Hello my lovelies and welcome to week seven of my Great Blogging Bake Off Adventure. Yes we have arrived at the week I've been dreading - Victorian week. Gulp. Each week I am attempting the signature challenge from each weeks Bake Off and this week was a Victorian Game Raised Pie - joy of joys. I will hold my hands up and say "I don't like pork pies". Never have done and probably never will. It's the jelly died pale pork that get's me. Just no. To be honest with you I'm not a massive meat eater, I like a little but I could also quite easily be vegetarian and not miss it. So seeing as I have three months left of my teenage years I'm throwing caution to the wind and rebelling. I've decided to bake a Vegetarian raised pie this week. Mainly because I know that neither me or my Mum would eat a raised game pie so it just seems a bit pointless making one. We both have very similar taste buds and a roasted vegetable pie is right up our street. There must have been some vegetarian victorians surely? I am sort of sticking to the brief by using a hot water crust pastry as supposed to a short crust so that's something at least. The good thing about a hot water crust pastry is that you don't have to fath about chilling it you can just crack on. Although it does involve lard which repulses me slightly but I'll be brave and embrace the change.
I've made this recipe up myself with my Mum whilst pinching Mary Berry's recipe for a hot water crust pastry. When it comes to baking she is the Queen so seeing as lard and hot water crust pastry is a topic that me and my Mum know very little about we put our hands to the baking Queen. The recipe seemed to work an absolute treat so thank you Mary, kind regards to you thank you so.
Halloumi and roasted vegetables is a heavenly combination. I just love vegetables and cheese simple as. Last night for dinner we had a plateful of gorgeous autumnal roasted vegetables and it was heavenly. Bit of veg, olive oil, blacks pepper, herbs, spices and toasted seeds so simple yet so effective. Currently drooling right now, must stop before the laptop get's sticky.
During baking we found that we had enough vegetables and cheese for two pies so we ended up making two. One for dinner and one for the freezer, boom! Yes Delia would be impressed. Feeling very smug and like two domesticated goddesses right one. If you only wanted to make one pie you could use half of the ingredients although what I will say is that it's tricky to buy half a courgette or half an aubergine. Although cold roasted vegetables are delicious so you could save them for another day it's entirely up to you.
Ingredients
Hot Water Crust Pastry:
500g plain flour
200g water
200g lard
1 egg
Filling:
250g halloumi
1 aubergine
1 courgette
1 orange pepper
2 red onions
100g mushrooms
Method
1) Pre-heat your oven to 220°C/ 200°Fan and very lightly grease three baking trays with some olive oil. At this stage you could also prepare your loaf tins. I ended up using two 2lb/900g loaf tins. Grease the sides and lay a strip of baking paper to cover the base and shorter sides. A good tip would be to cut the paper so parts of paper hang over the edges which will allow you to easily lift the pie out of the tin once baked
2) Thinly slice your onion, pepper, courgette and aubergine. I did this horizontally to form circles of onion and aubergine and lengthways to form strips of aubergine and pepper
3) Roast these in the oven for 15 minutes and then turn the oven off whilst leaving the vegetables in the oven. This will help to dry out the vegetables reducing the moisture level in the pie to avoid soggy bottoms
4) Next to make the pastry, place your flour in a large mixing bowl
5) Add your lard and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring to melt the lard
6) Pour your boiling lard and water mixture into the flour and stir with a wooden spoon to form a dough. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and kneed to form a smooth dough, this won't take long just a minute or so
7) Cut 1/3 of your dough and leave to one side to use for your pastry lid
8) Roll out the remaining dough and use it to line the base and sides of your loaf tins
9) Slice your mushrooms and halloumi into strips
10) Remove the roasted vegetables from the oven and pre-heat your oven to 220°C/ 200°Fan
11) Whilst the oven is heating it's time to fill the pie - the best bit. You can create your layers in what ever order you want, I opted for: onion - pepper - aubergine - halloumi - mushrooms - courgette - aubergine. I did one layer of each without double stacking the ingredients. I did end up with two layers of aubergine which isn't a bad thing in my eyes as it is one of my favourite vegetables
12) Roll out the majority of the pastry to form your pie lids leaving a small section for decoration
13) Next you can decorate your pie how ever you fancy, why not get creative?
Seeing as I am currently obsessing over Autumn I plumped for some Autumnal scattered leaves. I recon leaves are very simple yet always look effective on a pie. I also opted for a crinkled edge which you can do by pinching the dough between your fingers in alternate directions. To make the leaves, roll out your pastry and using a round cutter, cut out circles of pastry. Using the same cutter, cut out crescent shapes of dough around the edge of your circles to form the leaves. Pinch one end of the leaf for the stem and using a knife create a decoration of the leaf veins. You can arrange these however you like on your pie. Mine have a rustic effect varying in shape and size but you could do lot's of little ones around the edge or three large leaves in the centre it is entirely up to you. You could even create some branches, the world's your oyster.
14) Beat one egg using a fork, this will be used as an egg wash. Before placing your decorations over your pie, lightly brush your pastry lid with the beaten egg and arrange your decoration on top. Then brush more egg over the decoration. This will help stick your decoration to your lid and give your pie a gorgeous brown and crisp shine once baked
15) Create a small hole in the centre of your pie lid to allow the steam to escape
16) Bake in the oven for 30 minutes
17) Reduce the oven temperature to 200°C/ 180°Fan and bake for a further 20 minutes until golden brown
18) Turn the oven off and leave the pie in the oven to finish off
19) Once the oven has cooled, remove the pie from the oven, you can re-heat it to serve warm if you chose to do so. Once cooled remove the pie from the tin
So there you have it my lovelies a twist on a Victorian centre piece. This is a really easy recipe to make and perfect for a winter warmer dinner. Seeing as our boiler has broken the house is on the cold side with no hot water or heating, a nice steaming pie is the perfect dinner. You know the house is cold when you spend your day baking just to keep warm. My first meeting with a hot water crust pastry seemed to go really well. The pies have a golden crisp pastry and it was so quick and easy to make. So much less effort than puff pastry where you have to roll the pastry and butter together to create the layers and then chill it and repeat and so on. Before you know it half your day has disappeared to making pastry. I'll be honest the smell of boiling lard is up there in my top 10 of worst smells but the pie is worth it in the end. When roasting vegetables I would usually smother the vegetables in olive oil and season with black pepper, herbs and spices but I would say that for the pie it's important that minimal liquid is used to reduce the water/moisture content. Hence why it's important to leave the roasted vegetables to dry out in the oven. You could use any cheese or vegetables that float your boat. You could create seasonal pies for example you could use butternut squash, carrots and sweet potato for an autumnal pie seasoned with sage, thyme and pumpkin seeds. Yum.
Thank you for reading this blog post my lovelies. Phew we made it, roll on week eight is all I can say. Next week we will be tackling Patisserie week which involves creating some little cream horns. I'm really excited about those as I've never made them before and they look really fun. I'm sure you could be really inventive with some flavour combinations. I hope you enjoyed reading this post, let me know in the comments if you chose to give this ago. If you are following this baking series or attempting the challenge yourself, I would love to know what you came up with for Victorian week. I hope you all enjoy your Sunday evenings my lovelies.
Week One: Cakes: Raspberry and Almond Madera Cake
Week Two: Biscuits: Coconut and White Chocolate Biscotti
Week Three: Bread: Sun Dried Tomato and Basil Soda Bread
Week Four: Desserts: Amaretto Creme Brûlée
Week Five: Alternative Ingredients: Lemon, Honey and Pistachio Polenta Cake
Week Six: Pastry: Blackberry and Pear Frangipane Tart
XXX
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