What happens when you take the kind of mincey, chorizo-y, beaney filling that you would normally roll up in tortillas or slather over nacho chips…and stick it in a pie? This my friends – a cowboy pie, not as the name would suggest, actually filled with cowboys… As I sit here it is 5:30am, I am in my yoga gear, snuggled up in a blanket sipping tea, lying on the couch. I have made it out of bed, which I know from my years as a personal trainer, means I am as good as at the class – ie. I will get there. The most difficult bit of morning yoga is getting my feet out of bed and on the floor – once they’re there, I’m away! I have a lot of work on at the moment, so things have been a bit scant on the bloggy front, but I am going to schedule myself a bit of quieter time coming up so that I can attend to that. In the meantime, Rich is in the middle of mock (practice) exams for his Cambridge course at school, Henry has had a couple of days off work, consequently got bored and dyed his (brown) hair white blonde (as you do), and Nick is actually not in China. We are all heading down to Wellington on Thursday to check out Victoria university for Rich, and of course have a big catch up with Henry – yay! In the meantime, the clock is ticking, yoga is calling, so quickly back to the pie! I made the recipe for Fairfax and it is the perfect weekend pie, you can make it less or more spicy, as you wish, serve it with a good tomato chutney and a beer / glass of milk for the young’uns and enjoy!
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
150g bacon, chopped
200g chorizo (or cooked sausages), chopped
½ teaspoon sweet smoked paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon coriander
700g beef mince
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 400g tin crushed tomatoes
1 cup beef stock
1 400g tin kidney beans, drained
Rice brain oil spray or similar
450g flaky puff pastry for 1 large pie or 900g ready rolled flaky puff pastry sheets for 7 individual pies
1 egg lightly beaten
1 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional)
Heat oil in a large deep frying pan and cook onion, bacon and chorizo with spices for 12 minutes until onion is softened. Add beef and garlic and use a fork to break up the mince as it cooks for 7-8 minutes so that is well browned. Add tomatoes and stock with salt and pepper to taste. Leave to simmer without a lid, over a gentle heat for one hour, stirring occasionally. Add beans and cook a further 30 minutes then remove from the heat to cool. Lightly spray the base and sides of 1x 24cm pie plate or 7x 1-cup capacity pie plates with oil then line with pastry. Spoon in cooled meat filling then lightly brush the pastry edges with egg wash. Cut out pastry lids to top pies and use your thumbs or the tines of a fork to press around the edges to seal. Brush with remaining egg wash and decorate with pastry cut outs and or sesame seeds as you wish. Chill pies while the oven preheats to 180˚C (350˚F) . Cook large pie for 65 minutes and individual pies for 45 minutes. Grunty adventurous cowboys may wish to ‘up’ the spices by half as much again (or more), and junior cowboys or girls might prefer these minus the smoked paprika…make them your way 🙂
We made a big pie of this earlier this week and it's absolutely delicious! So full of flavour. It's going to definitely be repeated in our house! p.s. When you post recipes it would be really helpful if you could say how many (approx) it serves. We reckon this is for 6 – but that might just be our greedy portions 🙂
Honeybourne Line
Hi Roseann – great, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! You are absolutely right about the serving size, it make 7 individual pies, so the big one serves 6-7…not greedy portions at all! 🙂
Great, goo to know, thank you x