Pork Pie!
I've been looking forward to this one for a long time! It took three Instacart shoppers to do it, but thanks to a lovely young lady named Tristy, who was determined to find it, I finally acquired a nice supply of lard! Today's pie recipe is another by Paul Hollywood and it uses a hot water crust. I like hot water crusts because they are more forgiving and easier to work with than the traditional pastry crusts that use a lot of butter and require a tender touch. I could barely wait to get started.
As soon as the kids went down for their nap, I gathered the cast members.
The filling is pretty easy; pork loin, bacon and onions are finely chopped and combined with the other ingredients. The recipe called for an entire large onion but I left about 1/3 of it out. I like onion but the proportion to meat seemed excessive. Sorry for second-guessing you, Paul.
The recipe called for a "small bunch" of parsley. I spent some time musing over the fact that a subjective description of "large" onion didn't annoy me as much as "small bunch" of parsley. I had what I deemed to be a "rather large" bunch of parsley so I took about half of it. Sorry if my thought processes frighten any of you. I usually keep it pretty contained.
I added the parsley and then thought about the next set of directions. Salt and ground pepper "to taste." He recommends seasoning it and then cooking a tiny bit to get a feel for the seasoning level, but what Paul doesn't seem to understand is, these kids could wake up at any time and there's still the crust to deal with. I made a judgement call; 1 tsp. of pepper and about 1-1/2 tsp. of salt. Moving right along.
It looked and smelled great and I felt slightly smug that I was right about the onions. Any more and it would have overwhelmed the meat.
All-purpose flour and bread flour were combined and the butter, cut into cubes, was worked in.
The lard was melted down.
And the mixture was added the flour and butter.
The mixture is very hot! You definitely want to start combining it with a spoon first.
It cools down fairly quickly though and then you have to move fast; hot water crust has a tendency to get brittle if it gets too cold. I used my hands to push the dough into a ball and then put it out onto a lightly floured countertop.
Now this is where things went completely awry. The recipe is supposed to make 12 mini pies in a muffin tin. The bottom crust of each pie needed to be cut with something that was approximately 11cm in diameter. The problem is, the only thing I had that was in that size range is this bowl. I did have a 7cm biscuit cutter for the tops.
Hot water crust is quite stretchy and has a tendency to spring back on itself. I rolled out the dough for the bottom crust and no matter how thinly I rolled it out, by the time I started wielding my bowl-turned-cutter, it would shrink back enough so that there was no way in pastry hell that I was going to be able to get 12 disks. Not even when I used my rolling pin to further roll and flatten each disk.
With the dough getting colder every minute, I had no choice. I re-rolled the little disks into one big disk and put it into a round cake pan. The filling went in and I managed to roll the top crust into a decent-sized cover.
After those shenanigans, I wasn't going to bother attempting a pretty crimp. I brushed it with egg, poked a hole in the center to release steam, and threw it in the oven.
The chaotic aftermath...my pin hit the bowl that the egg was in and I didn't realize it until I needed to use the egg to brush onto the crust. I also had flour on the floor and on my shirt. And, at this interlude, Layla's daddy came to pick her up and Aiden came strolling out of the bedroom where he proceeded to lay down at my feet and poke sleepily at the dough bits that had fallen off the counter and onto the floor.
I baked the pie for 1 hour at 375. It looked good but I could see a fair amount of meat juice had escaped on one side. Now, when the pie comes out of the oven, it's supposed to be carefully filled with a mixture of chicken stock and gelatin so that when it cools, there will be a nice jelly that helps to keep the meat moist. After that crust fiasco...no. I went to play with Aiden. We built a condo complex for his animals.
He had patiently sorted all his animals into family groups and carefully selected which family went into which apartment. The elephants and giraffes always get first pick.
The crust was a bit tough because I rolled it out twice but it was still flaky and tasted good. Though the meat juices did leak and caused the pie to stick, the slices still came out intact and there was no soggy bottom! The filling was yummy. How can you go wrong with pork, bacon, parsley and onion? All three of the guys said they really liked it and Eric said, "Mmm, meat pie!" My issues with the recipe were mostly due to operator error but I think I made a good call about the amount of onion! A 4 turtle rating for now!
Here is the promised link:
Paul Hollywood's Pork Pies
As soon as the kids went down for their nap, I gathered the cast members.
The filling is pretty easy; pork loin, bacon and onions are finely chopped and combined with the other ingredients. The recipe called for an entire large onion but I left about 1/3 of it out. I like onion but the proportion to meat seemed excessive. Sorry for second-guessing you, Paul.
The recipe called for a "small bunch" of parsley. I spent some time musing over the fact that a subjective description of "large" onion didn't annoy me as much as "small bunch" of parsley. I had what I deemed to be a "rather large" bunch of parsley so I took about half of it. Sorry if my thought processes frighten any of you. I usually keep it pretty contained.
I added the parsley and then thought about the next set of directions. Salt and ground pepper "to taste." He recommends seasoning it and then cooking a tiny bit to get a feel for the seasoning level, but what Paul doesn't seem to understand is, these kids could wake up at any time and there's still the crust to deal with. I made a judgement call; 1 tsp. of pepper and about 1-1/2 tsp. of salt. Moving right along.
It looked and smelled great and I felt slightly smug that I was right about the onions. Any more and it would have overwhelmed the meat.
All-purpose flour and bread flour were combined and the butter, cut into cubes, was worked in.
The lard was melted down.
Water was boiled and salt was dissolved in.
The boiling salted water was added to the hot lard.
The mixture is very hot! You definitely want to start combining it with a spoon first.
It cools down fairly quickly though and then you have to move fast; hot water crust has a tendency to get brittle if it gets too cold. I used my hands to push the dough into a ball and then put it out onto a lightly floured countertop.
Now this is where things went completely awry. The recipe is supposed to make 12 mini pies in a muffin tin. The bottom crust of each pie needed to be cut with something that was approximately 11cm in diameter. The problem is, the only thing I had that was in that size range is this bowl. I did have a 7cm biscuit cutter for the tops.
Hot water crust is quite stretchy and has a tendency to spring back on itself. I rolled out the dough for the bottom crust and no matter how thinly I rolled it out, by the time I started wielding my bowl-turned-cutter, it would shrink back enough so that there was no way in pastry hell that I was going to be able to get 12 disks. Not even when I used my rolling pin to further roll and flatten each disk.
With the dough getting colder every minute, I had no choice. I re-rolled the little disks into one big disk and put it into a round cake pan. The filling went in and I managed to roll the top crust into a decent-sized cover.
After those shenanigans, I wasn't going to bother attempting a pretty crimp. I brushed it with egg, poked a hole in the center to release steam, and threw it in the oven.
The chaotic aftermath...my pin hit the bowl that the egg was in and I didn't realize it until I needed to use the egg to brush onto the crust. I also had flour on the floor and on my shirt. And, at this interlude, Layla's daddy came to pick her up and Aiden came strolling out of the bedroom where he proceeded to lay down at my feet and poke sleepily at the dough bits that had fallen off the counter and onto the floor.
I baked the pie for 1 hour at 375. It looked good but I could see a fair amount of meat juice had escaped on one side. Now, when the pie comes out of the oven, it's supposed to be carefully filled with a mixture of chicken stock and gelatin so that when it cools, there will be a nice jelly that helps to keep the meat moist. After that crust fiasco...no. I went to play with Aiden. We built a condo complex for his animals.
He had patiently sorted all his animals into family groups and carefully selected which family went into which apartment. The elephants and giraffes always get first pick.
The crust was a bit tough because I rolled it out twice but it was still flaky and tasted good. Though the meat juices did leak and caused the pie to stick, the slices still came out intact and there was no soggy bottom! The filling was yummy. How can you go wrong with pork, bacon, parsley and onion? All three of the guys said they really liked it and Eric said, "Mmm, meat pie!" My issues with the recipe were mostly due to operator error but I think I made a good call about the amount of onion! A 4 turtle rating for now!
Here is the promised link:
Paul Hollywood's Pork Pies
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