Passive aggressive pie

I don't consider myself a particularly mean or nasty person. I frequently write pithy and cutting tweets, only to delete them 30 seconds later, for fear of offending someone. No matter how much someone has annoyed me, I find it difficult not to respond when they text me. Even when something is seriously bothering me, I'm willing to let it go in  the short term in order to have an easier life. Some may call it passive, or avoidant, I just like everything to be nice. However, I must have been feeling particularly vindictive when I decided to make this pie. Granted, things hadn't exactly been going to plan. I had spent close to 3 hours navigating the streets of London trying to get home from a friend's house the previous night, thanks to disappearing buses. My sensible, quiet night in with X Factor turned into a cross-London epic; I had to tackle Oxford Street at 3am on a day England had won a football match. It was less than pleasant. The plan the  next day was to spend my day slow-cooking some pork belly and red cabbage, after a leisurely brunch with friends. I slept through brunch, the butcher was closed, there was no red cabbage in the shops. Obviously, I snapped. I cooked the most passive aggressive dinner I could: one of the people I was cooking for doesn't like mushrooms, the other isn't a fan of stews or pies. I can't really eat Stilton as it hurts my stomach. But I soldiered on. I subconsciously wanted to ruin everyone else's weekend by making this. Unfortunately, it didn't work, and the pie was a success. So much so, that when my boyfriend arrived home from work there was far less left than I had expected. Ho hum. I was only saving him from the mushrooms, honestly.

I would definitely serve this with mashed potato and gravy were I to make it again. Again, it's adapted from something I found on BBC Good Food. Some day I'll use proper cookbooks. The Stilton flavour isn't at all strong; it just adds an interesting layer of savoury-ness to the pastry. I used prepackaged puff pastry, but I saw Mary Berry use it on the telly the other day so it must be OK.
Feel free to leave the chili out. I only used it as they are the only really successful thing in our garden this year, and I use them in everything. I think it gave a slight hit of heat, which some people mightn't like, but I enjoyed.
Like everything I ever make, it's ridiculously easy.

Beef and ale pie with a Stilton crust.

Ingredients
500g stewing beef
2 rashers of smoked bacon
200g pack of mushrooms
A heaped teaspoon of plain flour
500ml dark brown ale
1 teaspoon of English mustard
a splash of Worcestershire sauce
1 chopped chili, seeds removed if you're weak.
salt and pepper
1 packet of ready made puff pastry
50g (about the size of a matchbox) Stilton
1 egg, beaten

 Brown the beef. I did this in two batches, and added the bacon in the second batch. Remove, the beef but leave the bacon, add the onion, mushrooms, chili and brown.
Put the beef back in, sprinkle over the flour, and cook for two minutes. Apparently this gets rid of the floury taste. I don't know.
Add about 2/3 of the ale, the mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and season liberally. Bring to the boil, put a lid on it, and simmer for about 2 hours. At this point you could wash up after yourself, do some other housework, or work on your novel. I poured a glass of wine and watched Labyrinth, because I am very productive.
It's important to keep an eye on it, because if your pots are anywhere as useless as mine, it's going to stick. Keep stirring, and once it begins to get a bit dry, add some more ale until it's not dry anymore.
Put your oven on however long before it's finished so that it heats up to 200 degrees.
When it's pretty much reduced and thick, roll out your pastry until it's about half the width it was. Dot the Stilton on the pastry, then fold it over and roll again so that the cheese becomes part of the pastry (I thought this was dead clever)
Pour the beef mixture into a pie dish, cover with the cheese pastry, and bake for about 1/2 an hour until golden.

And there you go. Hopefully if one of you make this, you'll hate it, and my passive-aggression won't have gone entirely to waste.

Here's a terrible picture of the pie. Yes, that's a smiley face on top. I'm a kook at heart. I forgot to take a cross section because I was watching X Factor, and One Direction were on. Soz.

 To make up for that frankly terrifying sight, here are some pretty pictures of Salzburg. All I ate was meat and dumplings and beer for a week. They're not the most photogenic of foods.

Porkie Pies

Did you watch The Great British Bake Off? It was amazing, and one of my favourite things on television. I'm not overly excited by some other cooking competition TV (notably Masterchef - so much shouting, so tense!), but this is wonderful. There is the right amount of tension, and everyone is so lovely and British and nice. Janet is (was) my favourite. Oh Janet! So sweet. And so unlike the others. Like me, Janet is no stranger to the 'a couple of grams more or less won't make a difference either way' method of cooking. Janet, if by chance you see this, come teach me how to bake, please.

Although I haven't had a chance to watch the final yet, I do know who won, and I am aware of the squirrel star of the show, which is an Internet meme waiting to happen (view it here at your own risk).
 
A couple of weeks ago they made pork pies. Having never had a pork pie, I was intrigued by the idea. The results look suitably delicious, but terribly difficult to achieve. Leaving them over night, using jelly, inserting an egg in the middle. All an awful lot of work. Last Saturday however, I had the urge to bake something. Having originally planned to roast a pork belly, I soon decided that as it was 30 degrees outside I'd rather make something easy I could have on a picnic. I found this recipe, for cheats pork pies, on Donal Skehan's website, and decided to give it a go. I altered it slightly to my tastes. To be fair, they are basically just glorified sausage rolls. Calling these pork pies would be telling pork pies (I have been working on making that less laboured all week, there is no way), but they were delicious and I would definitely have them on a picnic again, in 10 months time (sob). You probably don't need all the 'splashes' I recommend, I just used what was in front of me.

Easy Pork Pies (makes 12 miniature pies)

Ingredients

3 rashers of bacon
400g sausage meat (the butcher didn't have any, so he kindly just split open a load of sausages for me. I'm sure this would be very easy to do yourself)
2 onions, sliced finely
2 small cloves of garlic, sliced finely
Salt and pepper
Mixed herbs
A splash of Worcester sauce
A tiny splash of Tabasco
2 sheets of shortcrust pastry (this means two packets, incidentally. I'm sure most people know this, but I did not, and it resulted in a rushed second journey to the shop. Which I didn't enjoy)
1 beaten egg to glaze the tops

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees/gas 6
Fry the bacon on a medium heat until it's crispy and golden.
Fry the onion and garlic in the bacon fat on a low heat until they're soft. While this is going on, cut the bacon into small pieces and place in a bowl.
When the onions are done, mix them with the sausage meat and bacon in the bowl. Use your hands for this, it's fun.
Cut 12 circular disks from the pastry to fit the muffin tray, and then 12 smaller ones for the lids. For this I used a mug for the big ones, and a small glass for the little ones. You probably have special cutters for this though.
Place the larger disks into the muffin tin, and fill each with about 1 tablespoon of pork mixture.
Top with the smaller disks, making sure to seal.
Brush the tops with the beaten egg (I used the back of a teaspoon, because a pastry brush is very low down on my list of things to buy at the moment)
Pop in the oven for 20 minutes
Allow to cool (I ate one warm which was lovely too)
Enjoy. I served mine with just a few cornichons and some English mustard, but a nice crisp carrot salad would have been lovely with this, I think. The butcher I went to also sold Tayto crisps and Club Orange, which made for a delicious and nostalgic picnic.