Comfort Food

As the temperatures drop, I find myself becoming happier and happier. Winter is by far and away becoming my favourite time of the year. Sure, it's freezing outside, and at our place it's freezing inside too (as visitors can attest, hopefully we've fixed that for this year). But the cold temperatures for me also mean delicious, warm, and comforting stews and pies, with the trade of salads for the steamed vegies and mashed potatoes of my British ancestry.

Just last night I cooked one of my favourite finds from a year or so ago:

Beef and Guinness Pies.


Making home-made pies is a fairly recent development for me, but growing up I used to love the Steak & Kidney pies my dad used to make; And I've always loved the various Beef & Ale-of-some-sort pies from the pub. Last year, I decided I wanted to try my arm at a Beef and Guinness Pie and so went and scoured what is fast becoming my favourite recipe website taste.com.au for a likely looking recipe. After comparing a couple of different recipes, I settled on the recipe available via the above link and, last night, cooked it again but with a few modifications I'd thought of since last time.

serves 4
Ingredients
1/4 cup plain flour
800g beef chuck steak, cut into 3 cm cubes
2 tbsp olive oil
2 brown onions, cut into wedges
2 carrots, peeled and cut in chunks
50g mushrooms, sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed or finely chopped
1 can of Guinness (440ml)
1 1/2 cups beef stock
2 dried bay leaves
8 fresh thyme sprigs
1 sheet of ready-rolled frozen puff pastry
1 egg, lightly whisked with 1 tsp milk
Mashed potato and steamed beans to serve

Method

1. Place the flour in a large bowl and season well with salt and pepper. Gently toss the beef in the seasoned flour to lightly coat it. Heat half the oil in a large saucepan or flameproof casserole dish over  high heat and cook the beef in batches, turning occasionally, until brown all over, then remove to a separate bowl.
2. Heat the remaining oil in the pan over medium heat. Add the carrot and onion and cook, for 5 minutes or until the onion is golden. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute until aromatic.
3. Add Guinness, beef, mushrooms, stock, bay leaves, and thyme and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to very low and cook, covered, stirring occasionally for 2 hours until beef is tender and the sauce thickens slightly.
4. Remove from the heat, season to taste with salt and pepper, and set aside to cool for 30 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Spoon pie mixture among four, greased 1 1/2 cup ramekins. Cut the pastry sheet into quarters and place over each pie. Use a small, sharp knife to cut a small slit to allow steam to escape from each pie and brush with the egg mixture.
6. Place pies on an oven tray and bake for 20-30 minutes until pastry is puffed and golden. Remove pies from the oven and serve with mashed potatoes and steamed beans.

These pies taste fantastic with either a nice BBQ sauce, or with my favourite: HP brown sauce.

Domi-No's

When planning this week's meals, I decided I wanted to make a pizza. Not just any old pizza, I wanted to try to emulate the best pizza I've ever had, which was in a café in a little piazza on a side street in Florence, Italy.

Italians make their pizzas elegant in their simplicity. Don't get me wrong, there's times when a pizza with an inch-thick layer of toppings is great! But after Italy I've found myself looking more for the delicate merging of complementary flavours.

This pizza in Florence was simplicity itself. It had a thin crust, a fresh tomato sauce/passata as the base, some mozzarella cheese, and just a few pieces of Italian sausage. I've already been making my own pizza bases for a while now, and just love the flavour it lends to the pizza, so all I needed extra was some mozzarella, some sausage, and a good quality passata.  Off to the local fresh food and produce markets and a delicatessen there that specialises in bits and pieces from around the globe. Given that I was making my tomato soup this week, I decided to make use of the bunch of basil that I bought for that as well.

makes 1 pizza
Ingredients
dough
1/2 cup of warm water
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups pizza flour
3/4 tsp dried yeast

topping
3-4 tbsp quality tomato passata
1 pinch dried mixed herbs
200g shredded mozzarella or pizza cheese blend
2 Italian sausages
1 handful of fresh basil, torn

Method

1. To make dough, add water, oil, salt, flour, and yeast to your bread maker. Select the Dough - Pizza setting and start. Once the dough is ready turn it out onto a floured surface and knead and press it into the approximate size of your pizza tray or stone. If using a pizza stone, place the stone into the over and preheat to 200°C. Otherwise, preheat the oven at this point.
2. Place pizza base on the tray, and spread the passata over the base, using a spoon in a circular motion from the centre to provide even coverage. 
3. Sprinkle with the dried herbs, then the cheese.  Pinch out the sausage meat into small meatballs approximately 2cm in diameter and scatter across the pizza (you should end up with about 16 meatballs altogether). Finally sprinkle the fresh basil across the pizza.
4. Place pizza into the over and cook for 25-30 minute until the cheese is starting brown and the sausages are cooked. Slice and serve.

All up, I was supremely happy with how the pizza turned out. I still need to work on my dough shaping ability, as I'd like the crust to be much thinner than it was (think Domino's classic crust as opposed to thin 'n' crispy, which is how I like it), but the taste was pretty spot on, and definitely a hit with my wife.

As an extra note, if you don't have a bread maker and want to make your own dough, I got my recipe from www.taste.com.au. It's got instructions there on how to make the dough by hand. The astute amongst you will note that I've halved the quantities of the ingredients for my dough. Simply because the amounts they suggest will make 2 decent sized pizza bases. I also combined the wholemeal and plain flours to be just pizza flour. I use Lighthouse brand Bread & Pizza flour which should be available from your local supermarket.