I’m proud of this pie for two reasons. Firstly, it is basically my own recipe; well, at least, I modified this recipe by guessing what might work and getting it right. Secondly, it was in competition with a meaty pie, and whilst I obviously didn’t try the meat Anna confessed that the veggie was nicer…
Pie. Mmm, pie.
Its not all that complicated, nor all that different from the BBC recipe, but since the details are not anywhere I’m going to give my first proper recipe.
Ingredients (serves 2)
For the pastry (150g of pre-made pastry would do fine):
- 125 g plain flour
- 60g butter/margarine
- pinch of salt
- 2 tablespoons of water
For the filling:
- 1/2 onion
- 1 carrot
- garlic clove
- 100g shiitake mushrooms
- 125 ml vegetable stock
- 75g stilton cheese
- 50g mixed nuts
- salt and pepper
- 1 tbsp tomato purée
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1/2 tsp cumin seeds (ground cumin would do, but definitely isn’t as tasty)
- 1/2 cinnamon stick (ground cinnamon would do, and is probably just the same)
- 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
Method
- Make the pastry by sieving the flour, adding the butter and a pinch of salt and kneading it into tiny breadcrumbs. Then add the water slowly, kneading it in each time, until it no longer cracks (but isn’t sticky). Its supposed to be put in the fridge before being rolled out on a flat surface sprinkled with flour.
- “Meanwhile” crush the cinnamon, fennel seeds and cumin seeds (the cinnamon needs quite a lot of work – you’ll need a pestle). Then dry fry them for about 5 minutes – this makes the room smell great! (actually it probably doesn’t change the taste all that much over ground spices, but I like the smell..)
- Fry the garlic, onion and carrot in oil until soft.
- Add the mushrooms and fry until soft. Then add the tomato purée and nuts and fry for another few minutes. Then add the soy sauce and stock and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Butter a pie dish and roll out the pastry quite thinly. Cut it to the right size to line the bottom and sides of the dish, put in the pastry and add the mushroom mixture on top. Crumble the Stilton over it, then add the lid. Brush the top with egg or milk, and bake at 200 degrees for about 30 minutes – don’t let the top brown until the bottom layer of pastry is cooked through. (We have to put a tray above whatever we’re cooking to stop it being burnt…)
OK, so its not all that different to the recipe on the BBC website – I just added spice (a lot of spice) and nuts. But it is extremely tasty! And next time I hope to have time to make the presentation a little neater, and get some good photos!
We had it with a “potato and leek boulangere” (complete vegetarian cookbook page 262) which was a huge disappointment. It spent about 2 hours in the oven then tasted of unflavoured potato, despite having smoked cheese and cream in it. In the interests of fairness, I aught to give a whole post over to it, but I don’t have a photo and it was simply too dull to bother. Not to be recommended.
Who made it: it was a joint effort in a hectic kitchen, but the vegetarian flourishes were me trying to make my own dinner tasty!
Recipe: My own! Well, mostly…
