Cheeky Beef and Guinness pies

Bord Bia are running a fabulous competition at the moment for food bloggers to win a trip to Germany to a European Bloggers workshop. In order to enter the competition I had to put together a recipe using Irish beef. Given the month that is in it, my contribution is a very Irish style pie. This pie would serve as a very hearty lunch or dinner and given the contents include meat, veg and drink it very much has "eating and drinking in it". The filling itself makes a good stew on its own (maybe dont thicken as much as I did) served with mashed potato (or even sweet potato mash).

I had far too much time on my hands so made the pastry from scratch (its not difficult, just a little time consuming) but you could just as easily buy frozen puff pastry. If you have remaining pastry then a great nibble is to scrunch up the leftover and grate some parmesan over it before sticking in the oven for 10 minutes.


Cheeky Beef and Guinness pies (makes 4)

Beef filling

• a few tablespoons of sunflower/rapeseed oil
• 200g finely chopped onions
• 550g beef cheeks chopped into inch sized pieces
• 150g diced carrots
• 250ml Guinness
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 teaspoons tomato puree
• 100g mushrooms

Roux 

• 50g butter
• 50g flour

Flaky Pastry (or use store bought puff pastry)

• 300g flour
• pinch of salt
• 200g butter at room temperature
• cold water to bind
• a whisked egg to wash pastry

the most beautiful Irish beef cheeks

Prepare the meat and vegetables
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a small casserole. Lightly cook the onions in the oil over a medium heat until softened. Remove the onions from the casserole and set aside.
Season the beef with salt and pepper.
Brown the beef in small batches in the casserole, removing to the side once browned.
Once the meat is browned return to the casserole with 175ml of the Guinness, the chopped onions and diced carrots. Add the tomato puree and enough water to cover the meat and vegetables, along with some salt and pepper to taste.

all ready for the Guinness

Bring the stew to a boil and then leave to simmer covered on a low heat or in the oven at 150C for 2 hours.
Finely chop the mushrooms and fry in small batches in some butter until browned. Leave to one side and add to the casserole for the last half an hour of cooking

Prepare a roux by melting the 50g of butter in a saucepan and then adding the flour. Stir over a medium heat for two minutes.

Remove the casserole from the oven and strain the liquid into a saucepan. Bring the liquid to the boil and add roux, whisking to thicken. Add the remaining 75 ml of Guinness at this point also, this addition is what gives the filling its rich Guinness taste. The sauce will need to be a fairly thick gravy so that it wont leak from the pies so dont be shy with the roux. Return the sauce to the casserole and leave to cool. This bit is really worth noting. I made the filling a little too late in the day and it melted through my pastry before it was fully sealed (they didnt turn out too pretty but were still very tasty!)

Pastry (will take about 2 hours)
Sieve the flour and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Divide the butter in 4 equal pieces and mix the first piece through the flour adding enough cold water to bring together and make a pastry. Wrap the pastry in clingfilm and place in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.

be careful not to dig your nails into the pastry!

Roll the pastry into a rectangular sheet with width of about 10 inches. **Spread 1 piece of the butter across two thirds of the length of the pastry. Fold the pastry in thirds over the butter. Wrap in clingfilm and return to the fridge again for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the fridge with the seam to the side (it should look like a book). Roll to a rectangle again and repeat as before from ** 2 more times to use the remaining butter. Leave the pastry in the fridge until the beef filling has cooled.

pie ready for egg washing

Roll out the pastry so that it is large enough for 4 pies, using a side plate as a template (store bought pastry is normally also around the 500g mark so should do the same number of pies). Place the filling (2 -3 tablespoons should be enough) slightly to the south of centre.

pie with pint

I have made pies a number of times and failed at sealing them until I came across this youtube video on how to crimp the pastry. Follow the video and they will seal perfectly. Brush with eggwash and place in an oven at 180C for 25 minutes until golden brown

Fresh from the oven

in a bit of a stew

So the doctor called me the other day to tell me that I dont have anything strange growing in me after my trip to India and then proceeded that lovely sentence with the word "yet". As a result I have been sticking away from anything my Grandparents would have deemed strange food and decided to go all wholesome and make a stew.


Now a few things should be noted here about said decision to make a stew:

1. I gave up eating pork, beef and lamb when I was 16. Much as it pains me to mention this thats a few more than 5 years ago. The last time I ate a significant amount of red meat I was fairly ill for 2 days.
2. Im not vegetarian, I dont even pretend to be, so dont go giving out to me. I just stopped eating meat because I didnt really like it and was back from a trip to France where I saw far too much blood for my liking on plates. Ive decided that 2009 is the year to be a bit more adventurous and try it again. Im no longer 16 so maybe my tastes can be changed?
3. When I did eat meat I hated stew, hated it with a passion. I didnt like the barley, the sinewy lamb, the half boiled carrots, the smell, anything about stew.
4. I have no idea what made me think that making stew was a good idea, theres sometimes that it just feels like the right thing to be eating. That time just happened to coincide with me being afraid I had a parasite living in my stomach so its worth documenting.

This recipe is very much one that I pulled together by googling stews and realising that there was nothing on the Interwebs that exactly matched what I had to eat in my house. The weather has been miserable so I really didnt want to leave the house to go to the supermarket.

Im not saying this is the best stew in the world, just that its easy to make and if you are afraid you might have something living in your stomach then you may just feel adventurous enough to give it a try. Of course even if youre not afraid of a non existant parasite which you have already named then you may feel like some stew anyway.

The food.ie everything in my fridge stew

The measurements are in handfuls as I didnt weigh anything. You dont need to be too accurate.

• Handful of chopped chicken breasts (2 breasts will probably do the job)
• Handful of chopped pork
• 2 smoky bacon rashers
• Handful of chopped mushrooms
• Handful of chopped carrot
• 2 Handfuls of baby potatoes or large potatoes chopped small
• 1 large onion quartered
• 1 Handful of chopped leeks
• 1 Handful of chopped mushrooms
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 2 bay leaves
• Salt and Pepper
• 1 pint of vegetable stock (or meat stock if you prefer)
• the leftover bit of a bottle of white/red wine (this was probably one very large glass)
• Some oil for frying
• 1 tablespoon cornflour/ground arrowroot

Heat some oil in a frying pan and brown the meats slowly. While you are doing this you can be chopping all the veg. Remove the meat to a casserole dish.

Throw the veg into the pan for a few minutes and then remove to the casserole dish aswell.

Pour your wine and stock into the casserole dish (mine is an 18cm Le Creuset dish which is about enough for 3 hungry people). Season with some salt and pepper and add the bay leaves and cinnamon stick.

Cover with lid and put into an oven pre-heated to 180C. Leave for an hour or so, or until the carrots and baby potatoes are no longer rock hard.

Remove from the oven and strain as much as possible of the sauce from the casserole dish into a saucepan and put it on a lowe heat. Mix up a few teaspoons of cornflour or ground arrowroot (only found this in the supermarket recently when they had no cornflour but works great) with some water into a paste and then add to the saucepan. Bring slowly to the boil whisking all the time. This should give you a nice thick gravy which you can then add back to the casserole dish before putting into bowls and eating.