Rabbit Pie

I’ve seen various recipes for rabbit pie and this is my version, which in one way or another is probably an adaption of those recipes.
I thought it very apt to make it, in celebration of British Pie Week and have included some flavours that conjure up the British countryside, wild rabbit, of course, apples and cider. For an old-fashioned feel, I perked up the sauce with mace and mustard.
The pastry is very short, as in the ratio of fat to flour is quite high, but it makes the pastry so melt-in-the-mouth gorgeous.

Please do try to use wild rabbit as I’m sure it has had a better life before being killed, plus a diet of wild grass and herbs can only improve the taste.
Wild rabbit is easy to come by these days – you’ll find it at your farmers' market or, dare I say, even in the supermarket.

Ingredients
For the pastry
225g strong white flour
half tsp salt
100g unsalted butter
50g lard

For the filling
knob of butter
small amount of vegetable oil
300g boneless wild rabbit
1 tblsp plain flour
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 stick celery, finely chopped
generous pinch ground mace
150ml cider
sprig thyme
half tsp dijon mustard
salt and pepper
2 tblsp creme fraiche
half an eating apple, peeled, cored, thinly sliced
25g mushrooms, sliced
1 tspn fresh tarragon, chopped
beaten egg or milk to glaze

Method
First make your pastry.
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and cut in the fat and rub in lightly with your fingertips until the mixture resemble coarse breadcrumbs.
Add a very small amount of chilled water. The less you add, the better as this results in a light crumbly pastry.
Stir in with a knife until the pastry just starts to stick together. Form into a ball.
This process can also be made in a food processor, just whiz together the flour, salt and fat until combined an while the machine is still running add the water a tiny bit at a time until a ball magically appears.
Wrap the ball of pastry in some cling film and put in the fridge.

Now make the filling.
Preheat the oven to Gas4 / 180C / 350F.
Cut the rabbit into 2.5cm pieces. Place in a bowl and sprinkle over the flour. Stir and shake the bowl to evenly coat the meat with the flour.

Heat the butter and oil in a large frying pan and put in the rabbit pieces. Fry gently until they take on light golden colour. Remove with tongs or a slotted spoon and transfer to a lidded casserole pot.

Add a little more oil to the pan if necessary and add the onions, carrot and celery. Fry gently until they soften but do not let them burn.
When they have softened transfer them to the casserole with the rabbit.

Return the pan to the heat and pour in the cider and bring to a simmer, scraping ap all the bits on the bottom and sides of the pan and stir well.
Tip the cider into the casserole. Add a sprig of thyme, the mustard, mace and some salt and pepper. Mix well to combine everything.

Put the lid on the casserole pot and place in the oven for 1 hour.
Remove from the oven and retrieve any thyme stalks and discard. Add the apples, mushrooms and creme fraiche and stir well to combine.
Transfer to a pie dish and allow to cool.

When the filling is cold, preheat the oven to Gas 6 / 200C / 400F.
Knead the pastry slightly, and roll our fairly thickly, so it’s big enough to cover the pie.

Moisten the edges of the dish and place the pastry on top. Press the edges down lightly on to the rim and trim.
Roll out the trimmings to make a decoration for the top.
Brush with the egg or milk to give a lovely golden glaze.

Cook in the centre of the oven for 30-40 minutes.
Photo: ©childsdesign 2011

British Pie Week

Get ready for the British Pie Week, starting tomorrow, it's a time to celebrate all things encased in pastry, a true honour of what's a great British culinary institution.
What will you be making for pie week? I'd be interested in seeing what everyone's up to this week.

Do you make your own pastry?
Do you prefer savoury or sweet?
Have you made or eaten a very unusual pie?
What's your favourite pie?

You could leave a comment at the bottom of this post or even better, visit my Facebook page and post something there.
Thanks and I'm looking forward to it and have high ex-pie-tations of you all!

Chicken Pastilla

I have a fairly adventurous palate, within reason, of course, so I love to try new things with what would seem odd flavour combinations.
I rooted out one of my little cookery books, that was a secondhand find, when I remembered a Moroccan recipe for a pastilla. Pronounced 'bast-eeya', a pastilla is a pie of usually sweetly spiced pigeon, almond, eggs and herbs encased in crispy filo pastry and dusted with icing sugar. Sounds weird? Actually it is rather good, although I used chicken instead of pigeon. I had pigeon once and didn't like it much, so have shied away from it ever since. I'm still looking for an opportunity to be convinced that pigeon is nice without having to pay for it.

The combination of fragrant spices including cinnamon and sugar is surprisingly agreeable and don't be put off by the scrambled egg either as it turns out less eggy than you'd expect. The texture is soft and moist and carries the flavours really well.

This recipe is very much my own adaptation of Fettouma Benikrane's from her Moroccan Cooking book. Firstly after reading the original recipe through, I realised that it would feed hordes of hungry people, so I had to scale everything down to make it more suitable for a normal family.

It's great little book, but I think it definitely embraces the Moroccan approach to good hospitality as the quantities are quite gargantuan in some cases. I also have to read the recipes very carefully as they're laid out in an unconventional way and it could be easy to miss something.
Hopefully my recipe makes things simpler to follow.

Serves 4
Ingredients
2oz flaked almonds
1oz butter, plus more for melting
3 onions, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely crushed
1 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
quarter tsp ground cloves
quarter tsp ground nutmeg
half tsp cinnamon
quarter tsp turmeric
salt and pepper
4 skinless and boneless chicken thighs
juice half lemon
2 tbsp sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten
handful flat-leaved parsley, chopped
handful coriander, chopped
6 sheets filo pastry
icing sugar to dust

Essential equipment
One 8 inch springform cake tin.

Method
In a dry frying pan, on the hob, gently toast the almonds, stirring them occasionally, taking care not to burn them. They should take on a light brown colour. Set aside.

In a large pan, gently melt the butter and drop in the onions and garlic and cook very gently until soft.
Stir in the grated ginger and spices, season with salt and pepper and then add the chicken thighs, stirring them round to coat in the mixture. Add enough water to just cover the contents, bring to the boil and then simmer gently for about 30 minutes until the chicken is tender.
Remove the chicken using tongs or a slotted spoon and set aside to cool.

Keep simmering the onion and spice mix until it has reduced in quantity a little and become thicker. Add the sugar and lemon juice, taste and add more seasoning if you wish.
Next add the beaten eggs, parsley and coriander to the onion mixture and cook gently, stirring all the while. over a gentle heat for about 4-5 minutes until the mixture is scrambled. Leave to cool

Preheat the oven to Gas 6. Butter the cake tin.

Place the filo pastry on a board and brush the first sheet with melted butter. Line the tin with the filo pastry sheet so it fits well inside and has the surplus overhanging the outside. Continue with the remaining three sheets, brushing with melted butter and laying the second at 90 degrees to the first and so on, so that all the pastry covers the tin and is well overlapped.

Shred the chicken and lay in the bottom of the pastry case.
Add half the toasted almonds, crushing them through your hands as you do so.
Spoon in the scrambled egg mix and top with the rest of the crush almonds.
Bring up the overlapping pastry and form over the top of the pie in a random fashion.
Brush the top with plenty of melted butter.

Place in the preheated oven and bake for 30-40 minutes until golden and heated through.

Take the pastilla out of the oven and leave to rest in its tin for 5 minutes before serving.
Remove the pastilla from the tin and dust with icing sugar using a sieve.

Cut into wedges and serve.

Food photos: ©childsdesign 2010

The Value of Pie

"Good apple pies 

are a considerable part

of our domestic happiness."

Jane Austen

Happiness is indeed pie-shaped, something enticing enclosed inside a crisp rich pastry shell never fails to please. My model and pie ambassador for this post is a bramley apple and blackberry pie, which I made in honour of the latest English seasonal fruits.
Of course, fruit is not the only filling for a pie, meat, fish and vegetables all make welcome inclusions for delectable dough enrobement.

A hot pie is the ultimate comfort food during winter, fresh from the oven, the contents bubbling within and when the crust is broken a sudden gush of steam delivers its appetising aromas to eager hungry diners.
A pie can be as simple or as complicated as you wish. You don't even need a recipe – just pastry and your imagination.
Never be afraid of the pie – if you make it yourself, you know exactly what's inside and never need fear anonymous lurkings beneath the lid.

Photos: ©childsdesign 2010

Onion Tart with Baked Goat's Cheese

I think we must have a thing for goat's cheese as this is the second recipe I have published here.

I know a lot of people that do not like goat's cheese because it tastes too farm-yardy for them. Indeed, it does have rather a goaty note to it, but that's the appeal for me.

I had two little rounds of Gevrik Goat's Cheese in the fridge and they were edging ever nearer to their use by date. Our local supermarket sells this creamy and nutty flavoured Cornish cheese so on occasion we like to indulge, and one day we had the impulse to drop them into the trolley. Somehow we never got around to eating them soon after buying them, so there they sat in the fridge, nestling next to the cheddar in the cheese box for a good couple of weeks.

Wanting to make something substantial for an evening meal, I decided to make some individual onion tarts to go with the cheese. A sweet onion marmalade is usually a good accompaniment and I thought, why not use that idea but bake the onions in a light puff pastry.

I decided to serve the cheese baked as it's texture becomes so gooey and delicious.

You need lots of thinly sliced onions which you cook slowly and gently in olive oil and butter with a little sugar until they are soft and slightly caramelised. Then add some chopped fresh thyme leaves, a dash of balsamic vinegar and salt and black pepper to taste.

Then cut 2 rounds of puff pastry (I used ready-made) which I placed on to a baking sheet lined with baking parchment. Then make 2 rings of pastry to fit on top of the rounds, stick them on using some a little milk.

Pile the onion mixture into the centre of each and place them in a hot oven until the pastry is risen and golden brown. You'll see that the once flat pastry has now risen up to create a wall around the edges to encase the onions.

You'll need to warm the goat's cheese in the oven. Just pop them on some baking parchment on a tray and cook them until they puff out slightly, but be careful that they're not in the oven too long otherwise they might burst!

You can serve the tarts and cheese with some salad.

Roquefort Cheese, Pear and Potato Pie

You've really got to like blue cheese to eat this, and I know I certainly do. Roquefort and pear have always been perfect companions in salads, so why not in a pie. I wanted to create something that was quite rustic rather than cordon bleu, so opted to leave the potatoes and pears with their skins on. The pastry is very much 'country-style,' spelt flour adding its wholesome nuttiness to the whole pie.
It's not obligatory to use Roquefort – Dolcelatte or Stilton would be just as good.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients
For the pastry
4oz plain flour
4oz spelt flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4oz butter, cold from the fridge, cubed
a little cold water

For the pie filling
10oz new potatoes or salad potatoes (no need to peel)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
1 garlic clove, finely crushed
half glass white wine
1 heaped tablespoon plain greek yoghurt
4oz of Roquefort cheese
1 pear - Williams variety is good, core removed and sliced (no need to peel)
freshly ground black pepper

For the crumble topping
1 teaspoon olive oil
2oz pine nuts
2oz fresh white breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Equipment
one,  8 inch diameter, 2 inch deep, round cake tin

Method
For the pastry
Sieve the flours and baking powder into a large bowl, add the butter and rub into the flour with your fingertips, until it resembles breadcrumbs. Then add a drop of water and stir into the mixture with a fork. Work lightly to bring together into a ball. Be careful not to make the dough too wet. Using your hands, work the dough into a ball. Wrap it cling film and put into the fridge for an hour to chill. This will make it easier to roll later.

For the pie filling
Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the onions and fry gently until golden, add the garlic and continue to cook for another minute or so. Pour in the wine and simmer until it has completely evaporated. Transfer the onions to a large bowl to cool, keep the frying pan, unwashed, for using later.
Meanwhile, boil the potatoes for about 15 minutes or until the sharp point of a knife pierces one easily. Drain, and allow to cool slightly, before slicing them into big pieces.
Add the potatoes to the onion mixture, stir in the yogurt and season with pepper.

For the crumble topping
Heat the oil in the frying pan you used for the onions, tip in the pine nuts and fry gently until they become slightly golden, add the breadcrumbs and rosemary and continue to fry until the breadcrumbs are golden. Remove from the heat and season with salt and pepper.

Preparing your cooking tin and pastry case
You'll see from the photos, that I've used folded aluminium foil strips in the tin. This was intended to assist the removal of the pie. I'm going to make a confession — although this should have worked in principle, I had to resort to turning the pie out by putting a tin over the top and turning it upside-down, and then inverting it back on to a plate. When I tried to use the foil to lift it out, as originally intended, it proved to be rather difficult and may have resulted in certain breakage!

Grease the tin. Place the chilled dough on a floured work surface and roll out so that it's big enough to line the tin. Place the pastry into the tin, making sure it fits against all the surfaces. Trim away the excess pastry.

Assembling the pie
First, tip in the onion and potato mixture so it covers the bottom evenly, then crumble the cheese over. Arrange the pear slices on top and sprinkle over the crumble topping. Push a few rosemary sprigs into the top.
Place on the middle shelf of a preheated oven, Gas 4 for about an hour. iceland reykjavik norway sweden reykjavik finland

Remove from the oven and leave to stand in its tin for 5 minutes before turning out.
Serve cut into wedges with a green salad.