Comments on: Steak & Ale Pie

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:11:45 +0000

Hi Paul,

Your recipe looks nice and I’ll give it a go tomorrow night.

I notice at the end of your message, you ask after equivalent cuts of Lamb or Pork.

For Lamb, try lamb neck fillets – a great marbling of fat and easy to deal with as you just need to cut it into chunks. Very good in stews etc. However, this seems to have gone up in expense quite a bit lately (some celebrity chef or other has no doubt recommended it!) so, as often as not these days, I’ll bone a shoulder of Lamb instead. This can take a while but you do have the opportunity to decide just how much fat to leave in!

For Pork, I find that you can’t really beat roast or braised belly pork. Very fatty, but delicious.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:14:01 +0000

Hi Paul,

Re: Pie Debate. I totally agree with you about the true nature of the pie and as a recent addition to the pie-making fraternity, I find it really frustrating that so many online pie recipes are actually ‘stew with a lid on’! To me a pie should stand up on it’s own base. I haven’t attempted your Steak and Ale Pie yet, but I made some great ‘homity’ individual pies (cheese topped, so not ‘officially’ a true pie) at the weekend, so your recipe is the next stage on my ladder to pie greatness.

Great Recipe, thanks very much.

By: paul

paul — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:07:34 +0000

Hi Kenny,

I agree that the longer you cook beef shin, the better it tastes. In the recipe above, you cook the meat for 1.5hours before putting it into the pastry. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear. If you’ve got more time to cook the meat, go for it!
Hope the cooking goes well. Thanks for posting!
Paul

By: Kenny

Kenny — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:55:56 +0000

Hi liked your recipe, and will try it at the weekend. Only thing that I concerned with is the cooking time of the stew – I would be tempted to cook it a little longer. I’d normally leave 3 to 3 and a half hours for a regular stew. As you are also cooking it in the pie for 45 mins, I would be tempted to cook the first part of the stew for 2 and a half hours. I only say this because one time I cooked a beef shin stew and tried it after 2 hours and it wasn’t ready yet – i found that the extra cooking improved the meat.

By: matt

matt — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:28:27 +0000

I guess this is to celebrate national pie week? (as Alice told me). Best pie you’ve ever tasted is a pretty high recommendation! The pastry looks fantastic – like a proper British pie. The meat does look pretty nice and marbled. I like the idea of Old Slug with it, I’ve not had that for a while.

http://www.britishpieweek.co.uk/

Personally, I think of pie as having a really wide range. Generally though, I take it to mean the same as your definition. An Italian guy in lab coined the term ‘pie technology’ to mean the same as what I generally accept as a pie. I think pie can include tarts, pasty, piroshki, beef wellington etc. Anything with stuff wrapped in pastry.

I had a bit of a research on the net into the history of pie:
* Apparently the term ‘pie’ (relating to food) appeared in the 1300s (according to OED).
* According to the The Oxford Companion to Food it derives from magpie relating to the collection of bits and pieces.
* An American website suggests that pies (as Paul defines) were originally called ‘coffins’ or ‘coffyns’. Open pies were called ‘traps’.
* The same website indicates that the first type of pie technology came from the ancient Egyptians.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/PieHistory.htm
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpies.html

Another interesting relationship is between Pirogi/Pirozhki and pie. What I knew of these I’d accept that they are generally borderline pie cases. In Ukraine however, they have something called a Pyrih or Pirog which is a yeast-raised dough pie. They also seem to suggest that Pyrohy/Pirogi are full sized pies whilst Pyrizhky/Pirozhki are small pies. All of these Ukrainian pies seem more clear pie cases to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrih