Sweet & Spicy Beef Pie

The idea of savoury pies really appeals at this time of year — short days (soon getting longer!), damp, and lots of rain and wind just begs for warming and filling meals. As I mentioned recently, I had the good fortune of hearing a talk by Ottolenghi last month, which inspired me to look through all of his recipes again. I chose this one as it looked really moreish and I thought perfect for this time of year. Also, I’d never made a savoury pie before.

I used only beef, no pork, for my pie, which I think possibly had adverse effects. I don’t want to say that this failed….it didn’t. Taste-wise it was great, if a little dry. However visually the pie looked awful. The problem was the dish I used. It was too deep, so the crust went too far up the sides, and the ratio of crust to filling was too high. I only used about 300g of pastry (the standard size it seems to come in here), and about 400g of mince, which I thought would work fine. [Side note: as I was re-reading the recipe to write this post, I noticed that the last instruction is to break off the excess crust — hmmmmm]. I think I needed a bit more meat though, and for that meat to be fatty — I used what would be called lean beef in North America (as opposed to extra lean or medium). I also think it was slightly overbaked — it is a very fine line when it comes to eggs, and I don’t like runny eggs, so prefer to err on the side of caution.

The TASTE however, was lovely. As the title indicates, it’s both savoury and sweet, the latter coming from the gingerbread-y, Christmas-y spices of allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg, plus sweet paprika and cayenne pepper.

We served it with a nice green salad which was the perfect pairing to balance out the heaviness. 🙂

Apple Pie

When we last visited H.’s parents, his mum gave us a GIANT basket of apples from their garden, and so we’ve been on a bit of an apple craze lately. Fall and apple pie (or “American-style apple pie,” as it’s known here) just go together for me, so I decided to give it a go in an effort to use some of them up. For the recipe, I decided to straight to my Joy of Cooking book. It’s a trustworthy source, and I knew there would be detailed instructions.

I was dreading making the crust before I even began. I knew from experience that the crust is extremely finicky, and somehow I just knew something would go wrong.

As it turns out, there were quite a few problems with this pie!!

Problem #1 — Unlike the (one) previous pie crust I’d made (which had too much fat), this time there was too much flour. I think the problem stemmed from the metric vs. imperial measurements — the conversion wasn’t perfect and it caused problems.
Problem #2 — The pan we used was not meant for pies, and it made the whole shape too deep and rather awkward.
Problem #3 — There wasn’t quite enough crust.
Problem #4 — As a result of #1, the crust was nowhere near flaky enough. The taste was fine, but the texture was off.

The pie still tasted fine (the centre was apples, cinnamon, and just a touch of sugar as these were fairly sweet apples). However, I’ve decided that my next pie will use pre-bought crust (still have yet to find it here but I think it exists), unless I’m making it on a day where I truly have nothing else to do!