This can be a stand alone dish with the pastry as I was originally going to have it as. I was watching Masterchef the other night and they had a pie challenge. So I thought I wold have a go at making my own pastry and so I ended up just topping the pie with pasty but didn't use pastry as the base.
Serves 6
Ingredients
1 kg piece of beef chuck steak, cut into 8, I only put this on at lunch time, took 5 hours on high.
2 tbsp dijon mustard
2 tbsp wholegrain mustard
300ml pure cream
5 cloves garlic, rough chop
2 red onions, rough chop
¼ cup of sherry or brandy (opt)
Method
You can either brown the beef, then add the garlic, onion and sherry (if using), reduce it a little and then add the mustards and cream, heat and add it all to the slow cooker or
Put in the slow cooker on low for the day. Take the meat out at the end and pour the liquid out into a pot and reduce all the liquid until nice and thick. Put the beef back in the slow cooker to keep warm while the liquid is reducing. Serve up wit steamed veg and pasta/rice/mash etc or use to make a pie
If you are using this for a pie filling mix
-the sauce and beef need to be used cold.
Chop the cooked beef into smaller pieces. At the end of cooking when you have reduced the cream and some cornflour with water and add a little at a time to the cream until it is really thick. Add to the chopped beef and leave to cool before using.
To make the pies
1/2 the recipe below will make enough for 6 pastry circles or one big one- you might have a little leftover.
You can either fill ramekin dishes with the beef and top with pastry using the ramekin as your guide
or you can use an big oven proof dish and top with pastry
Brush the pastry with milk or egg wash and you can sprinkle with poppy seeds, black sesame seeds or what have you.
To pastry needs to be rolled out thin to about 3mm and baked at 180 c fan forced or 200c normal for 25-30 minutes.
You can save leftover pastry put wrapping it and putting in the fridge to use within the week or store in the freezer.
Spelt flakey pastryMakes 600g pastry
Ingredients
250g spelt flour
180g cold butter-diced small
70g cold butter-divide into 5 portions and then slice the butter in each portion-keep this in the fridge until needed.
½ tsp salt
Method
In a bowl put in your flour and the 180g cold diced butter and squash the flour and butter in-between your fingers, you can keep plenty of lumps in there. Then add 1 tbsp of very cold water (with ice) Using a bread knife mix in, add another tbsp of the water and mix, add enough water until you can press the dough together. Then put onto a floured bench, sprinkle over some flour as needed on the dough, knead until it just comes together and then roll out to about half an A4 paper (1/2 a printer paper size). The length needs to be a little bit longer though.
Over the top of your dough take 1/5 of your 70g cold butter and dot over. Then roll up your dough , and roll out to the half an A4 size again. Dot another 1/5 of the butter over the dough and roll up. Continue with this until all the butter is used. Then you can wrap and put in the fridge until needed. Have it in the fridge at least 30 minutes before you use it.
This is the video I watched to show you how to do it if my instructions are confusing!
1.5-2kg ribs or a pork shoulder or lamb shoulder/leg
If doing pulled pork or pulled lamb you can add 1-2 cans rinsed and drained legumes like butter bean or cannellini beans if you wanted, it’s like bbq baked beans.
