Gill Meller's raised pork, chicken and parsley pie

If you fancy a cooking project this weekend Gill Meller's raised pork, chicken and parsley pie from his new book Outside would be perfect.

Gill writes: There are two pleasures here. The first is pie making. The second, pie eating.

Pie making is the kind of cookery you settle into, like a good book, so give yourself time. Each stage of the recipe is a chapter, in a sense, and the finished pie, cooling on the sideboard, is the last page, the conclusion.

Eating the pie, particularly this pie, is equally enjoyable. You are like an architect at this point, stepping back and admiring your work, although in this case you get to eat your own building. A big pie like this needs to be made the day before your picnic – it gives everything time to cool and find its place.

SERVES 8

‘For the hot water crust pastry

200g (7oz) pork lard

500g (1lb 2oz) plain (all-purpose)

flour, plus extra for dusting

½ teaspoon sea salt

2 eggs

For the filling

1.5–2kg (3lb 5oz–4lb 8oz) organic

or free-range chicken, preferably with giblets

350g (12oz) fatty pork belly, cubed

200g (7oz) bacon lardons or chopped streaky bacon

a large handful of flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and chopped

a handful of chives, finely sliced

1 teaspoon ground white pepper

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

a good pinch of grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon sea salt

You’ll need an 18–20cm diameter by 7–9cm (7–8in x 2¾–3½in) deep pie dish or cake tin.

To make the pastry, put the lard and 170ml (5½fl oz) of water into a pan and warm them over a low heat until the fat has melted and the mixture is warm – it doesn’t have to boil.

Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine the flour with the salt. Crack one of the eggs into a bowl and beat it lightly.

Pour the lard and water mixture into the flour. Add the beaten egg and bring everything together to form a dough. Gather up the dough and place it on a work surface. Fold the pastry four or five times until smooth.

Allow the pastry to cool in the fridge. It’ll be much easier to work with if it’s not warm.

While the pastry is chilling, make the pie filling. Place the chicken on a board. Remove the giblets from the cavity.

Use a sharp knife to remove each leg from the bird. Divide the drumsticks from the thighs. Carefully remove the chicken breasts. Try not to leave any meat on the carcass. Remove the skin from the legs and breasts – you can save this and all the chicken bones for making a delicious stock.

Cut the leg and thigh meat away from the bones and place it in a bowl with the cubed fatty pork belly and the lardons or chopped bacon. Trim the chicken liver and heart and add this to the other meats.

Give everything a good mix, then put it through a mincer. Or, if you don’t have a mincer, chop the meat to a relatively fine consistency by hand. (This can take time but it’s worth the effort.) Place the minced chicken and pork back into a large bowl and add the parsley and chives, along with the ground white and black pepper, nutmeg and salt.

Cut the chicken breasts into 2–3cm (3⁄4–1.in) cubes and add this to the minced pork and chicken, too. Carefully turn the chunks of chicken through the minced pork, herbs and seasoning so everything’s really well mixed and evenly distributed. Cover and refrigerate until needed.

Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/Gas 4.

Set aside a quarter of the pastry for the pie lid. Form the remaining three-quarters into a round and, on a floured surface, roll it out into a circle, roughly 35cm (14in) in diameter. Lay the pastry in the pie dish, carefully bringing it up the sides and smoothing out any pleats (of which there will be many) as you go, to make the pie case. Leave a very slight overhang of pastry all round.

Fill the lined tin with the chicken and pork mixture, making sure you don’t leave any unfilled gaps. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come all the way to the top of the pie dish; it’s fine.

Roll out the smaller portion of pastry for the pie lid. It should have the same diameter as the pie dish itself.

Crack the remaining egg into a bowl and beat it to make a glaze. Use a pastry brush to brush the rim of the pastry with a little beaten egg. Carefully ease the lid into place and crimp the edges together in a tight, neat fashion. You’ll have to trim any overhanging edges back to the crimped seam at this point. Use the tip of a knife to make a small hole in the middle of the lid.

Set the pie in the middle of the oven and bake it for 20 minutes, then lower the oven setting to 160°C/140°C fan/315°F/Gas 2–3. Brush the top of the pie all over with beaten egg and return it to the oven for a further 1 hour 10 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and golden and the filling is cooked through. Remove the pie from the oven and allow it to cool, then refrigerate it for 6–8 hours or overnight before slicing and eating.

What to drink: I actually think a pale or golden ale or a medium dry cider would be perfect with this dish but if you fancy a glass of wine a light red like a Beaujolais would also work well.

Extracted from OUTSIDE: Recipes for a Wilder Way of Eating by Gill Meller (Quadrille, £30) Photography: Andrew Montgomery

Pork rillettes with fennel

Like many of the best recipes this came about by accident. I bought a box of free-range organic pork and didn’t have enough room for it all in the freezer so left out 4 thick slices of pork belly ...

I originally thought of giving them an Asian spin but suddenly hit on the idea of rillettes, spiced not in the classic French way but Italian-style with fennel. A great success and a handy dish to have to dig into mid-week.

Serves 8

2 tsp flaked or coarse sea-salt
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp dried thyme or herbes de Provence
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
About 700g-750g good quality organic pork belly cut into 4 thick slices
2 tbsp olive oil
2 bayleaves + a couple more for decoration

You will also need a pat dish or earthenware bowl, about 725ml (1 1/4 pints) in capacity)

Put 1 teaspoon of the salt and the peppercorns and fennel seeds into a mortar and bash with a pestle until roughly ground. Add the thyme or herbes de Provence, grind again them add the chopped garlic and pound until you have a wettish paste.

Put the pork belly pieces side by side in a small roasting tin and rub with the oil. Season both sides with the garlic paste rubbing it in well and tuck a piece of bayleaf between each piece. Cover loosely with foil, put in a hot oven (200°C/Gas 6) for 10 minutes then turn the heat right down to 130°C and cook for about 3-4 hours until the meat is practically falling apart. (I cooked mine overnight in the simmering oven of the Aga.) Cool for about half an hour then pour off the fat and pan juices.

Cut away any skin, remove the bones then pull the meat apart with a couple of forks. You can take out a bit of the fat behind if you want to but it’s fat that gives rillettes its flavour and spreadable texture. Sprinkle over the remaining salt, mix together and pack into a lightly greased pat dish or earthenware dish. Skim off the excess fat from the roasting juices and pour it over the surface of the pork.

Decorate the dish/bowl with some bayleaves and a few peppercorns, cover with cling film and leave in the fridge to set for at least 12 hours, preferably overnight. Bring to room temperature for an hour before serving with sourdough toast and cornichons or cippolini (balsamic glazed onions).

What to drink: This needs a fresh-tasting wine with good acidity to cut through the fat. Beaujolais is the classic match for French charcuterie but you could easily accompany it with a young Italian red like a Langhe nebbiolo.

Duckstrami

Last weekend our cooking group cooked up an American barbecue of which this brilliant recipe from the Hang Fire Cookbook was the standout dish so I really wanted to share it with you.

As Sam and Shauna say you can serve it cold but we had it hot and it was utterly delicious so I wouldn't hesitate to double the quantity.

NOTE - just to reiterate you need to start it two days in advance

Duckstrami

SERVES 2–4

Cooking methods: Curing, Indirect Grilling/Smoking

Wood: Apple, Pear, Cherry

What’s not to like about duck pastrami? This is a great recipe that we’ve been making for the past couple of years and it really isn’t as complex as you might think. You can eat it cold, shave it over salad served with a nice punchy blackberry reduction, have it as part of a charcuterie board, or make the most awesome duck Reuben. As with all cured meats, this is gonna take patience, you’re looking at starting the recipe two days in advance.

4 good-quality duck breasts (about 250g each)

For the Cure

100g fine sea salt

2 tsp cracked black pepper

2 tsp soft dark brown sugar

1 tbsp garlic powder

8 juniper berries, ground

3 bay leaves, ground

1 tsp mixed spice

2 tsp ground coriander

For the Rub

4 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper

2 tbsp coarsely ground coriander seeds

1 tbsp garlic granules

½ tsp mixed spice

First make the cure. In a small bowl, thoroughly combine the cure ingredients. Coat the duck breasts entirely with cure and place in a large ziplock bag. Place in the coldest part of the refrigerator and cure for 48 hours, flipping the bag twice a day.

Place the duck breasts in a large container and fill with water. Allow to soak for 1 hour. Drain and pat them dry with kitchen towel.

Next, combine the ingredients for the rub in a small bowl.Coat the duck breasts entirely with the rub.

Fire up your smoker or grill to 110°C/225°F. Add chunks of cherry wood (or other fruit wood). When the wood is ignited and starts to smoke, put in the duck breasts, skin side down. Smoke for 1 hour, or until an instant-read thermometer reads 74°C/165°F when inserted into the centre of the breasts. (We cooked this on a gas barbecue for a shorter time (see below) and it was still delicious)

Remove from the smoker/barbecue and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

We prefer to wrap the duck breasts in cling film for at least 24 hours before we eat them, giving the flavours a chance to settle. If you want to reheat the duckstrami, we find that steaming it using a bamboo steamer is best. This warms the pastrami gently without direct heat which could cause it to dry out. Any meat you’re not using can be frozen for up to 3 months, or will keep for up to 1 week in the fridge. It’s a really versatile meat, and not as gamey as regular duck.

What to drink: This is unlikely to be the only dish you're serving - we had an array of other dishes including salads, pickles and ketchups so look to a full-flavoured red to cope with them all. Given the rub I'd favour a good cru Beaujolais like a Morgon rather than the usual pinot noir but a bright fruity syrah or syrah/grenache/mourvedre (GSM) blend would work well too. Or a amber ale.

From The Hang Fire Cookbook: Recipes and Adventures in American BBQ by Samantha Evans & Shauna Guinn (Quadrille, £20) Photography © Paul Winch-Furness

Thanksgiving turkey with a special Italian stuffing

If you haven't yet decided how to cook your Thanksgiving turkey try this fabulous Italian stuffing from ex-pat American food and wine writer Brian St Pierre.

"If you want to do Thanksgiving a little differently, why not look to Italy? Italians took to turkey as no other Europeans did, probably because they saw the bird the way that artists see blank spaces, as something to project their imaginations onto. You see it on menus of even the most exalted restaurants, sliced and stuffed with a spicy filling as involtini, or poached lightly in flavored olive oil, or roasted and stuffed with chestnuts in the autumn, or braised in wine to a juicy tenderness year-round.

To Italians, the idea that anyone would eat such a magnificent food only twice a year, and - even worse - to prepare it pretty much the same way each time, with the same side dishes, seems like absurd self-denial."

Roast turkey stuffed with pancetta and herbs
Serves 12

1 turkey, 10 to12 pounds
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for coating
1 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound ground pork
8 ounces sweet Italian sausage, removed from casing
2 cups loosely packed cubed sourdough bread without crusts, soaked in 1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon minced fresh sage
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil
3 tablespoons pine nuts
1/2 cup (2 ounces) grated Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons medium-sweet Marsala wine
3 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
3 ounces pancetta, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4. Rinse and dry the turkey, rub the inside with salt.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a medium large skillet and sauté the onion and half the garlic for about 5 minutes, or until soft. Add the pork and sausage meat. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring well, until it loses its raw pink color. Remove from heat and let cool.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine the bread cubes, herbs, pine nuts, Parmesan, and Marsala. Add the meat and mix well. Set this stuffing aside. In a small bowl, combine the rosemary, pancetta, and remaining garlic. Mix well. Loosen the skin of the turkey across the breast, beginning at the back of the bird, by inserting a finger under the skin and running it back and forth side to side, then forward. Insert the rosemary-pancetta mixture under the skin and massage it around forward fairly evenly across the breast meat (it will provide an aromatic, delicious self-baste). Stuff the turkey and skewer the cavity closed.

Place the bird on a rack in a roasting pan and brush or rub the skin liberally with olive oil, then rub with salt and pepper. Roast, basting occasionally with more olive oil and pan juices, for about 3 hours (figuring 18 minutes to the pound) until juices run clear when skin is pricked. Remove from the oven, let rest for 20 minutes loosely covered with foil, and carve.Serve with simple veg, such as caramelized mushrooms and a couple of shallots tossed with lightly steamed green beans and parsley

Brian’s wine suggestion: a lightish red such as Valpolicella, Nerello Mascalese (from Mt. Etna), Cerasuolo di Vittoria (Planeta's is nice); outside Italy, very good Beaujolais, New World Pinot Noir under 14% alcohol. (On a festive day, wine's the accompanist, not the star.)

Brian St Pierre is the restaurant critic of Decanter magazine and the author of The Winelover Cooks Italian. You can also read his writing at foodandwineinlondon.com and stpierre on wine

Image © msheldrake - Fotolia.com