Pies are a great invention.
Hiding stuff inside pastry is the oldest trick in the book, and couple of people can resist the scent of freshly cooked golden pastry, and then biting by way of to a redolent savoury filling within.
This is a single of life’s excellent pleasures. To this working day I still don’t forget getting at Tamaki Principal University in New Zealand and being transported by the smell of the pies arriving for university lunch, the aroma wafting down the hall and slicing through our attention spans like an oxy-acetylene torch applied to a block of butter.
When I was a lad we had a minimal number of choices when it arrived to pies, but they had been delightful options.
We had a choice of mince pies, steak pies, pepper pies, potato best pies, the wildly unique “curry pie” and then a great innovation, the tomato and onion pie, the place strips of superheated onion burned throughout one’s lip like an offended box jellyfish.
On the weekends, if we were fortunate, the bacon and egg pie would make an visual appeal, and this was 1 of the greatest of the lot.
I set it on our breakfast buffet a handful of months in the past and it truly is a well-known addition.
These days we are spoilt for option, and the savoury filling within your pie is limited only by your creativeness.
Some fantastic kinds contain cauliflower and cheese, broccoli mornay, environmentally friendly curry rooster, massaman beef, beef and red wine gravy, mushroom pies, chicken mushroom white wine, goulash, smoked fish in white parsley sauce and fairly much anything at all from your favorite cuisine that can be bound in gravy and encased in pastry!
The perfect pie needs a denser pie dough base, a tasty filling, and a flaky pastry lid.
Puff pastry can be utilised for the lid, even though this has a inclination to stay up to it is title and puff skywards like a best hat.
Much better is a flaky pastry, or a ‘rough puff’ which is quicker and simpler to make.
Here’s a recipe for the lid
Tough Puff / flaky pastry
550g flour
120 lard
200 butter
one tsp salt
Sift flour and combine the salt by means of it
Rub 50 percent of the lard by means of the flour and rub it with fingertips until it seems to be like breadcrumbs.
Add in ample iced drinking water to make a gentle dough.
Mix the butter with the remaining lard
Roll the doughh into a rectangle.
Take 1/three of the butter lard blend and place teaspoon sized chunks throughout two/3 of the pastry on the still left.
Fold the vacant appropriate hand aspect one/3 of pastry above 50 percent of the pastry with butter knobs to the remaining. Fold to the left yet again.
There are now a few layers. Seal the open sides of the pastry by urgent lightly. Flip ninety levels and roll into a rectangle once more.
Chill pastry in the fridge for 15 minutes
repeat very last step with 50 percent of the remaining butter lard mix
Chill yet again in fridge for 15 minutes
Repeat again with remaining butter lard blend. Roll, fold back again into a square and then chill for 30 minutes ahead of using.
What does this attain?
The chunks of butter/lard grow to be flat discs when rolled out, and become unfold through three the three folded levels of pastry.
each time you roll and fold and repeat, the butter & lard becomes distribute evenly into overlapping layers of pastry and excess fat, just like a puff pastry but with a number of more gaps, and significantly less finesse.
The result is a crisp, flaky, layered pastry that is excellent for topping pies.
Subsequent we need to have the pastry to make the pie bases.
Pie base pastry (lifted pie dough)
one thousand g Flour
forty g Salt
four hundred g Butter (or pork lard)
ten each Egg yolks
250g / 240g Iced Drinking water (250g water if making use of butter, or 220g h2o if utilizing lard)
Technique one: (Conventional, by hand)
1. Combine salt by means of the flour
2. Pour flour on to table and make a well (a thick ring with a gap in the middle)
3. Combine the butter or lard into the flour, and rub with the fingertips until finally it looks like coarse breadcrumbs
four. Type a nicely with the flour & butter mix. Pour the water and egg yolks into the properly.
5. Pull the flour butter blend into the liquid and mix with the fingertips till just combined.
six. Thrust jointly with the palms, switch above and drive again into condition. 3 occasions
7. Sort into two balls, clingwrap and relaxation in chiller for a single hour
eight. Should be handled cold, but not also cold. If in the chiller right away, remove a single hour just before rolling.
*This dough is used for the Foundation ONLY for pies and quiche.
Approach two (By foodstuff processor)
one. Blend flour and salt and place into foodstuff processor
two. Add chilly, challenging, diced butter into robot coupe and blend by pulsing till it appears like coarse bread crumbs
3. Include h2o and egg yolks.
four. Pulse two or a few instances more for a second or two only, until it starts off to type a ball DO NOT Above Mix
5. Wrap in cling movie / plastic wrap and great before rolling.
Producing the bacon and egg pies.
We need to have a filling, which in this situation is a easy bacon and egg combine.
Sauteed bacon items, comfortable and not crispy.
For the mini chunk sized pies I’m employing quail eggs as they look great cracked whole within every mini pie.
For typical personal pies, use a single chicken egg per pie.
Bacon & egg pies helps make 50 mini pies
350g Pie foundation pastry 7g each x seven.5cm diameter
200g Tough Puff pastry 4g each and every x 4.5cm diameter
300g Bacon, diced 1cm sq..
50 ea. Quail egg, one each and every for every pie
Salt & pepper to style
one ea Chicken egg (for egg wash – for brushing puff pastry pie lid)
40g Milk (for egg clean – for brushing puff pastry pie lid)
1. Pan fry or grill the bacon. It should be cooked & colored, but NOT crispy.
two. Great the cooked bacon ahead of using as a filling.
3. Conquer the hen eggs for a minute until effectively combined – but not frothy.
4. Push the seven.5cm pie foundation pastry into the pie moulds
5. Put chilly cooked bacon in the bottom
6. Include teaspoon of crushed hen egg (three.5ml or 4ml) into each and every pie
seven. Crack quail eggs one particular by a single into each pie. Make positive there is no shell in the pies.
spianatoia in acciaio for every pie
eight. Best each pie with a 4.5cm rough puff pastry pie lid
nine. Bake at 190C till pastry is fully cooked (15 – twenty minutes)
Shane Brierly is a skilled chef from New Zealand who has been travelling the world for the very last six several years cooking, consuming and finding.
He prefers the “route less travelled” and is at the moment living in South-East Asia blogging new foods, ordeals, sights and elements.
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