Meat and Ale Pie

I'm trying to get used to making more effort in the kitchen at the moment given that soon fruit and veg will be once again abundant and we'll have hours of blanching, jam making and other similar stuff to do.

So we'll be adding loads of recipes as we go but as I made some stuff this weekend I thought I'd stick a couple up on the blog to get on with.

My recipes tend not to be massively scientific, weights and measures are generally approximate and based on how I feel at the time and how fresh/smelly/tasty the ingredients seem on the day. So all I can tell you is if it makes it onto the blog it turned out tasty and no-one died.

Meat and Ale Pie

For reasons unknown to myself I felt the urge to make one of these, not tried before...

Ingredients
Diced Game 500g (or other preferred meat, I just found this in our freezer)
Flour (just a bit)
Onion
Mushroom
Carrots
Bottle of ale
Stock Cube (I used a veg one)
Optional splashes of red wine vinegar (balsamic would do) and Port
Pastry (I cheated by using some ready to use Jusroll puff pastry)
Splash of Oil for lubing the pan
Mushrooms
Tomato Puree
Single cream or crème freche
A sprinkle of salt and pepper

My Method
Rub the meat in seasoned flour then heat a bit of oil in a pan (large frying pan is fine but ideally with a lid) and then slam in the diced meat and brown off - takes around ten minutes?
Then remove the meat to stand for a mo, scrape the bottom of the pan so the tasty bits travel with the meat.
In the same pan (might need another splash of oil?) soften the chopped onion until transparent without burning then throw in the chopped carrots for a few minutes. I added a splash of the ale here to help simmer/steam the carrots for about five minutes.
I then crumbled in the stock cube because I never see the point in going to the hassle of melting it in boiled water first - the ale is mostly water anyway. Stick the meat back in and also add some tomato puree (about a desert spoon) a splash of port (this is optional but I'm classy enough to have some laying around the house) and a dribble of the vinegar. Of course I also added the ale at this point - as someone that never drinks this ale stuff I chose to buy a bottle of London Pride purely because I'm about five foot four and it happened to be at eye level in the local garage.

Give it a gentle stir then bang on the lid, bring it up to the boil then turn down to a gentle simmer and I left it for between 40-60 minutes. I didn't time it precisely but basically I leave it long enough until the meat and carrot is done - if it helps it turned out to be the right amount of time to drink a relaxed glass of wine whilst watching my wife weed around nine fruit trees. About ten minutes before the end I tend to add some roughly chopped mushroom then leave the lid off and watch it really thicken up. Take off the heat, stir in a spoonful or two of cream then shove it in a casserole dish.

**To make the same dish so much quicker cook the chopped carrots in a steamer/Microwave first then you only need to simmer the mixture until the meat is tender - about twenty minutes.

If like me you are a lazy pastry chef I find the Jusroll stuff is pretty good and easily found in shop fridges around the globe. Either way shove it over the dish, trim with a little extra then press down around the edges. Don't forget to jab two steam holes through it somewhere then bang it into a pre-heated oven at 200oc or gas mark 6.

Thirty minutes later and it is hot to trot !