THE CRAFTY COOK

 chefThis is going to be a new monthly article about food and recipes that are easy to make with the minimum of skill and time.  Most of the recipes may have a story or a humorous anecdote attached to them, which hopefully will make the cooking more fun.  I suppose you could say that these recipes are written by a bloke for blokes, especially those that haven’t had a go at cooking before or would like to, but need a bit of encouragement.

 Steak Pie

 This recipe was inspired by a rather bored trip to the supermarket to buy what I thought would be a nice treat for our family’s tea.  Well, I bought this steak pie and it said on the packaging ‘a tasty beef pie in a rich gravy with a light shortcrust pastry’.  I am pretty sure it had bit of cow in it, although I don’t think I would class those ‘bits’ as steak.  The gravy seemed to have been supplied in more generous proportions than the bits of cow and was very salty.  And as for the pastry, I think they have an agreement with a shoe maker to use up all their spare bits of leather!

After eating this pie with the brown gloop for gravy with bits of inedible cow in it, I thought I can do better than that.

Ingredients (serves 4)

450g of lean diced beef steak
2 tbsp of beef gravy granules
¾ pint of boiling water
1 beef oxo cube
1 medium egg beaten (for glazing)
1 packet of chilled ready made shortcrust pastry
1 foil pie dish
2 tbsp cooking oil

Method

1.

Place the cooking oil in a saucepan with the diced meat, turn the heat up to medium and brown the meat.  Use a wooden spoon to turn the meat over until all the chunks are brown and have lost the red appearance.

2.

Crush the stock cube into a jug and add the boiling water and stir to dissolve the stock cube.

3.

Pour the beef stock into the saucepan with the meat and turn up the heat to bring back to the boil.  Once boiling, turn the heat down so that the water is just simmering.  Simmer for 45 minutes until tender.

4.

Remove from the heat and stir in the gravy granules until dissolved (this will thicken the stock up).pastry and rolling pin

Half a packet of short pastry should be enough for one pie.  Roll out two circles of pastry on a floured surface.  Don’t forget to flour the rolling pin!  Make one circle slightly larger than the other and use this to line the base of the pie dish so that the pastry overhangs the dish by about half an inch.

Fill the base with the cooked meat and gravy (remove a little gravy if there is too much)

5.

6.

7.

Moisten the edge of the pastry with cold water then cover with the remaining circle of pastry and seal the edges with the finger and thumb.

8.

Brush the pie with the beaten egg and place the pie in the centre of a pre heated oven at 200oC or gas equivalent for 35 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.

selection of vegetablesThe total cost of this pie is about £3.50 which isn’t bad for something that is meaty (with real meat) and doesn’t contain bucketfuls of preservatives.

 The first time I made this pie my family were amazed at the difference in quality and how the home cooked pie tasted against the supermarket version.  I served this pie with mash and fresh vegetables from my father-in-laws allotment – delicious!!  In future I will write a recipe for Mike’s home made shortcrust pasty which is easy and superior to the shop bought variety and will save you money.

Mike Clare

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