A non-pie post: chocolate eclairs

I bake other things too, and on Sunday I had a go at my second batch of chocolate eclairs. They were pretty yummy, but I need a better recipe for my non-fan-forced oven.

Choux pastry rolls with creme patisserie filling (vanilla with a hint of cinnamon because reason I can't recall and I'll leave it out next time) and 70% chocolate ganache (with a hint of golden syrup so it wasn't too bitter). Yum.

A Very Porter Pie

Last weekend was the inaugural PAX Australia! It was three days of gaming awesomeness.

This weekend I bought a really yummy porter style beer called Ass Kisser Smoked Porter. It was so yummy I decided to invent a pie around it. I added some beef, bacon, onion, mushroom, carrot and broccoli (thus making it a well-rounded meal of course). A beef stock cube and some tomato paste rounded out the flavour. As when I've previously made a beef pie I let it simmer for about an hour and a half. I made up some rough puff pastry for the case and top and ended up with a pie that was absolutely delicious.

It's a little lighter on the top than usual because I didn't bother with an egg wash on top.

Using the rough puff for the base had me a little worried as it puffed up much more than when I've previously made rough puff. It ended up not being an issue but I think in the future I'll play it safe and go with the shortcrust instead.

A weekend quiche

Last weekend was the annual Python conference for Australia, PyCon AU. I spoke and had a blast.

This weekend I made a quiche which was a slight variation on the Lorraine recipe. I added mushroom and it was tasty :-)

Still making pies; here's some tutorial videos

I've been moving house so not much pie baking but I did manage to make a beef pie last weekend. Instead of cheating and using frozen puff pastry for the top I made a rough puff pastry (while still using a shortcrust pastry for the base). Unfortunately the new oven I'm using is temperamental and slightly random in its temperature control so the pastry wasn't fully baked through. The pie was still delicious though.

This weekend I'm going to be making up a  chicken pie (some chicken, peas, corn, carrot, chicken stock, cream, cook and put in a pie case). And I've bought a thermometer to try to nail down the oven's strange temperature behaviour...

There's some great tutorials out there for making pastry that I've watched so far this year, but the best of the rough puff videos that I've seen is this one by Michel Roux:

And here's a good one for making Short Crust Pastry in the blender from Sarah Cook at BBC Good Food:

Quick 'n Dirty Rough Puff

Not a picture of the pastry

Another break, and this week I found myself without a food processor so I had to make the pastry for this weekend's Tarte Tatin by hand (yes, I also found myself without a new recipe). I chose to make a rough puff pastry rather than try to make shortcrust by hand again. Maybe next time...

I poked around the Internet and found a number of recipes with a variety of methods. The following is basically inspired by a few of them:

Ingredients

• 250g plain flour
• 250g butter, chopped into little chunks (no bigger than ½ cm)
• 100ml cold water

Method

1. Put the flour into a large bowl. Tip in the butter chunks and spend a little time smooshing the butter in with fingertips. Not so much that it melts, just so the chunks aren't big sharp squares any more. I did this process until I started making some little breadcrumb-sized bits of floury butter. 
2. Make a well and mix pour in the water. Mix with fingertips spread apart - the idea is not to heat the mixture up too much. Mix until there's no obvious water left or large blob of watery flour.
3. The mixture will most likely still be quite crumbly. I poured the mixture onto a bench and very lightly kneaded into a single blob. It only took a few pushes to do so. Kneading too much will result in gluten forming and the pastry will be tougher (harder) and less short (crumbly and flaky). Once in a blob, smoosh it away from you so it's a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
4. Take the disk and place onto a lightly floured bench. Lightly flour the top too. Basically you can lightly flour it enough so it doesn't stick to the bench or rolling pin or have chunks of butter popping out. Now roll it out away from you so it's makes a tall rectangle about 3x higher than across.
5. Fold the bottom third up and the top third down so there's now three layers. Rotate ¼ turn and roll out again to another 3x1 rectangle. Fold over again.

You may now use the pastry immediately or refrigerate for another 20 minutes. I believe that cooling it again will mean the pastry works better. It worked pretty well for me without the cooling.

Quiche Lorraine and a Pie

Yes, oops, forgot to take the photo earlier again!

After another enforced break from baking, I've come back in force with two pies! Oh yes. I had some friends around last Sunday so decided to bake a meat pie (as previously made) and my first quiche. I started with the Quiche Lorraine recipe from Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion and modified it to add some leek.

Quiche Ingredients

• One quantity shortcrust pastry as per the meat pie recipe
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 eggs
• 4 rashers bacon, rind removed, chopped into smallish bits
• 1 leek chopped finely
• 300ml cream
• salt, pepper and nutmeg

Quiche Method

1. Blind-bake the pastry case per the meat pie recipe. Then turn oven to 170ºC.
2. Fry up the bacon and leek until the leek is soft and bacon browned. Allow to cool a little.
3. Mix up the eggs and cream. Season with some nutmeg, salt and pepper.
4. Scatter the bacon and leek over the case bottom and pour the mixture in. Cook for 20-35 minutes, until firm. 25 minutes worked for me.
5. Allow to cool before serving.

And that's it. And it was so delicious!

A Most Vaguely Defined Shepherd's Pie

Now, some may disagree on exactly what comprises a "Shepherd's Pie." I say that it's a meat pie with a pastry crust and mashed potato topping, simply because that's how they're sold as fast food in Australia. Even if wikipedia disagrees.

Either way, I made a damn tasty pie on the weekend that had a shortcrust base, tasty minced beef filling and potato top.

The filling included:

• an onion, finely chopped and fried until quite soft
• a few cloves of garlic, sliced and fried with the onion
• 500g mince (less would have been better but that was the quantity available to me)
• a can of chopped tomato
• a splash of Worcestershire Sauce
• a beef stock cube
• some salt and pepper to taste
• some plain flour to thicken up the gravy before using as a filling

I simmered all that for about an hour. The crust was made as usual and the mash was a few large potatoes with some milk, butter and an egg yolk mashed through until creamy. I made the mistake of making too much mash and it was too thick on the top. The optimum amount of mash would be about half the thickness of the filling. No more than the thickness of the filling, otherwise the flavour of the filling has to fight with too much potato. Also, when spreading the mash on make sure you start at the edge and make a reasonably good seal before moving towards the center. Don't press hard - you want a good low filling on the side or it might bubble through the sides quite unattractively.

I think this recipe wins the prize for being the most vague, but this pie can really just be made up with whatever you like in it.

I'm afraid I have to declare pie-atus for another two weeks as I'm being sent to Jersey for work and will be away from the pie kitchen for both weekends.