Recipes
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
Barbecued Chicken with Yellow Mustard Sauce
If you fancy a proper US-style barbecue this weekend try this brilliantly easy recipe from chef Brad McDonald's book Deep South: New Southern Cooking
Brad writes: "You’re going to fall in love with this Carolina- style sauce. I really like its tanginess with the chargrilled chicken skin. It also stands up well to the charred spring onions, which make the perfect garnish for this dish. (Keep any left- over mustard sauce in the fridge – it’s great with sausages.)
Barbecued Chicken with Yellow Mustard Sauce
Serves 4–6
1 free-range chicken, about 1.5kg (3 1⁄4 lb)
100ml (3 1⁄2 fl oz) olive oil
50g (1 3⁄4oz) BBQ rub (see below)
12 spring onions (scallions), trimmed but left whole
a little vegetable oil
sea salt
For the yellow mustard sauce:
250g (9oz) French’s yellow mustard
120ml (4fl oz) cider vinegar
85g (3oz) light soft brown sugar
1⁄4 tsp paprika
1⁄4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1⁄4 tsp cayenne pepper
1⁄4 tsp freshly ground
black pepper
First spatchcock the chicken: put it breast-side down on a board and, using a pair of poultry scissors, cut out the backbone. Turn the bird over and press down gently on the breast bone, then splay the chicken open. Season with salt on both sides. Make a paste with the olive oil and the BBQ rub and coat the bird all over with it. Leave to marinate for 3–4 hours or overnight.
Place the bird skin-side down on a barbecue grill and cook over a medium heat until tender and cooked through. Turn once and move to a lower heat if nec- essary to prevent scorching. If using a thermometer to check the temperature, pull the bird off the heat at 65°C/150°F. Leave to rest for 15–20 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the sauce: put all the ingredients in a pan and bring to the boil, stirring constantly with a whisk.
Toss the spring onions in enough vegetable oil to coat, then place on the barbecue and cook until lightly charred.
Carve off the chicken legs and thighs, then carve the white meat from the bone. Brush the sauce over the meat. Garnish with the grilled spring onions and serve with the rest of the sauce on the side.
For the rub:
125g (4 1⁄2 oz) paprika
15g (1⁄2 oz) onion powder
15g (1⁄2 oz) garlic powder
15g (1⁄2 oz) chilli flakes (red pepper flakes)
15g (1⁄2 oz) crushed black pepper
7g (1⁄4 oz) dried oregano
Mix everything together, use what you need for the recipe and keep the rest in a sealed jar
What to drink: Personally I'd go for a craft beer like a pale ale or IPA with this but you could go for a fruity red like a merlot, grenache or tempranillo or a not-too-oaky chardonnay if you prefer a white
From Deep South by Brad McDonald (Quadrille £25) Photograph © Andy Sewell
Sierra Nevada chicken
A bit of a blast from the past, this. It comes from An Appetite for Ale, the beer and food book I wrote with my son Will at the time he owned a pub, the Marquess Tavern back in 2007.
It's a Belgian-style chicken stew made with a classic American ale. Chicken casserole re-invented.
Sierra Nevada Chicken
Serves 4
3 tbsp sunflower or light olive oil
125g (4 1/2oz) smoked bacon lardons
500g (1lb 2oz) skinless, boneless chicken thighs cut into large chunks
1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and thinly sliced
2 sticks of celery, trimmed and thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
1/2 tsp finely chopped fresh thyme or 1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 level tbsp plain flour
300ml (10 fl oz) fresh chicken stock or stock made from half an organic chicken stock cube
150ml (5 fl oz) Sierra Nevada pale ale + a little extra to finish the dish
300g new potatoes
125g (4 1/2oz chestnut mushrooms, rinsed and sliced
A handful of roughly chopped flatleaf parsley
Salt and pepper
Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a large frying pan and brown the lardons lightly (about 3-4 minutes). Remove to a casserole with a slotted spoon then lightly brown the chicken pieces. Transfer them to the casserole with the bacon, turn down the heat in the frying pan and add the chopped onion.
Cook until starting to soften (about 3-4 minutes) then add the sliced carrot and celery, stir and cook a couple of minutes more. Tip the vegetables into the casserole, stir, cover with a lid and leave to cook for 10 minutes over a very low heat for the flavours to amalgamate.
Remove the lid, add the crushed garlic and thyme, cook for a few seconds then stir in the flour and cook for a minute. Add the chicken stock and Sierra Nevada ale and bring up to boiling point. Turn the heat right down, re-cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes.
Cut the new potatoes into even sized chunks, add them to the casserole, stir well and continue to cook until the potatoes are cooked (another 15-20 minutes), adding the sliced mushrooms about 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time.
Splash in a little extra Sierra Nevada ale (about 2 tbsp), season with salt and pepper and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Stir in the chopped parsley and serve the stew in large shallow soup bowls.
What to drink: Sierra Nevada obviously or a similar pale ale - Kernel's Table Beer would be pretty good or try a full flavoured lager like Schiehallion
Photograph © Vanessa Courtier
Bacon, Isle of Mull cheddar and Thornbridge beer bread rolls
I don't normally run commercial recipes but this comes from an enterprising new cookbook from a brewery I really like called Thornbridge with recipes from chef Richard Smith.
It's called Craft Union and includes a useful section on matching beer with food.
If you've never baked with beer before you'll be amazed how good the results are. You could, of course, substitute another pale ale for the Kipling.
Makes approx. 30 small rolls
Ingredients
Bread
500g granary flour
500g white bread flour
10g salt
50g fresh baker’s yeast
200ml Thornbridge Kipling beer (or other pale ale) plus a little for brushing
350ml water
140g smoked bacon, diced and cooked
100g Isle of Mull (or other) cheddar cheese, finely grated
Glaze
25ml Thornbridge Kipling beer (or other pale ale)
25g sugar
Method
For the bread
Mix both the flours and yeast in a bowl. Add the beer and water and bring together. Cover with a wet cloth and leave to prove somewhere warm until it doubles in size.
Cut the dough in half and roll it out into a rectangle 5mm thick. Add the cheese, bacon and salt and knead. Brush the rectangle with beer and roll up like a Swiss roll.
Cut the roll into portions 3cm thick and place them on greaseproof paper on a tray
Now prove again for about 30 minutes somewhere warm until they double in size.
Pre-heat the oven to 210°C.
When the bread has proved, put the tray into the oven and cook for roughly ten minutes or until golden brown (when tapped on the bottom the rolls should make a hollow sound)
Turn the rolls onto a wire rack until cool
For the glaze
Pour the remaining beer into a pan with the sugar. Warm until the sugar is dissolved then reduce it on a medium heat until a syrup is formed. Brush the glaze over the rolls.
Warm the bread in the oven for a couple of minutes before eating.
This recipe comes from Craft Union: Matching Beer with Food. You can buy the book from the Thornbridge shop for £14.95.
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