British Beef and Onion Pie

This one came courtesy of Erin giving me Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Food Revolution cookbook for Christmas a few years back. I've made quite a few stir-fry's and curries from this already, but decided I'd try my hand at one of the more British recipes (he's British if you didn't know).

So I made the pie crust from my King Arthur Flour's cookbook, I did the food processor recipe with half butter and half shortening and it also included vinegar which I've never done before. I always doubt myself when I make pie crust and think I'm going to make it too tough and I did it again this time too. Therefore, the process of making the pie crust was not ideal, but it ended up being pretty tasty and decent texture. And any pie crust would do for this recipe. 

The pie filling was pretty straight forward, chopped onions, carrots, and celery cooked down with some spices and then add the meat and broth, cook down for an hour, dump in a pan, top with the crust, and bake. Jacob enjoyed this pretty well and so did I. Definitely hardy but quite tasty and not a lot of work.

A couple of my own embellishments were:

1. I did Not add the Marmite since I couldn't find it and after researching, don't intend on using it ever (sorry Jamie).
2. For the English mustard, I used spicy brown mustard.
3. Handy tip - if you have extra carrots or celery to use up, just cut them up and freeze them for future use.
4. I used milk to top the crust rather than egg.
5. It took Much longer than 40 minutes to bake, it was probably like 1.5 hours. This could have come from the liquid kinda seeping through the cracks in the pie dough, resulting in a bath rather than just straight dry baking. So next time, better pie crusts with no holes and try to bake off more of the liquid before or not putting as much liquid into the pie pan. 
6. There was extra filling surprisingly, so I took the remaining filling, put it in a bread pan, and topped the pan. BAD IDEA. The crust over topped with liquid and so it was swimming in beef broth the whole time. Oh, and when I took the pan out of the oven, I dropped it and broke the glass bread pan. We still ate it and kept an eye out for rogue pieces of glass. Next time, I will put the extra filling in ramekins rather than a bread pan or use a larger pan. I'm also not sure why Jamie thought this only fed 4 people as well...

Beef filling

Pie plate version

Broken pan :(

British Beef and Onion Pie

Serves: 4(?!)

Time: 2 hours?

Ingredients:
    3 medium onions

      2 carrots

      2 stalks celery

      2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

      olive oil

      2 bay leaves

      1 pound good-quality ground beef

      1 teaspoon English mustard

      1 teaspoon Marmite - No thank you

      1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

      2 teaspoons all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

      1 quart beef broth

      2 x 9 inch pie crusts

      1 large egg or a splash of milk

Steps:

Beef Filling

1. Peel and roughly chop onions, carrots, and celery.
2. Remove rosemary leaves from woody stalks and chop finely.
3. Place a large casserole-type pan (I used my dutch oven) on high heat and add 2 lugs of olive oil, all the veggies, the rosemary, and the bay leaves.
4. Stir every minute for around 10 minutes or until the veggies have softened and lightly, colored.
5. Stir in the ground beef, breaking up any large chunks with a wooden spoon. Add the mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and 2 teaspoons of flour. Add the beef broth and bring to a boil. 
6. Turn the heat down, simmer with the lid slightly askew for about an hour, stirring every now and again to stop it catching. 

Pie

1. Fill a large baking dish (okay, Jamie I need more description than this) with the beef filling and allow it to cool down. 
2. Remove the pastry from the refrigerator 10 minutes before you need to roll it out. 
3. Preheat the over to 350 degrees. 
4. Dust a clean work surface and your rolling pin with some flour and lay pie crusts on top of the other, then fold in half, and roll out the pastry to 1/8 inch thick. Once it's large enough to cover your serving dish easily, wind the pastry around the rolling pin and unroll it over the dish. 
5. Run a knife around the edge of the dish to trim off the excess pastry and use a fork to press down the edge of the pastry to "crimp" it. 
6. Make a hole in the middle of the pastry using a tip of the knife and brush the top of the pastry with beaten egg or a little milk.
7. Bake on the bottom shelf of the preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until the pastry is golden.

EAT