NikitaI made meat pies on Tuesday to celebrate Manchester City in the quarter-finals. They must have brought good old-fashioned English luck because we won! We are moving on to the semi-finals against Real Madrid. I pulled a recipe from a website and forgot to pin it. I couldn’t find it again later in the week. I will say that my pie dough failed, and I had to run to the store to get pre-made pie crust. The filling is ground chuck, rosemary, S&P, onions, sliced potato, and sliced rutabaga. Yes, rutabaga. It tasted like an cousin of the potato family twice removed (?). This was definitely challenging, but the boys gave it a thumbs up!! Amyo tell the truth, when I read that Nikita chose meat pie as this week’s food challenge, I was a little than enthused. I thought, “Isn’t this more of a cold weather dish?”. However, as I continued to read, Nikita’s excitement became contagious. I can do this! At this point I began to rack my brain wondering if I’ve actually had a meat pie. Those frozen atrocities known as pot pies. The revolting Shepard’s Pie they tortured us with in the school cafeterias. Living in south Florida I tried empanadas, too greasy. This wasn’t looking good. I scanned my cookbooks and found a steak and kidney pie. No organs! I suppose I could have gone with this recipe, just omit the kidneys. Blech! I perused the internet. Pinterest. Nothing jumped out. So I decided to think logically. Okay, meat pies are distinctly British. What’s British? Well…the Queen of England is British! However, she doesn’t have a food blog. What else is British? The BBC! I went to their site and found a meat and potato pie recipe. I considered it briefly but two things occurred to me. 1) For a meat and potato pie it sure seemed a bit too involved. And 2) It served close to 20 people. Too many leftovers with which to deal. But I had faith in the BBC! I mean, Doctor Who. I rest my case. I scrolled until I hit upon something; Steak and Ale Pie! We have a winner! Recipe below: I changed it up slightly by adding potatoes (at the same time as the other veggies) and omitting the mushrooms. Otherwise, I followed it as is, using rib eye steak. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/how_to_cook_steak_and_15585 This pie turned out to be spectacular! My apologies dear niece for the initial negative reaction. You picked a winner! The challenge this week was finding a recipe that worked for me. I think we’re onto something here ladies. I look forward to what Gigi has picked out for next weeks challenge. GeorgiaI live with a meat eating husband.. So this was right up my alley..
For my meat pie I decided to get in touch with my Irish roots. Earlier in the week I made a huge pork roast. So I substituted the mutton and / or lamb with leftover pork roast Dingle Pie Once made with mutton, Dingle pies are now usually made with lamb. They’re small individual pies that could easily be bought from a stall and carried around the fair while you had a look at the cattle or thought about where you might stop for your next pint. For the pastry:
Wrap in plastic wrap or baking parchment and leave in the refrigerator to rest for at least twenty minutes. Trim fat or gristle form the meat: cut into small pieces. Place in a bowl with the diced onion, carrot, potato and celery. Mix well and season well with salt and black pepper. Preheat oven to 180C / 350F. Cut one-third off the pastry ball to save for the lids of the pies. Roll out the rest. Use a small plate as a guide and cut the dough into six circles. Lay these out flat on the work surface and divide the lamb and vegetable mixture among the six circles, piling it in the middle of each one. Roll out the remaining pastry into six smaller circles . Lay these on top of the fillings. Brush the edges of the larger pastry circles with a little water and roll them inward along with the smaller circles, pinching the upper and lower layers together to seal them. Pierce a small hole or cut a slit in the top of each pie so that the steam of cooking can escape. Brush the pies with beaten egg: place on greased (or nonstick) baking sheets. Bake for one hour. Serve hot or cold. They aren’t pretty because I was seriously pressed for time.. But what they lacked in looks they more than made up for in taste.. Recipe from the Irish Heritage Cookbook. No matter where you are in the world, the common experience that brings us together is food. Happy cooking and blessings, 99, Ames and gigi
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