It was very difficult to choose a single recipe to try this week. I am quite unfamiliar with savory pies, but so many recipes were making me salivate. I narrowed it down to a mushroom pie (I am a sucker for mushrooms) and a steak and Stilton pie (which looked so fun to make). I made my decision by literally flipping a coin.
I made several changes to the original recipe. First of all, instead of using a store-bought, frozen puff pastry, I made my own. I used Susan Purdy’s recipe for Quick Puff Pastry. There was also the option of making a Classic Puff Pastry, but that would’ve taken me fifteen years to finish. So Quick Puff Pastry it is. The ingredients were very similar to those in the basic flaky pastry which we’ve been making. The difference is in the procedure.
First of all, you roll the pastry out, then slather it with a nice layer of butter, as seen here:
Then you use things like the “letter fold” and the “book fold” to layer the dough. The latter is featured in the picture below.
Then you fold, then roll, then fold, then roll, then fold, then chill, then roll, then fold, etc. For a long time. And then your puff pastry is ready! Here it is, awaiting to be chilled overnight in the fridge:
With the puff pastry done, it was time to begin on the pie filling. This is an English style pie, so it doesn’t have a bottom crust. The original recipe was supposed to make four individual pies, but I adapted it to make one 9-inch pie. The recipe said to brown the meat first, then work on the vegetables. The most exciting part of this recipe was adding a bottle stout beer to the vegetables and leaving them to simmer for 1.5 hours.
Once that was done, the steak and mustard powder and cheese were combined with the rest of the filling. The original recipe calls for English Stilton cheese, which was unavailable at Stop and Shop, so a more generic blue cheese was used instead. I also cut down on the amount of blue cheese; the recipe called for 6oz, but I used 3-4oz instead. I know that here are some diehard blue cheese lovers out there, but I like mine in moderation. A taste test suggests that the pie should be good. It needed a little seasoning with salt and pepper, but I think I got it right. Here’s a picture of the filling, waiting patiently for its top crust.
The puff pastry was surprisingly easy to roll out/work with. I made a very simple design on it. Man, I’m going to have to up my game for next week.
Here’s the final product. There was some bubbling-over happening, so not the prettiest thing, but should still taste good! I guess we’ll see 🙂
