Steak and Ale Pie - a Garden Chefs Challenge

Garden Chefs is the virtual cooking club born from the passion of food, cooking and entertaining all Flour Garden subscribers, readers and supporters share.  If you want to join, please visit the Garden Chefs page, read the guidelines and sign up!

The Challenge

Steak and Ale Pie
My husband's favorite. His comfort food. His time to gorge himself guiltlessly, with pure pleasure and happiness. We don't make food like this very often any more. These days we focus on fitness and heart-healthy foods. So when Justin decided to join Garden Chefs I knew I simply had to choose a recipe that he would love. Steak and ale pie was it. Between a test run, his version and my version my sweetheart was able to indulge in his favorite three times over the course of two months. Wow! Salads, tofu and lots and lots of water were the chasers over the following few weeks.





The Recipe

Steak & Ale Pie

75g/3oz plain flour

salt and freshly ground black pepper 
750g/1½lb braising steak, cut into 5cm/2in cubes
2 tbsp olive oil
125g/4½oz baby onions (or small onions), peeled
400g/14oz carrots, cut into large pieces

6-8 large field, crimini or portabella mushrooms, cleaned and quartered
4 sprigs fresh thyme
3 bay leaves
4 tbsp tomato purée
300ml/10fl oz ale
300ml/10fl oz hot beef stock
500g/1lb 2oz ready-made puff pastry, rolled to 0.5cm/½in thickness
1 egg, beaten, to glaze the pastry

The Process

1. Preheat the oven to 325F/170C. 

2. Sprinkle the flour onto a plate and season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Dredge the steak pieces in the seasoned flour. 
3. Heat an ovenproof casserole dish over a high heat, add the steak pieces in batches and fry for 3-4 minutes, or until golden-brown on all sides, stirring regularly. Remove the cooked steak from the dish, transfer to a warm plate and set aside. Repeat the process with the remaining steak pieces, then set aside.
4. Add the onions and carrots to the emptied casserole and fry for 2-3 minutes, or until just softened, then add the mushrooms and fry until soft. 

5. Add the thyme, bay leaves and tomato purée and stir well to combine.

6. Add the ale and stir well, scraping any sediment up from the bottom. 
7. Return the browned steak pieces to the casserole, add the hot stock, stir well and bring the mixture to a boil.

8. Transfer the dish to the oven and cook for 1½ hours, or until the beef is tender and the gravy has thickened. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool slightly.
9. Increase the heat of the oven to 425F/220C.
10. Cut the pastry to fit over the casserole dish.

11. Brush a little water around the rim of the dish, then place the pastry over the pie and press the edges to seal the pastry to the dish.

12. Brush each pie with a little beaten egg, then place in the oven and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the pastry is pale golden-brown and has risen.

The Reveal

After a test pie and then a few recipe tweaks Justin and I were ready to dive into making our creations. The above recipe is the tweaked recipe and the photos are from Justin's pie. He made his in a 12" cast iron frying pan - one of the most versatile and functional kitchen items - that was just a hair too shallow for all of the liquid. I made mine in an enameled cast iron dutch oven which was far more suited to this recipe. 

Justin's Steak and Ale Pie was served with mashed potatoes and fresh garden peas. My Steak and Ale Pie was served with broccoli and cheddar mashed potatoes.

Justin's Reveal

Gina's Reveal

Easter Ham & Egg Pie

No matter what your religious affiliation, there is no denying that Easter symbolizes a celebration of life: new life, new love, new beginnings. It is a breath of fresh air deep in our lungs. A rae of warm sunshine blanketing our naked face. A glimpse of color and light in our eyes.  A thousand moments sparking a spirited youthfulness in us all.

With Spring comes the memories of friends and family and the urge to reunite. It is this time of year when I plan for the rest of the year: plant the garden, plan a summer vacation and organize gatherings with friends. Pouring over plant catalogs and Do-it-Yourself magazines, calendars of events and travel guides, my diary is quickly filled with notations of sleepovers for my stepson, school vacations, festivals, parties, dinner dates, and if I am lucky, vacations for me and my husband and visits from family and friends from overseas. I love including my past in my present day life and look forward to brining it into my future. If I can bring the memories of my ancestors with me, what better ways to do this than through the recipes that have been shared with me? The collection of all moments makes me happy and it only gets sweeter when the opportunity to share these moments arises. This is why I plan, why I love to share and ultimately why tradition is so important to me.

Easter has always been a uniquely joyous and happy time in my family – one that hosts a very different mood than Christmas or Thanksgiving. We never had Easter egg hunts but we did have jelly bean hunts. To this day my father finds petrified jelly beans lodged in the cracks of the exposed hand hewn beams in the farmhouse. We always found beautiful baskets filled with tiny chocolate eggs, marshmallow peeps and a single large chocolate Easter rabbit for each of us. My mother always sang the “Peter Cottontail” song, substituting the names for ours. When she’d get to that point in the song, we’d all chime in “there’ll be jelly beans for Gina, colored egg for Michael John, chocolate bunny for Andrea, and a present for Dad and Mom!”  She’d finish the song on her own as none of us knew the rest. And of course, we would always dye Easter eggs! 

There were a lot of traditions we developed over the years. Some I have left to memory and others I have taken into my heart and shared with many friends. To this day I still make my family’s Ham and Egg Pie recipe every Easter. And, as with many other recipes handed down to me, I count on my mother to repeat it to me each year when I realize I misplaced the last scrap of paper on which I jotted the recipe down the year before. That is sort of a tradition unto itself.

As with most old world recipes taken out of their homeland and dropped in the middle of a new culture, my family’s traditional Easter Ham and Egg Pie is based on traditional techniques, cultural ethos and everyday lifestyle only with an American twist. You used what you had. And it wasn’t always the case that available ingredients were the same that were commonplace in the motherland. Making due is what they called it. And making due was just as much fun, delicious and festive as always.

Ham & Egg Pie

(Long ago the actual directions were lost or may never have been passed down. However, I’m sure you’ll figure out what to do!)

Make a basic pastry crust to line the bottom of a large 9” or 10” spring form pan.

Filling
8 hard boiled eggs (quartered)

3 cups diced ham

¾ lb. diced mozzarella cheese

1 lb. ricotta cheese

12 raw eggs

¼ cup parmesan cheese

Beat the eggs, add the ricotta cheese, mix in the hard boiled eggs, ham and remaining cheeses. Add salt and pepper to taste (sometimes I add a bit of nutmeg) and pour into pastry lined pan. Bake at 325° Fahrenheit for one hour or until done.