HEAD BLOG

It’s one thing to dip into a huge pie dish, cracking the crust and serving it out to everyone around the table. It’s an entirely other thing to receive a pie all to yourself and taking greedy pleasure in flaking the pastry into the meaty sauce and appreciating the sudden blast of steam.

Steak and Ale pie is one of my favourites. Like all one pot dishes it is simple to prepare and, if you are familiar with the process, almost an unthinking act. You should be spending no more than 20 minutes cooking it and then that’s it, your job is to let the oven melt it into submission over the course of two and a half hours.

So, get preparing:

600g braising steak

2 red onions, diced

2 or 3 cloves of garlic

4 medium carrots, sliced generously

1 punnet of chestnut mushrooms, quartered

1 bottle of Guinness or Superbock

1 beef stock cube

Ready prepared puff pastry

1 egg, beaten

Rosemary

Flour

Heat the oven to 190C.

Dice the onion and get that slowly softening over a medium heat. Then chop then garlic, carrots and mushrooms and, when the onion is soft – add to the pan.

Chop the meat into bite sized chunks and throw that into the pan along with a good two tablespoons of chopped rosemary, crushed beef stock cube (you can go mad here and add chilli, worcestershire sauce – anything that takes your fancy. Then add a tablespoon of flour. This will help thicken the sauce. A pie with a runny sauce is like a child with a runny nose – not a good thing at all.

Give it all a stir and let it fry for a few minutes before adding the Guinness. Add boiling water so the stock just covers the meat and then bring everything up to the simmer point.

Cover and slam into the oven for 1½ hours. Check the mix after that and give it a good stir and then continue cooking for another hour. Keep checking though because you don’t want the sauce to dry up.

When you are happy that everything is tender, spoon out the mix into individual pie dishes and then cover with some rolled out flaky pastry. Bung it all back in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden and then eat with some green vegetables.