Category Archives: savory pies

Beef Curry Pie Part 2

Part 2 of my three part savory pie adventure.

For my filling, I adapted from a recipe on Waitakere Redneck’s Kitchen. I simply added celery and replaced the cup of either green peas or carrots to just one cup of a mix of green peas and carrots. I used a yellow onion, the size of my fist. It was probably 3/4 cups of onion. I could have definitely used more. Also, I added in just a lil bit more curry powder than the recipe called. Also, I’m baking this into a large pie instead of hand held ones.

On a side note, I’m confused to why the cook used the term redneck when she is from New Zealand…

I will put my recommendations in the edited recipe.

I tried taking a photo of all the ingredients but that didn’t work! I forgot the celery, salt, water and frozen green peas and chopped carrots. On the other hand, i do have a pretty good photo of the spices:

Thank you David for your generosity in providing your own spices to use.

Anyways, cleaning and chopping things up took a while, albeit it was very fun. But after that, i just tossed things into a saucepan in the order the recipe called.

Note to self: Prepare everything first before cooking.

I sort of wished that I had everything prepared before starting to cook. What I did instead was that I started on the onions, ginger and garlic but then had to turn off the flame and scramble for the spices, meat and potatoes. Not the best idea.

Note 2 to self: Grab a larger sauce pan when cooking fillings.

After I added the potatoes and meat, the saucepan was very very full. Potato pieces kept wanting to jump out of the pan.

Another thing I think could have gone better is that I could have chopped the potatoes into smaller pieces. When people eat this pie, they’re just gonna get a mouthful of potatoes. Haha. Whoops. I also think I put in too many potatoes. The recipe called for 2 potatoes. I think the cook should have specified in cups or something.

Things turned out pretty well in the end.

I plan to bake this into the pie tomorrow. Yay! I will edit the recipe later as well…

Beef Curry Pie Part 1

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Alright, I thought I might as well get started on the blogging instead of leaving it for the last day. Anyways, this week, we are working on savory pies. Mm mm. I’m really feeling like bringing some Asian taste to this class, so I went with a beef curry pie. Surprisingly enough, I learned today that a lot of what people consider “Indian food” originated in Britain. According to Julia, the Scots claim to have created the famous Chicken Tikka Masala. Wikipedia agrees.

I thought I might as well split this into three parts since I made it in three parts. This part’s about the crust.

I just have a couple of thoughts. I decided to use the double crust recipe, which comes from David’s personal copy of Susan Purdy’s The Perfect Pie. I followed the recipe for everything except I replaced the lime juice with vodka. I’m not sure how good of an idea keeping the egg is. I mixed the yolk, water and vodka, which resulted in a strange mixture. The egg sort of settled on the bottom and didn’t really mix in. Never mind that. I used a total of 4 tbsp of vodka and 4 tbsp of water. I probably didn’t add enough water/vodka. My dough was still very dry. I’m sort of sad about that. I hope it roles out well though.

I don’t have any pictures from today so have a comic instead:

Red pepper and goat cheese tart

That’s goat cheese mixed with a egg and layered at the bottom of the crust after it’ been placed in the tart pan. Then a layer of fresh basil leaves on top of the chèvre.

Then many layers of red pepper rings (about 3 peppers’ worth) with some additional crumbled goat cheese interspersed for variety. Drizzle with honey, sprinkle with salt and black pepper, and bake.

Happy Boxing Day!

Sunny spinach pie

This just looked too good to pass up. Best part was, it tasted amazing too! Win-win.

So basically you make a double crust, opening it up to a bit wider than one would for a pie in a pie plate. On the bottom crust you put your spinach-ricotta-spices mixture in a pattern like this:

Then lay the top crust over it, tucking it in around the central mound of filling, and making sure the outer edges line up with one another. Use a bowl to shape the dough over the central mound (it’ll give it a nice dome shape). Moisten the edges of the two layers and use a fork to crimp them together. Poke the fork tines down through both layers in a circle around the bowl to help bind them together around the center dome.

Then you do a magical slice-and-twist thing around the outer ring of filled pastry to get this:

It’s pretty amazing!

Return of the mushroom-onion pie

Added some grated parmesan on top, and thyme sprig garnish

David’s medieval-style pork, onion & apple pie

…a.k.a. pork chops and applesauce in a double coffin.

So I totally just made this one up, based on reading and thinking about the medieval predilection for mixing sweet and savory. I thought of how much I love homemade applesauce with my pork chops, and decided that would be a brilliant pie—with the addition of onions, because I’ve always thought onions and apples went well together.

I checked out some very British recipes for pork pies because I wanted (again, in the medieval vein) where to cook the pork IN the pie not BEFOREHAND. The answer for that turned out to be lower temps (like 250° or 275°) for longer times (2-3 hours). Tin foil to prevent over browning of the crust. Also, a full egg (yolk and white) glaze gave the lid the characteristic golden, glossy look. Rosemary, sage, pepper and salt for spicing. I should check what else I used.

Basically, this pie was absolute heaven—so much so that I was unwilling to share it with anyone! Best lunches ever.

One change for next time: try it with a lard crust instead of the basic flaky, butter-and-shortening crust. I mean really, this is what a lard crust was born to surround.