Beef and Ale Pie Recipe Mary Berry
Choosing the recipe
I was looking out of the window on a dreary day, despite it being the end of May, trying to decide on the weekend menu and this week's Saturday Seconds. We had friends coming for a day of movies and I wanted something that could be made ahead and popped in the oven. Given the horrible weather, when I looked at the second recipe in the "Meat" chapter in Mary Berry Cooks the Perfect and it was a Steak and Guinness Pie (page 130), it certainly seemed like a great option.
Gathering the ingredients
Then of course the weather turned and it was a beautiful day when we popped over to Fernygrove Farm to pick up some braising steak. The butcher gave me a slightly quizzical look, asking "a stew?" but was nonplussed when I replied pie, stating "never a bad time for a pie." So true.
Mary states that a shop-bought puff pastry is fine (all butter preferably) but I decided to give making a rough-puff pastry a go for the first time.
The cooking
The great thing about this book is what's called "Keys to perfection," where extra photos of the techniques are shown. This makes it a really easy to follow book and would be particularly great for the inexperienced cook. The first of these for this recipe was about browning the meat, I got started by cutting the steak in to chunks and dusting with seasoned flour. Then it was into a casserole in batches until the meat had a good colour. Now the recipe states using 2 tbsp of oil to begin with, but I think this is too much. It made it very messy with its spitting and, perhaps because it wasn't hot enough to begin with, it seemed to stew the meat instead of browning it. I'd probably start with 1 tbsp next time and add extra as required.
Once the meat has been browned, a little more oil is used to first cook the onion and then the celery and carrots. Mary seems to use a different pan for browning the meat and frying the vegetables than cooking the pie filling in the oven. For me this is an unnecessary use of an extra pan unless you don't have one suitable for both your hob and the oven. As I was using the same one,although it's not in the recipe, I deglazed the casserole dish with a little ofthe Guinness as it had lots of sticky flavour on the bottom that I wanted to getinto the pie filling.
Following this I returned the meat and vegetables before adding the rest of the Guinness plus the stock and redcurrant jelly. At this point it's confession time, what Ihad thought was redcurrant jelly in the fridge turned out to be cranberry sauce,so with no time for a shopping trip this was my own twist on Mary's recipe! The bay leaves are also added and then it goes into the oven for a slow braise.
Once the meat has become tender the mixture is left to cool,I did this overnight as I was planning to cook the pie the following day. The bay leaves are removed once cool and the mixture is transferred to a pie dish and it's then ready for its lid.
I missed a few photos of the pastry in its making, but I deviated slightly from the recipe in that instead of using room temperature butter I put it in the freezer for half an hour so that it could be grated. The pastry was surprising easy to make and not all that time consuming.
I followed the "Keys to perfection" tips from the book for making a well-fitting, decorative pie lid. Unfortunately, the tip of putting a 'lip' of pastry around the dish before adding the main lid didn't work very well for me. Perhaps I'm just too heavy-handed because as soon as I put the lid on, one side of the lip just slipped off and onto the pie filling. After a second attempt I got itto stay and following a light egg wash the pie went into the oven for 35 minutes, after which it was a lovely golden hue.
The eating
A disclaimer is that any kind of pie always goes down well in this house, although it's normally a much more haphazard affair to use up whatever is leftover from a roast plus odds and sods available from the fridge. Everyone really enjoyed this rich and delicious pie, served alongside some buttery mash and fresh vegetables. The cranberry sauce, instead of redcurrant jelly,didn't seem to have any adverse effect and I was also delighted with how the pastry turned out. In contrast to current prevailing thinking, I do think it was worth the extra effort to make it as the texture was much crisper than pastry I have bought. We also had leftovers reheated in the oven the following day and it was just as good second time round.
Score and summary
Final scores on the doors for this Saturday Seconds was 8/10:
- Thoroughly delicious pie with generous fillingthat was neither too wet nor too dry
- If I had followed the recipe with the shop-bought pastry I'm not sure it would have felt as special as it did
- Takes a fair amount of preparation (even if the pastry was shop-bought), if you cooled and cooked same day it would probably take a good five hours total, although 4 hours of this would be hands-off time whilst the pie was in the oven or cooling
- Most of the techniques were relatively straightforward and the extra photos would help the less experienced
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Source: https://myfavouritefoodisseconds.com/saturday-seconds-mary-berry-cooks-the-perfect-steak-and-guinness-pie/
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