Beef bourguignon pie

Why has no-one had the genius idea of putting beef bourguignon into a pie before? Here's the recipe courtesy of the brilliant Ginger Pig Meat Book which I reviewed here.

We started making meat pies around eight years ago as we had a lot of offcuts of meat that was too superior to make into everyday mince. After getting a classic recipe from old farm cookery books, I adapted it to make it more interesting.

Makes 1 large pie (24 x 12cm/9 1/2 x 4 1/2in) or 4 small (12 x 6cm/4 1/2 x 2 1/2in) pies
Takes 2 hours, plus overnight chilling

For the filling
1.3kg (3lb) chuck steak, cut into 2cm (3/4in) cubes
350g (12oz) cooked dry-cured bacon, diced
200g (7oz) button mushrooms, chopped
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 small garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp soy sauce, preferably Kikkoman
350ml (12fl oz) red wine
2 tbsp cornflour
leaves from 4 sprigs of flat leaf parsley, chopped

For the suet pastry
700g (1lb 9oz) plain flour
350g (12oz) suet
tsp salt

For assembly
25g (1oz) lard, melted
1 tbsp plain flour
1 egg, beaten

1 Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4. Place the beef and bacon in a roasting tin and brown in the oven for 15 minutes, then stir and cook for 15 minutes more. Add the mushrooms, onion, garlic, soy sauce and wine. Cover with baking parchment, pushing it down over the ingredients, seal with foil, and cook for 1 hours.

2 Drain off all the liquid into a saucepan. Blend the cornflour with a little water and
mix into the cooking juices, then place on the heat and stir until boiling and thickened. Return the liquid to the meat, add the parsley, mix, and leave to cool completely.

3 Now place the flour and suet in a food processor and blitz until very well blended.
Transfer to a mixing bowl, add 300ml ( half pint) water and mix until smooth. If making individual pies, divide the dough into eight balls, four weighing 185g (6.5oz) and four weighing 115g (4oz). If making one large pie, divide it into two balls, one 740g (1lb 10oz) and the other 460g (1lb).

4 Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/gas mark 5. Brush the inside of the tin or tins
thoroughly with lard, then dust lightly with flour. Roll out the larger pastry balls and use
to line the tin or tins. Divide the filling between them. Brush the pastry edges generously with egg, roll out the smaller pastry balls and place on top, pushing the edges together. Trim off the excess with a knife and crimp around the edge. Brush with egg, and decorate with pastry trimmings. Cook for 50 minutes. Leave to cool for five minutes, then turn out of the tins and enjoy hot or cold.

Suggested wine match: burgundy is the classic French match for a Bourguignon but given the pie treatment I go for a more rustic and substantial Rhne red or southern French red.

From Ginger Pig Meat Book by Tim Wilson and Fran Warde, £25 Mitchell Beazley

Supreme of guinea fowl with broad beans, fresh morels and herb gnocchi

A smashing recipe from Chris and Jeff Galvin's Galvin: a Cookbook de Luxe which you could make to impress on Father's Day. It's one of those books that teaches you to cook like a Michelin-starred chef - so also a great present for any Dad who fancies himself in the kitchen.

Chris and Jeff write: This is one of those delightful dishes where all the ingredients come into season at the same time. If you can't get fresh morels, use any good wild mushrooms in season

Serves 4

2 guinea fowl crowns (the main body with the legs taken off)
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 quantity of Herb Gnocchi (see below)
3 tablespoons olive oil
40 small fresh morel mushrooms
160g shelled broad beans, blanched and thin outer skin removed
sea salt and freshly ground white pepper

For the herb paste
90g softened unsalted butter
80g curly parsley, chopped
100g fresh white breadcrumbs

For the sauce
1/2 garlic clove
50ml white wine
1 sprig of thyme
300ml Brown Chicken Stock (see the book or substitute your own home-made stock)
1/2 lemon

First, make the herb paste to go under the guinea fowl skin. Put the butter, parsley and breadcrumbs in a blender or food processor and blitz until they combine. Transfer to a piping bag.

Prepare the guinea fowl. Remove the wishbone and wings from the birds (these are used in the sauce later), then push your fingers between the skin and breasts to loosen. Pipe the herb paste into this cavity on both birds and spread it out evenly.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large, ovenproof frying pan until smoking hot. Seal the guinea fowl on both breasts in the pan until golden brown. Transfer the pan to an oven preheated to 200°C/Gas Mark 6 and cook for 25 minutes, basting regularly. Remove from the oven and leave to rest for 15 minutes. Once rested, remove the breasts from the crowns and keep warm.

Meanwhile, to make the sauce, chop the wing bones into very small pieces. Heat a heavy-based saucepan, just big enough to hold the bones in a single layer, until it is very hot. Add the chopped bones to the pan with the garlic and reduce the heat slightly. There is no need to add any oil as the wings will start to release fat as they cook.

Cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, ensuring the pan is hot enough to roast the bones but not so hot that they burn. You are looking for the wing pieces to turn a deep golden yellow colour. Add the white wine and thyme and cook until reduced by three-quarters. Add the chicken stock and cook for 10–15 minutes or until the mixture has reduced to a light coating consistency. Season with salt, if necessary, and finish with 1 or 2 drops of lemon juice. Pass the sauce through a piece of muslin or a fine sieve.

Just before serving, heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a frying pan, add the gnocchi and sauté for 2–3 minutes or until golden all over. Season with salt and pepper and keep warm.

Heat another tablespoon of the olive oil in a small saucepan, add the morels and sauté gently for 2–3 minutes or until tender. Season with a little salt. At the same time, reheat the broad beans in a pan of boiling salted water. Drain, then sauté the beans in the remaining olive oil for 30 seconds and season with salt.

To serve, slice each guinea fowl breast into 3 and place in the centre of each serving plate. Surround with the gnocchi, morels and broad beans. Finally spoon over a little sauce and serve immediately.

What to drink: This is the perfect dish to pair with a fine red burgundy or other top Pinot Noir. Premier cru Chablis or another subtly oaked Chardonnay would also be a good match.

Herb Gnocchi
Makes 20

1 large Desiree potato, weighing about 400g
100g fine sea salt
1 small free-range egg
35g Parmesan cheese, finely grated
50g Italian ‘00’ flour
1 tablespoon of chopped mixed herbs (chervil, parsley and tarragon)
8g sea salt
freshly ground white pepper

Wash the potato well and prick it with a fork. Place the fine salt on a small baking tray, put the potato on top and place in an oven preheated to 190°C/Gas Mark 5. Bake for about 11/2 hours, until tender. Remove from the oven, cut the potato in half and use a spoon to scoop out the flesh. Pass it through a fine sieve into a bowl; you should have about 200g sieved potato.

Lightly beat the egg with the Parmesan, them work this mixture into the potato with a spatula or wooden spoon. Make sure the mixture is well combined but be careful not to overwork it. Add the flour, herbs and salt and a few twists of pepper and mix together to make a dough. Turn the dough out on to a work surface and shape into a long sausage, about 1.5cm thick. Cut it into 20 pieces.

Add the gnocchi to a large pan of boiling salted water. They will sink to the bottom initially but when they rise to the top, they are cooked. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon, refresh in iced water and then drain well.

Galvin: a Cookbook de Luxe is published by Absolute Press at £25. Photograph ©Lara Holmes. For more about the Galvins' restaurants see www.galvinrestaurants.com

 

 

Japanese ginger and garlic chicken with smashed cucumber

A simple but spectacular Japanese-style dish from Diana Henry's marvellous new book A Change of Appetite which I've also reviewed on the site here.

Diana writes: "This dish has a great interplay of temperatures. The chicken is hot and spicy, the cucumber like eating shards of ice (make sure you serve it direct from the fridge).

The cucumber recipe is adapted from a recipe in a wonderful American book called Japanese Farm Food by Nancy Singleton Hachisu. You can also make the chicken with boneless thighs and griddle them."

Serves 4

For the chicken

3 1/2 tbsp soy sauce

3 tbsp sake or dry sherry

3 tbsp soft dark brown sugar

1/2 tbsp brown miso

60g (2oz) root ginger, peeled and finely grated

4 garlic cloves, finely grated

1 tsp togarashi seasoning (available in Waitrose), or 1/2 tsp chilli powder

8 good-sized skinless bone-in chicken thighs, or other bone-in chicken pieces

For the cucumber

500g (1lb 2oz) cucumber

2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

2 tsp sea salt

2 tbsp pink pickled ginger, very finely shredded

small handful of shiso leaves, if available, or mint leaves, torn (optional)

Mix everything for the chicken (except the chicken itself ) to make a marinade. Pierce the chicken on the fleshy sides with a knife, put the pieces into a shallow dish and pour the marinade over. Massage it in well, turning the pieces over. Cover and put in the fridge for 30–60 minutes.

When you’re ready to cook, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Take the pieces out of the marinade and put them in a shallow ovenproof dish in which they can sit snugly in a single layer. Pour over half the marinade. Roast in the oven for40 minutes, basting every so often with the juices and leftover marinade (don’t add any leftover marinade after 20 minutes, it needs to cook properly as it has had raw chicken in it). Check for doneness: the juices that run out of the chicken when you pierce the flesh with a knife should be clear and not at all pink.

When the chicken is halfway through cooking, peel and halve the cucumber and scoop out the seeds. Set on a board and bang the pieces gently with a pestle or rolling pin. This should break them up a little. Now break them into chunks with your hands.

Crush the garlic with a pinch of the salt and massage this – and the rest of the salt – into the cucumber. Put in a small plastic bag, squeeze out the air and put in the fridge for 10 minutes. When you’re ready to eat, tip the cucumber into a sieve so the juices can drain away. Add the shredded ginger. You can add shiso leaves if you can find them (I can’t, I have no Japanese shop nearby). Nothing else really tastes like it, but I sometimes add mint.

Serve the chicken with brown rice or rice vermicelli (the rice vermicelli is good served cold) and the cucumber.

Try this with… edamame and sugar snap salad Mix 2 tbsp white miso paste, 1 tbsp rice vinegar, 2 tbsp groundnut oil, 2 tbsp water, 1 tsp runny honey and 2cm (3/4in) peeled, grated root ginger. Toss with 100g (3 1/2oz) cooked edamame beans, 100g (3 1/2oz) raw sugar snap peas, sliced lengthways, 8 sliced radishes and a handful of mizuna. Serves 4.

What to drink: While this type of sweet-savoury dish is delicious it can be tricky with wine. Chilled sake might be your best bet - otherwise I'd go for a strong fruity rosé, a light red like a Beaujolais cru or a New Zealand pinot gris.

You can read my full review of A Change of Appetite here.

From A Change of Appetite by Diana Henry, published by Mitchell Beazley. Photograph © Laura Edwards.

 

Wilhelm Coetzee's Butterflied Leg of Lamb

I first met winemaker Wilhelm Coetzee back in 2006 when he was working for Flagstone. He's now working at Durbanville Hills and this is his favourite 'braii' recipe.

"In South Africa a lot of our lamb meat comes from the "Karoo" (an arid but beautiful part of our country and a place where the farmers are very passionate about their meat). The shrubs that these lamb feed on (free range) is very herbaceous and spicy, so when you buy the meat it's already tender with a natural herby/spicy character. For the recipe you need a small leg of lamb (1.3kg), deboned and butterflied.

The marinade:
500ml Bulgarian yogurt
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 tbsp of grounded coriander seeds
1 tsp of grounded cumin
1 small onion finely chopped

Mix all the ingredients together, keep half of it aside (store in a airtight vessel) to serve with the barbequed lamb, cover the lamb with the rest, put in a plastic bag remove the air and leave in the fridge for two days.

Before you barbeque, remove the lamb from the bag and wipe off excess marinade with paper towel.

Basting sauce for the barbeque:
250g good quality unsalted butter
100ml Verjuice
1 clove garlic finely chopped

Put the ingredients in a saucepan and melt the butter over a low heat.

Barbeque over medium hot coals but not too close to the heat. Turn after 10 minutes, baste, and season well with Maldon salt and black pepper. After another 10 minutes turn again and do the same as above. Now you can start turning every 5 minutes, basting after every turn. Take the lamb off the coals when medium done (about 50 minutes) and let it rest for 10 minutes. Slice thinly and serve with the marinade that was kept aside. (What I also like to serve with the meat is a fresh coriander pesto made with salted pistachio nuts instead of pine nuts).

With the leg of lamb I like to serve oven roasted vegetables. I prefer to use red and yellow veggies like:
Red and yellow peppers
Red onion
Nice sweet tomatoes
Butternut squash
Carrots

Just drizzle with olive oil, season and pop into the oven at 200 degrees C until they're tender (about 40-45 minutes)

To complete the color scheme do a salad of green baby leaves and parmesan shavings, squeeze some fresh lemon over and drizzle with olive oil.

To all this you add good friends and wine and have a feast!

Wine to serve with this:
Originally Wilhelm suggested the Flagstone Dragon Tree 2004 (a blend of Cabernet, Pinotage, Shiraz and Merlot) as the ideal match but since he moved to Durbanville Hills he's loyally suggesting the Durbanville Hills Bastion 2011, a smooth, minty Cabernet Shiraz blend (not currently available in the UK so far as I can make out but any similar Cape blend or Cabernet blend would do)

Image © sumos - Fotolia.com