I thought I'd start a new series on my blog called Food Fridays. I'm a massive foodie and so I thought it was about time I started sharing my food interests with you guys. I'm not going to post a food post every friday but maybe one friday a month I'll either do a restaurant review or a recipe! This week I embarked on making my very first pie, a Steak & Guinness pie. This was purely because I found a Le Creuset pie dish at TK Maxx for a bargain price of £12.99 and I was desperate to use it.

I used a basic recipe from Jamie Oliver and altered it to suit my needs.

Steak & Guinness Pie

INGREDIENTS

olive oil

2 medium red onions, peeled and chopped

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 sticks celery, trimmed and chopped

a handful of baby mushrooms, whole

750g quality diced beef

a few sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves picked and chopped

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

440 ml Guinness

2 heaped tablespoons plain flour

600g ready-made Jus-Rol shortcrust pastry

1 large free-range egg, beaten

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 220ºC/gas 5. In a large pan with a lid, heat a lug of olive oil on a medium heat. Start by browning the meat then remove from the pan and set aside. Put the onions in the pan and fry gently for about 10 minutes – try not to colour them too much. Turn the heat up, add the garlic, carrots and celery and scatter in the mushrooms. Mix everything together before stirring in the browned beef, rosemary, a pinch of salt and a level teaspoon of pepper.

Fry for 3 or 4 minutes, then pour in the Guinness, stir in the flour and add just enough water to cover. Bring to a simmer, cover the pan with a lid and leave on a very low heat for 1 and a half hours, stirring every 20 minutes or so. A perfect pie filling needs to be robust, so if it’s still quite liquidy after 1 and a half hours then remove lid and turn up the heat, reduce until the sauce thickens. Remove from the heat and season carefully and leave to cool slightly (even better leave to cool completely and then put in the fridge for a day).

Grease and flour a 24cm pie dish, before laying a round of pastry big enough to fall over the edges, making sure to press into the sides gently.Tip the stew into your dish and even it out before brushing egg wash around the edge of the pastry in the pie dish and then placing the rest of the pastry over the top of the pie. Trim and then crimp the edges and maybe even make some decoration out of the leftover pastry for the top (I went Christmas themed). Brush the top with beaten egg, then bake the pie directly on the bottom of the oven for 40 minutes, until the pastry is cooked and golden. Delicious served simply with peas, gravy and some mash potato if you're feeling like a treat!

It really is a delicious pie and surprisingly easy once you have prepared everything, what do you think? Will you be trying this?

 

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