sausage meat


• Pepper, mustard, herbs to taste (I usually use a sprinkle of Colman's mustard powder, pepper and thyme as I've never seen the more traditional mace here)


• 500ml stock (I use pot-au-feu) thickened with gelatine to make the jelly between meat and crust

Prep time: approx 45mins

Oven time: 2 hours

Chill time: overnight

Method:

• Sift together the flour and salt


• Rub in the butter with fingertips (as for a crumble,keeping the mixture as cool as possible)


• Beat together eggs and water


• Add to dry ingredients and work into dough, keeping it as cool as possible (pie will be in oven for a long time, the longer it takes the fats to melt the better)


• Roll out half the mixture to line a pie dish.  I use a silicone mould, which makes it easy to remove the pie, which is a 'raised crust' pie and should stand unsupported after cooking.  Otherwise, i recommend you line your pie dish with greaseproof paper.


• Season the sausage meat with the herbs etc of choice, then push half of it into the pie, makking indents for the 6 eggs to be evenly spaced.


• Place in eggs, then cover with rest of sausagemeat, shaping into a smooth, gently sloping dome.


• Roll out rest of pastry and cover, crimping firmly aroung edges


• Glaze with a little beaten egg


• Make a hole in the centre and place either a 'pie flute' or a cone of tinfoil in to keep it open whilst baking (to allow jelly addition after cooling)


• Bake for 30mins at 200, then a further 1h30 at 180 degrees, covering with foil if it gets very brown.


• Allow to cool for around 2 hours


• Pour in the jelly throught the hole in the top


• When thoroughly cool, refrigerate overnight.

Total Pork Pies

'Pork Pie' is, as well as a delicious foodstuff, Cockney rhyming slang for 'lie'.  Today not only do I finally get around to publshing my recipe for pork pie for your gastronomic edification, but also correcting the porkies in the published version of my Balsamic Chicken (ok the inference of lies was a bit of a stretch, but I'm not sure if there is rhyming slang for 'omission' or 'error' and I wanted a pork pie pun anyway).

Traditional pork pies have a hot-water crust made with lard, but as I have mentioned before this is not something readily available here and it is BAD FOR YOU.  I have developed my own 'butter crust' pork pie which is, I believe, pretty much as close in taste and texture as one can get without lard. Good quality sausage meat means it's not the cheapest item on the menu, but it's delicious and always one of the star attractions of our buffet table amongst both French and English friends.

Tonight I'm doing pork chops, then tomorrow night we're going Irish and having Steak and Guinness Pie, followed by an old-fashioned steamed pudding (flavour tbc) and custard.  Recipes to follow next week.  After that I think it's high time we got a few more French winter dishes on here, so expect to see Tartiflette and Cassoulet soon, my legions of loyal readers.

A bientot, geezers.

Just Loafing Around

Well we did it: house full of relatives, a Christmas party and much, much more.  Utterly exhausted, liver on strike, and sleep pattern of a feckless student as a result.

All the food went down very well, especially the pork pie etc at the Christmas party (although Christmas lunch could have been better if I hadn't partaken so liberally of the Bucks Fizz before attempting the Smoked Duck Risotto.  Whoops.)  Wonderful meal (as usual) at La Broussaillande on Christmas Eve. (Their food is much better than their website!)  Hundreds of mince pies made and consumed, bread baked, cookies that seem to evaporate when The Girl's Boyfriend is around.....

Next week should see a return to form and I will get things written up, like the beef tortellini we made for New Year etc. For now I have promised myself a quiet weekend of good food, relaxation and just a drop or two of good wine.

Happy New Stuff.

I don't fancy yours much

Our festive celebrations have, for some years now, been a mix of French and British traditions.  However, one French tradition we will never embrace is the love of foie gras.  The damn stuff is everywhere at this time of year.  Supermarkets advertise it in all shapes and forms for weeks in the run up to New Year (a more prominent celebration than Christmas here). The food magazines (or gastro-porn as I call them) that I buy are stuffed with recipes involving foie gras.  More than once we've received a foie gras as a present (rapidly re-gifted to others). There is no escape.

I am not going to use this article to publish a bunch of half-arsed online research into the production of foie gras - if you're reading a food site like this then chances are you already know what it is and why I would find it morally dubious.  Judging by its popularity and price, I can only assume that it must taste amazing.  I will never know.  I just think that there are so many other amazing things to eat that the suffering endured by the birds (and everyone who knows me knows I hate birds!) cannot be justified. A rampant carnivore such as myself seldom likes to look too closely at the source of some of the things that grace their table, but even I have a moral compass of sorts.  So we'll stick to the usual turkey and assorted lumps of roasted flesh and just hope there's no foie gras on the menu when we are invited to dine.

Hope your festive prep is all going tickety boo.

Number of mince pies baked so far this year: 84

Bob's Sweet Mincemeat

Ingredients:

• 650g light brown sugar


• 2kg dried fruit (sultanas, currants, raisins)


• 100g candied peel


• 75g flaked almonds


• 4 medium apples. peeled and cored


• 3 lemons


• 2 heaped tablespoons cinammon


• 1 tablespoon mixed spice


• Bushmills Whiskey

Method:

• Roughly chop all the dried fruits, almonds, candied peel and apples in a food processor.


• Place in a large container (one that has a lid)


• Sprinkle in the zest of the lemons, the sugar and spices and mix thoroughly.


• Pour in the juice from the lemons and mix again.


• Splash some whiskey over it all and mix again.


• Cover and place in a cool area for at least 24 hours, stirring occasionally and adding more whiskey if desired.


• Spoon into sterile, air-tight jars and keep in a cool place until needed. (Makes about 6 large-ish jars)

You Won't Believe Your Mince Pies

Mince pies are an integral part of a British Christmas, but are almost unheard of in the South of France.  For those of you that don't know, they are a sweet pie usually made with a shortcrust pastry and filled with a confiture of dried fruits called 'sweet mincemeat' (for reasons that escape me). And whiskey.  In our house there's always whiskey.

In the UK ready-made mince pies will be stacked to the supermarket ceilings by now but there are those who still make their own, using jars of shop-bought mincemeat.  Before we moved to France it never occurred to me to make my own mincemeat, but the prospect of a Christmas without mince pies did not bear countenance.

Traditionally, sweet mincemeat has suet in it, but this again is not available here and I have found that if enough moisture is added in the form of lemon juice and whiskey then it makes no difference to the taste or texture, and you have cut out unnecessary fats.

I would have loved to have shown you a picture of this year's first batch of mince pies but, as usual, the camera cable is AWOL, despite nobody apparently having touched it.

Recipe for sweet mincemeat is here.  Sweet shortcrust pastry favoured by me and mine is here. Last year I made over 240 mince pies. So far this year: 24 and counting........