Good Comfort Food...Meat Pie and Fish Soup

After a wonderful weekend on the boat we are home again, and today the children have come to visit. Barney has a new convert our baby Cleo… she is entranced with him, just like children have been for years. Both on the TV and in print.
Big sister Mia is reading her a story from a Barney Book



During the last couple of weeks there has been a programme on Food TV
Britain’s Best Dish, a competition to find Britain’s Best Dish cooked by amateur cooks.
Being of Welsh stock of course my food heritage is British, and most of the dishes on the programme were familiar to me.
There were some excellent recipes, and I have tried a couple of them.
The winner of the Starter Section made “Somerset Tiddy Oggy’s.”
This is a pasty similar to Cornish pasties.

I decided to try the pastry, as it was given the thumbs up by the judges.
It was excellent and very simple.
I turned it into a delicious meat pie.
I only had a piece of sirloin steak on the boat, which is not fabulous for a stew,

but I decided to make the sauce first, and add rare steak to the sauce and see what happened.
So I seared the steak.
Cut the rare steak up and add to the sauce,
Mix together and leave for at least 3-4 fours hours for the flavours to combine.
It worked . Melt in the mouth, beautiful meat.
You need
SHORT CRUST PASTRY
100g lard
100g butter
450g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
Cold water as needed

Place the lard, butter, flour, in the blender and whiz.
Add cold water till a ball is formed
Leave pastry to rest for 45 minutes in the fridge

Meanwhile
THE FILLING

Olive oil 2 tablespoons
1 onion finely chopped
1 carrot finely chopped
4 large brown mushrooms cut into small dice
Worstershire sauce 1 tablespoon
Tomato ketchup 1 tablespoon
1 teaspoon Hot English mustard
1 tablespoon flour
Beef stock
100 mls white wine
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 piece New York cut sirloin steak

In a wide pan sauté the onion in olive oil till soft and translucent
Add carrots and mushrooms
Sauté another 2-3 minutes
Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper
Add ketchup, Worcestershire and mustard.
Stir well
Add white wine and let it cook off
Add flour and cook out for a couple of minutes
Add beef stock just to cover
Stir till it thickens,
then let simmer gently for about 5-10 minutes, to reduce and continue to thicken
Watch carefully, as it can stick.
The idea is to get a nice base sauce for the meat.

Then
Heat a pan till it is really hot
Season and oil the steak.
Cook one side about 2 minutes to get a good colour
Turn and another 2 minutes.
Rest for a couple of minutes. It will be quite rare...just what we want.


Remove excess fat and slice the meat and add to the sauce.To complete the pie.
Grease your pie dish
Roll out the pastry in two discs
Line the dish
Fill with the filling
Top with pastry

Brush with egg wash for a nice golden finish
Bake about 30 minutes at 180C
Broccoli went well with it.
A yummy dinner.
From the same show there was this beautiful Fish Soup
It did take a bit of fluffing about but it was worth it.You should try it .

Orange Infused Fish Soup
First make the stock at least 24 hours before you need it.
I didn’t have any Calvados so I used Grand Marnier
Also I didn’t use monkfish just the grouper/hapuka
For the
STOCK
2 Fish heads and bones
120 ml dry white wine
1 ½ litres water
Four or five raw prawns with heads on
a good knob of butter
1 tablespoon Grande Marnier/Calvados
2 onions
2 stalks of celery
1 carrot

In a large pot simmer the fish bones in the white wine for 3-4 minutes
add 1½ litres water of and bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes
Roughly chop the onion, celery and carrot.
In a pan, sauté the prawns in the butter and Grande Marnier/Calvados.
Add the prawn mixture to the stock and simmer for 20 minutes.
Put the stock through a sieve
Back into the pot and add the chopped vegetables

Bring the stock back to boil and simmer for 45 minutes
Sieve the stock again and refrigerate for up to 24 hrs

Now The Soup
You will need
200 gms peeled prawns
1x small squid cleaned and sliced
½ a monkfish tail
200g clams
200g grouper/hapuka
1 medium to large size onion
5 garlic cloves
2 heads of celery
1 bulb of fennel
1 large leek
Peel of 1 orange
a red chili
Fish stock [as above)
lemon thyme
lemon balm
flat leaf parsley
2 fresh bay leaves
marjoram
salt and pepper
olive oil
1 dried red chilli
2 tablespoons dry vermouth or white wine
Parsley leaves

1 tablespoon Grand Marnier/Calvados to taste

Chop the white fish into chunks.
Finely chop the onion, garlic, celery, fennel and leek.
De-seed and chop the chilli.
Sweat the vegetables and orange peel in olive oil in a large pan for 5 minutes
Add the stock, whole herbs and vermouth/wine and simmer for 12 minutes.

Put the soup through a sieve.

Then add the squid, monkfish tail and grouper/hapuka and simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the shellfish and simmer for another 5 minutes.
Taste and add Grande Marnier/Calvados as required.
Chop the parsley.
Add parsley just before serving in a soup bowl.

Well this the last post for a while we are off to Tahiti on Friday
It is one of my favourite places in the world


How about this lovely place check out Tamara’s lovely bungalows in Moorea here
Think of us at the end of the week…Can’t be too bad. Can't wait!