I'd say I'm not one to blow my own trumpet but thats a flat out lie. I make kick ass pastry, in a wide variety of recipes, but very often the simplest is best. One pastry, many pies, thats hard to beat. So this was a simple shortcrust - 400g of butter, 800g of flour, a half a teaspoon of salt, beaten with the K beater of a Kenwood chef until it was like breadcrumbs (or cut the butter up and rub it through your fingertips - won't take that long). Thats enough pastry for about four good sized (plate) pies, or, as I was planning, two pies with more pastry in the fridge for week ahead. Once you've got crumbs, keep adding cold water with one hand while working it with the other until you've got pastry. Take it out of the bowl onto a floured board, kneed for a few minutes, and then put it back in a bowl, put a teatowel over it, and put it in the fridge for an hour or two.
Resting your pastry helps so much - it'll work more easily and roll out better. After resting it, I buttered two plates (dinner plates with a good sized rim) rolled a glob of pastry out thin (a little over 1/8 of an inch) and cut it to size. Then its time to fill your pie.
I had a pack of pigeon breasts to used up, and a fridge full of wild mushrooms. So in go the breasts, then salt and pepper and the shrooms, then an egg wash on the outer edge and more pastry on top...
But what about blind baking? What about keeping the crust stiff? I'm glad you asked. Now get all that Bake Off bollocks out of your head, this is real food. Look, the shrooms there will shrink below the pastry, but not before the pastry has set when you put it into a hot-ish oven. So you're left with a lovely crisp top with a gorgeous pastry bottom thats set and firm underneath but soft where it meets the meat. Thats what happens when you butter use butter on the plate and butter in the pastry.
Anyway, egg wash the top, crimp all round the side with a fork (savoury pies get a fork crimp) and importantly put a few fork holes in the top to let steam out, and you're ready to bake.
The other pie was apple - in go sliced cooking apples, a good hefty sprinkling of sugar and some cinnamon.
Tap it on the bench to sink the sugar and cinnamon in, and then top it as for the pigeon pie (egg round the edge, pastry, egg glaze) but crimp around it with your thumbs. This is a sweet pie, thats what you do. Thumb. Not fork crimp. And put a hole in the top for steam, and you'll get a good crust again.
Bung it in the oven at 200C for 10 minutes, then turn it down to 170C for about half an hour, maybe longer - until when you stick a skewer in its all hot through. And put it aside to cook - it will be delicious.
Pigeon and mushroom pie cooked this way gives a subtle mushroom flavour all through the pigeon, with a rich musoroomy layer on top. Look how the pastry is crisp and the innards of the pie moist and lovely.
And the apple pie is, well, an apple pie with lots of cinnamon. Its an all round champion of a pie, as apple pie always is.
Now this plate pie principle is pretty much universal. You can put in mince and onion (add a little splash of water and a teaspoon of flour), chicken and mushroom, or mince and potato, bacon and egg (literally chopped bacon and beaten egg, its great), sausage meat, quince and apple, blackberry and apple, quite literally nearly anything. Sliced veg and just a little white sauce is good. The basic principle of a thick plate pie is the simplest kind of baking you an imagine, and is pretty much always a winner. And its great game night food.
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