Post 164: Beef in red wine pie, with Delia Smith's Pastry

I didn't steal the pastry off Delia; only used the recipe!

Following my new butcher find, this week they had stewing beef on special offer and I needed no further prompting to use this for a pie.  Here it is in it's infancy ->

This is how it got there:

• fried off a big onion and 2 cloves of garlic (as ever, yay!)
• par boiled 3 carrots, 6 medium potatoes and 1 parnsip all cut pretty small. I boiled these until they were only just soft
• coated 2 kilos of beef in plain flour and fried them off
• chopped 1/2 a bunch of parsley
• chucked them all in my cocotte along with 1 pint beef stock and 1 bottle of red wine and 2 tea spoons of horseradish sauce

Initially this all looked pretty bad. A bit like some children had been playing nasty games with worms. This then went in the oven at a slow simmer for 6 hours (I had time, so why not). After 3 hours, I took the lid off to reduce the sauce a little further. I wasn't wishing for a runny pie. After all this cooking, it looked like this.

And this looked and smelled much more appealing.

Onto the pastry:

• 400 gs plain sieved flour
• 100 gs lard
• 100 gs butter
• a pinch of salt and a little water

I very carefully got the butter and lard to room temperature before mixing with the flour quickly. I was pleased to have followed the recipe properly. However, at the last when it came to adding water, I didn't add enough. So, when I came to roll the pastry, it just crumbled. A little extra water though and another kneeding, didn't seem to do it much harm.

I then greased my pie tray and lined it with unbaked pastry. I then drained some of the gravy from the pie and kept this back and adding all the lumps and covered the rest in a thin layer of pastry and egg washed it to make it look nice. Half an hour in a hot oven later it looked like this ->

Which proves I'm not very good at eggy-wash.

Never mind, the pie was beautiful. The observant among you may have noticed that I didn't cook the base. I was worried about this while it was cooking; but it all came out fine. When I cut into the pie, it was solid. Happy days.

Although, next time if I try again for beef and horseradish - I'll need to put more more in; that bit was a waste of time.