Cow Pie (Expert Level)

I actually did a steak pie recipe not that long ago – actually, a little shy of a year and a half ago.  This is a tweaked – and undoubtedly superior version.  It's also a bit more complex (but not frightfully so) so let's consider the other one my 'simple pie' recipe, and this one my gourmet version.  For the avoidance of doubt, I definitely recommend the additional work of the gourmet version.

I have also made a bone marrow pastry which was pretty epic, albeit probably unnecessary – if you want a quiet life (and who doesn't?) just get a roll of the pre-rolled puff stuff, yeah?

I have adapted this from a number of corners, but most notably the bone marrow pastry idea came from the irreplaceable Hawksmoor at Home.

Serves 4.

Ingredients:

For the gravy - 

500g beef shin (off the bone)
250g ox cheek
2 carrots
150g button mushrooms (chestnut if possible – the smaller the better)
500ml ale (get something a bit sweeter than your average)
5 springs of thyme
2 stalks of rosemary
2 bay leaves
15g bone marrow (more on this below) / 1tbsp sunflower oil
240g lardons (get properly fatty ones, not lean cuts)
250g baby onions / shallots, peeled
25g plain flour
500ml beef stock
1tsbp Worcestershire sauce

For the pastry – 

200g plain flour (plus some for dusting)
1tsp mustard powder (optional)
1tsp baking powder
100g bone marrow / suet
2 egg yolks
100ml cold milk
Iced water

On the subject of the meat, I have gone for two incredible tough cuts of meat.  A great rule of thumb is that the tougher the cut, the more that the muscle has had to work, and the better the flavour.  If you think about regular steaks, this rings true: rump is tougher but full of flavour, whereas fillet (an almost utterly unused muscle) is beautifully tender but less flavoursome. The two cuts I have gone for are shin and cheek.  Get them from any good butcher and you'll find that they tend to be a lot cheaper than the standard cuts (although they are becoming more popular so that might not last).  The downside of these cuts, however, is that they need a lot of cooking time – about 3 to 4 hours, to be honest.  So plan ahead.

Right.  Elephant in the room: Bone marrow.

Not everyone's cup of tea, I grant you.  Although there's really no reason why it shouldn't be, because it's lovely stuff – full of flavour.  This bit's optional, though: I think it's worth the effort but you might not.  If not, you can make the pastry using suet, or just Google a decent puff / shortcrust pastry in its lieu.  Also, it is worth noting that all of this was FREE.  Totally free.  If you have a good butcher and you go in to see them regularly (by which I mean more than once every year to buy the Christmas turkey) they're bound to give you something like this for free.  It's a really, really good idea to get them to chop the bone in half for you, as they have here.  The problem is that no one sells it by the gram – you just get a bone.  The amount that came out of this bone, for reference, was about 235g.  I'll deal with how to get the marrow out and prepping it below.

Right, on to the recipe.

The day before pie day you need to marinate the beef.  First up, trim any extraneous fat and connective tissue from the beef and cut up into bite-size chunks.

Cut up the carrots into quarter roundel lumps.  If the mushrooms need chopping, do this as well – although if you can keep them whole, so much the better – this will turn on how big they were when they were bought. Throw the beef, vegetables, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves, into a large, non-reactive dish.  Pour over all of the beer, cover and put in the fridge overnight.

The other thing to do is to prep the bone marrow.  This is a bit gross, but worth it.

The easiest way to get the bone marrow out of the bones is to dunk them in warm water for a few minutes, then remove them and slide the marrow out.  The marrow is extremely fatty, almost (in parts) with the consistency of butter, so it will melt up a bit in the warm water and come out.  I could not be faffed so I took a dinner knife and scooped it out.

In hindsight, I regret this because it made it fractionally more difficult to deal with later.  It's not totally critical, but just a tip.  Once it's out, you'll find that there are harder parts and softer, buttery parts.  Scrape off about 25g of the buttery part and keep it separate in the fridge.  Wrap the rest it in cling film and stick it in the coldest part of fridge overnight.  It has to be properly cold when you come to use it tomorrow – if you're worried, stick it in the freezer for 15 minutes before you use it.

The next day you're ready to start cooking properly.  Remove the beef from the fridge so that it comes up to room temperature and put it through a colander, making sure to reserve the beer juice.  Seriously, do not throw this away.  Then separate the meat, vegetables and herbs so that you have three bowls of stuff.  You'll see why later.  Place the beef on some kitchen towel and let it dry off.

Also, pre-heat your oven to 160ºC / 150ºC (fan assisted).

First things to cook are the lardons.  Get a great big casserole pot (this is one pot cooking, sort of) and melt the buttery, reserved marrow.  Cook the lardons in this for a few minutes until the fat has started to render.

Then add the onions and brown both, removing them with a slotted spoon when done and setting them aside.

So now you should have three pots of pie stuff: The drained vegetables, the marinated beef and the browned lardons and onions.

Next up, do the beef.  Measure out the flour into a small bowl and season it with salt and pepper.  Then, dredging each piece of beef individually in flour, brown the meat in the pot in batches.  There should be plenty of rendered lardon fat and bone marrow grease remaining to do this.  By  the way, don't cram the pot full of meat – if you do so, you drop the temperature way too much and the meat won’t properly sear.

Once all of the meat is browned you'll need to deglaze.  In fact, you've probably been getting a bit nervous as the process of cooking the lardons / onions and browning the meat will have crusted the base of the pan with something evil looking.  Deglaze this by pouring a couple of ladles of stock into the bottom of the pan and scrapping like hell.  Quite a lot will fizzle up, so make sure there's enough in there to stay liquid (otherwise you'll just end up with a thicker, harder glaze – bad).

When this is done, re-add the beef, lardons and onions to the pot.  Then throw in the beer juice, the rest of the stock, the Worcestershire sauce and the bay leaves.  Strip the leaves of herbs and chop them finely, adding these to the mix as well.  Give the whole thing a stir and turn the heat up until simmering point, before transferring it to the oven.

In the first round of cooking, it will need about 2 ½ hours with the lid on.

Whilst it's cooking you should make the pastry.

Place the flour, baking powder and mustard powder in a bowl and mix together.

Next, grate the bone marrow.  Yes, actually.  I found having a bit extra was a real bonus here, as it melted very quickly and I ended up wasting a fair amount.  (If you're using suet instead, you don’t need to grate it.  You're also a wimp.)  Once grated, add it to the flour and mix together until well combined.

Beat one egg yolk together with the milk and add this to flour slowly, mixing all the time.  Then add as much iced water as is necessary to bring the mix together into a dough.

Now wrap it in cling film and stick it in the fridge for at least an hour to rest.

Back to the pot (when the time is up): remove it from the oven and give it a stir.  It should still be relatively liquid, and the meat still fairly tough.  Therefore, it needs to go back in the oven, but this time with the lid off, so that the gravy reduces and thickens.  Mmmmmmm.  Make sure the bay leaves are submerged, by the way, otherwise you'll get it out and find a charred leaf sitting there – not cool.

Stir it every 20 minutes or so, keeping an eye on the level of gravy.  You should find its done and the beef is falling apart in about an hour.  Make sure you retain enough wet – otherwise it's barely a proper pie.  Remove the stew from the oven when ready – but don’t turn the oven off; turn it up to 190ºC / 180ºC (fan assisted).

Get the pastry out the fridge and, on a properly floured surface, roll it out to about 4mm thickness.  Placing the pie dish upside down on the pastry, cut the pastry to size, leaving a 1.5cm margin all around the edge of the dish.  Reserve any excess pastry – don’t chuck it yet!

Ladle the beef stew into your pie dish, filling it almost, but not quite, to the top.  Beat the remaining egg in a cup and brush the edges of the pie dish before plonking the pastry on top.  Crimp down the edges with your thumb and finger or a fork.  Cut a cross or a whole in the middle (a whole is probably easier before the pastry goes on, come to think of it…) to let the steam out, and then decorate.  As I have explained previously, an undecorated savoury pie is an unlucky pie.  I decorated it in a traditional sense, explaining its contents.  Brush all of the pastry properly, so that every nook and cranny is covered in egg wash.

It needs about 20-30 mins in the oven now, until the crust is golden brown and yummy looking.  Take it out and serve it straightaway, with peas and maple coated parsnips, in this case, or with mash and spring greens, or whatever takes your fancy.  

 - GrubsterBoy - 

British Pie Week at the White Swan

Last week was British Pie Week. 

It's true, it actually was.  Sadly, this is one of those festivals that is not nearly well celebrated enough.  In fact, for most average punters, I rather imagine that British Pie Week went by unnoticed.  Fortunately, one of the people to notice it was owners of the White Swan.

It is not without a hint of irony that I note that British Pie Week has come around just as the British weather has started to (finally!) improve.  I have written before about how I believe that pies are best eaten when the weather is cold and miserable (with the exception of cold meat pies, like a pork pie or a game pie, which wants to be eaten and a hot, sunny picnic).  Nevertheless, this Grubster (together with a couple of work mates) steeled itself to venture out during the day to sample the crusts.

And thank heavens we did. 

We were offered a trio of carb-crusted meats to sample: cottage pie, steak, ale and oyster or pigs' cheek pudding.  Josh and I opted, rather unimaginatively, for the steak, ale and oyster.

Now, I'm not especially good with oysters, I won’t lie.  And by 'not especially good' I mean that they make me wretch.  So I was nervous to say the least.  I am very glad I let the joy of the beef win out over the fear of the mollusc, because this was quite simply one of the very best pies I have ever had in my life.  Ever. 

The gravy was rich, silky, smooth.  The oysters, far from the fear I had, added a distinct, saltine, almost maritime, bite to the dish.  It was a thing of absolute beauty – from the presentation through the textures to the taste.  I could not have asked for better.  It even came with a little, garlic crumb-crusted oyster on the side.  It was only because I was in polite company that restrained myself from licking the bowl.

Toby had the pigs' cheek pudding.  Proper suet puddings are few and far between – probably with good reason, given the health consideration – which is a sad thing.  Because they a beautiful beasts.  A dainty wee pudding like this, complete with curly kale and chopped, sautéed kidneys, was more than enough for a casual lunch – and, I gather, very tasty.

My only regret of pie week is this: now that it’s over, the pies are off the menu.  This is truly a tragedy, as with pie-making skill like that, the Swan should be dishing them out every damn day.

The White Swan itself is a great venue – a top-notch City boozer just off Fleet Street. 

I've eaten there a few times before and always enjoyed the food – whether it's been a lobster salad or fish and chips.  The chef clearly isn't afraid of cooking the unpopular (yet increasingly fashionable) bits we don’t like to think about – I remember that, for a long time, the bar snacks menu proudly displayed an offering of ducks hearts and livers on toast – now sadly off the menu.  The standard burger is, I am happy to say, one of the best pub burgers out there.

So if you're in the neighbourhood, pop in.  even if you can’t get a pie.

- GrubsterBoy -

Steak and stout pie

There's a storm brewin'.

Actually, it's already been and gone, and as the picture below shows, caused absolute CHAOS to the streets of London.

Still, whilst it's wet and cold and blowy and autumnal, we'll carry on the theme of warming, comfort food.  Last week it was toad in the hole.  This week, it's steak and stout pie.  Perfect for when it's belting it down outside and you want to wrap yourself up in a blanket and watch endless repeats of old crap on telly.

This is also a really easy recipe that requires (a) no flour dredging (there's a cheat later that avoids this) and (b) no browning of the meat, both of which take ages and are a faff to do.  Fortunately, the absence of both these elements doesn’t seem to compromise the pie one bit.

A word to the wise, however: this massively benefits from being allowed to cool down and sit in the fridge overnight.  It also takes an unreasonably long time to cook.  So plan ahead.

Ingredients:

1.2kg cow (Kinda up to you what you put in – brisket, stewing steak, ox cheek, shin, whatever you like.  I used plain old casserole steak.)

500ml stout (I used Guinness.  I reckon you could use any ale, however, or even red wine.)

200g button chestnut mushrooms

x3 onions

x2 carrots

x2 sticks of celery

x3 cloves of garlic

x4 sprigs of rosemary

2tsp grainy mustard

2tbsp plain flour

x1 stock cube (Or, better still, 500ml fresh cow stock.  Up to you – but you will need the additional liquid, as I learnt...)

Ready-rolled puff pastry (Because life's too short to make your own pie crusts.  Genuinely.)

x1 free-range egg

1. Start by chopping all your veg.  No, actually, start by pre-heating the oven to 190°C.  Now get chopping. 

None of needs to be finely chopped, just into decent suitably pie-sized lumps.  I reckon a little smaller than the cow chunks will be.  The mushrooms I quartered, because they shrink a bit and I like big lumps of mushroom with this dish.  You can mix your carrots, mushrooms and celery sticks together, but keep the onions ghettoised.  Same goes for the garlic (slice this) and the rosemary (separate the leaves and chop finely).

2. Sweat the onions for 10 mins or so in a bloody great big cast iron pan.  Or whatever you'd normally make a stew in.  Keep going until them onions are nice and soft, but not browned.  A low heat should do the trick.

3. Turn the heat right up and thrown in the carrots, 'shrooms and celery, giving everything an almighty stir and season liberally with pepper and less liberally with salt (remember: you're adding a stock cube and/or stock to this, which is quite salty in itself, so go easy on the salt at this stage – you can always adjust later). 

Cook for a few minutes.  Or not.  Whatever.

4. Chuck in the steak, garlic and rosemary and cook for a bit, so that the meat is beginning to colour.  This shouldn’t take long. 

5. When you're happy, add the stout.  It'll fizz up like crazy, but fear not: it'll settle down before long. 

Add the mustard, sprinkle the flour in, and crumble the stock cube in now, if you're using it.   Boil a kettle and top up with boiling water so that the meat's covered – it you're using beef stock, warm it and add it now instead of the hot water – but again, only so that the meat's covered. 

6. Give it an almighty great stir, stick a lid on the pot and bung it in the oven for about an hour.  By the way, you might find that the four clumps up into rather unappealling, gluely lumps.  Fret not - these will magically disappear in the cooking, somehow.

7. Get it out, give it another stir, and have a look.  First, there should be lots of mucky brown crap stuck to the sides.  Good.  This is the flavour, so do your best to scrape it off with a spoon and reintroduce it to its friends in the stew.  Second, check the moisture levels.  I found that mine dried out quite quickly, which isn’t a problem – it just means you need to keep adding more liquid – kettle water will do it, honestly.  Cover it again and get it back in the oven to give it another hour.

8. Lather, rinse, repeat.  Well, get out, scrape, stir, check moisture levels.  Also, try a bit of the beef now – see how tender it is.  It should be fall-apart-in-your-mouth soft, not chewy.  Mine took three hours altogether, and could perhaps have done with a touch more.  From here on in I recommend testing it every 30-40 minutes – adding more water each time if it’s looking a little dry.  As for dryness, well, you know what the inside of a pie looks like, right?

9. Once it's done, leave it to cool and stick in the fridge overnight.  Apart from the fact that this'll let all the lovely flavours marinate and mix better, it'll also mean that the filling is cool when you want to make your pie, which will make life a lot, lot easier.  Get it out before making the pie, though, so that the filling is at room temperature when you stick the lid on.

10. Doing the lid is easy, because I told you to get ready rolled puff pastry.  If you want to make your own pastry, go and read someone else's blog – like someone who knows how to bake (I am a terrible baker).  I have tried handmade puff pastry and I have tried Sainsbury's pastry puff, and whilst I recognise that there is a difference and that the handmade stuff is better, I simply cannot be bothered with it – simply because the difference is so minor.

Unroll your pastry and stick the pie dish on it upside down.  Trace a line around the dish, leaving about a centimetre of overhang.  Like this. 

Keep the scraps, too – you'll need them.

11. Fill the dish up with filling and gravy, until it's about a half centimetre from the top. Pop the lid on and pinch all the way around the edges to make sure the lid stays in place.  Carve a little cross in the middle to let the steam out. 

Also, decorate it – that's what the pastry scraps are for.  I was a bit rushed, so it was just leaves.  But it's bad luck not to decorate it.  The tradition comes from big, old houses (think Downton Abbey) where they would have a weekly baking day, making all manner of pies.  To ensure that there was no confusion, and that the lord of the manor was not accidently served kidney and trotter pasty when he was expecting a mouthful of apple and bramble pudding, savoury pies were decorated whilst sweet pies were just sprinkled with sugar.  Preserve the tradition and stick a blooming leaf on there.

The crust needs to be egged.  So break an egg into a glass or cup, beat it up with a fork, and use a pasrty brush to paint it all.  All of it, not just bits.  It'll only turn nice and shiny where it's been painted, so get in all the nooks and crannies.  Also, top tip: paint the lid then put the decorations on - it'll help them stick down. 

12. Pie in oven, please.  It'll take 30 mins, no more – just check that your pastry looks crispy and golden. 

So, basically, it goes in like this...

...and comes out like this.

Serve it up with peas, or your favourite winter veg.  Draw the curtains, get the fire going, turn on some ancient, Sunday afternoon TV film, pour yourself a glass of something red and dark, and tuck in.  See, the weather's not so bad now, is it?

 - GrubsterBoy -