Apple Crumble Pie

This recipe is kinda cobbled together from a bunch of different places because no single recipe seemed to be what I wished to make.

On the bottom is a standard shortcrust base. No sugar - there's going to be plenty of sweetness on top.

Chop up 6 peeled and cored granny smith apples into thin(ish) slices (used my spiral peeler/corer). Don't worry if it looks like too much apple - it'll shrink as we cook out some of the water.

On the theory that you should never put fruit into a pie uncooked lest you end up with a soggy mess, I cooked the apple in a frying pan for about 20 minutes on a medium temperature in 50g of butter and 1/2 cup of castor sugar to reduce the amount of liquid and soften the apple. Added some cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg. Yum!

On the top is 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar and about 45g butter which has been chopped into the flour and sugar to make little breadcrumbs. I used my mini blender (wand attachment) to do this chopping.

Roll out the dough to fill a pie dish.

The cooked apple, the crumble mixture and the pie base can all be prepared, covered and refrigerated before assembly when it's time to bake the pie.

Blind bake the base for 15 minutes at 190ºC. Then put in the filling, cover with the crumble mixture and bake for another 40 minutes.

Serve with a little cream.

Spanish Chicken Pie

Yet another pie I didn't photograph
before serving

I made this pie for lunch because I was having friends Sam and Jesse over who I know like Spanish cuisine. They are particularly fond of chorizo sausage. This recipe is from Woolworths Fresh magazine, issue 90, August 2013. Yes, the free one from the store.

It's an open pie (there's a name for this kind of pie - Sam can maybe remind me of it :-) that's made by

laying the ingredients onto the pastry and folding the sides up and over (but not completely over) to hold the filling in.

Ingredients (filling):

• 2 tbs olive oil
• 750g chicken thigh fillets, chopped into little bits
• 2 chorizo, sliced
• 1 red onion, diced
• 1 large red capsicum, diced
• 1 tbs plain flour
• 3/4 cup chicken stock
• 2 tbs fresh oregano (I used 1 tbs dried)
• 16 pitted green olives - I sliced them in half
• 2 tbs grated parmesan

Ingredients (pastry):

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp salt
• 160g butter, chopped
• 1 egg

Method:

Sam constructing the pie

1. First the pastry is made by placing the 2 cups of flour, paprika, salt and chopped butter into a food processor. Process until the butter is small like breadcrumbs. Add the egg and process until the mixture forms a ball. Well, that's the theory. I processed the mixture for some time before giving in and adding a bunch of water to make it ball up. I used a large egg too... Remove the dough, squish together and wrap in plastic. Chill for at least 30 minutes. You can make it the day before and store in the fridge, or up to three months before and freeze (defrost in the fridge).
2. Preheat oven to 200ºC.
3. Heat the oil in a pan and cook the chicken, in batches if necessary, until browned. Set aside, ensuring there's oil in the pan. Add the chorizo, onion and capsicum and fry for 5 minutes. Stir in the 1 tbs flour, pour in the stock and add oregano and chicken. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer for 15 minutes or until it's not too runny. Stir in olives and take off heat.
4. Roll pastry out (using additional flour on the rolling surface and top of the dough to keep it from sticking) until about 35cm in diameter. Transfer to cooking tray. Spoon filling into centre, leaving about 4cm around the edge. Fold in sides, sprinkle with cheese. You can also brush the pastry top with another beaten egg, but I didn't do this (it just makes the pastry brown more). Bake for 25 minutes (well, in my oven 35 minutes). Serve!

Now, I stuffed up at one point: I put in way more chicken stock that was called for. Over twice as much. I added more flour to turn it into gravy, but there shouldn't be as much as you see in the photos. It was still delicious though :-)

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.