Lady Vengeance Pie

So, last night we held a really special meeting of Private Pie at the Star and Shadow Cinema. you can read all about it at the Private Pie blog here.

I decided to make two pies for the event: a sweet and a savoury. Some of you may already know that I am a bit of a fiend for Asian Extreme Horror Films, so I thought it would be cool to do something on that theme. I also went to go and see a load of Korean and Japanese horror films at the Star and Shadow, so it seemed like Lady Vengeance, my favourite of Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy. Here's an explanation of what I made, and how it links in with the film:

Tofu:
In Korea, a block of white tofu is presented to people on leaving prison. Its a symbol of purity and of starting a new life. This symbol appears twice in the film- at the beginning as she leaves prison, and at the end, when she represents the white tofu in a cake. A few weeks earlier, someone on Twitter recommended this recipe for chocolate tofu pie, so it seemed to me that it would fit nicely.

The chocolate tofu mixture in my pate sucree pastry case,

Strawberry Mousse:
On her release from prison, Geum-Ja finds a job in a bakery. Here's what the bakery owner has to say about her:

 "He tells her that he was astonished at a strawberry mousse made by a prison inmate who, using poor ingredients, made a dessert "fit for a king."

So I thought a lovely strawberry mousse topping would be perfect. I went for this BBC good food recipe

The strawberry mousse layer

Pink/Red:
See her eye-make up? That's quite a feature of the film, as Geum-Ja uses a change in her appearance to symbolise her departure from innocence to one intent on revenge. I had to go for a have a pink/red colour theme, and it had to be pretty- Geum-Ja likes pretty things, as do I, so I used pink sugar pearls which I let dissolved into the topping, and liberal applications of red glitter, with some little bits of red icing here and there. I also used some pink and red sugar roses, to add extra prettiness. I think Geum-Ja would have liked that.

With pink and red decorations

White
I made some meringue hearts with the leftover egg whites from the pate sucree, to pick up the theme of the purity from the tofu. And, of course, we have to bear in mind that everything Geum-Ja does is for the love of her daughter.

Blood
This is a revenge film, featuring plenty of blood. I used red gel food colouring to make blood spatter.

The fully assembled pie, ready for eating at Private Pie.

The resulting pie was rather tasty, although very sloppy as it was pretty hot in the room. If it was kept nice and clilled, I think it would make for a very pretty slice. And don't let the tofu put you off- its just really there for the texture, and you certainly can't taste it. the mousse was delicious, and i had plenty left over to give to friends and to make a pretty little dessert for myself as well.

 

 

Hxxx

Porter Cream Pie

Our last Private Pie Club meeting's theme was "Local Tipples"

I am a HUGE real ale fan and always have been, so this theme really excited me. Beer and pie are obvious partners but i was really excited about how our members were going to be creative with the theme.

I had set my heart on making a sweet pie with beer, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it. As usual, the first step in researching was google, and i stumbled across this beer cream pie blog post. I knew this was the one.

I was fairly short of time, so I ended up making the pies for the meeting the night before without doing a practice run. I was a bit nervous to start with that it was all going to go horribly wrong, which may explain the events that followed.

I merrily made a chocolate shortcrust pastry and blind baked the crust. Nothing untoward here.

Then I mixed the melted chocolate with the porter and brushed a good thick layer of this divine stuff onto the pastry case. Again, all went smoothly. The porter i was using was Hadrian and Borders Ouseburn porter.

Then it came to making the custard. Here, total panic and disaster struck, as the custard just wouldn't set at all (in reality, I think i was too impatient and didn't really let it cool down as much as i should before taking action). For some reason, it seemed like a good plan to put some gelatin in... So in went one sachet... Then i thought i needed some more (again i clearly hadn't left it for long enough to make this decision rationally)... and some more.... so in total i put in three sachets of gelatin.

Eventually, the custard started setting... And then it continued setting, then set a bit more. Undeterred, I
went ahead and decorated the tart with some of the leftover porter chocolate mixture and some gold leaf. It looked pretty good in the end:

The verdict at pie club was that it tasted nice, but had a very odd texture. Emergency gelatin really wasn't a good plan at all. One member put it very nicely: "I think you might have invented a new material for breast implants"

Apple Streusel Cake

I'm a lazy, lazy person. Occasionally, I like to have very lazy days where i barely leave the house (I don't think a trip to the bins is classed as an expedition these days, especially when the bins are about 2 metres away from your flat). Usually on these days i am suffering from that most terrible of ailments The Hangover.

One thing i do like to do on these days, except for watching full DVD box sets of Dexter or House MD, is to bake. So then I have to attempt to find something to bake for which i already have all of the ingredients in the house.

So, the other week I had some cooking apples left over from the toffee apple cider pie I made for Private Pie Club (I will post about this sometime soon). I also had some pecans and bits and pieces leftover from the not-so-vegan-vegan-tart, so i decided to make an apple cake.

Of course, good old BBC Good Food obliged me with a recipe, and a-baking i went.

The result:

Apparently I have a lop-sided cake tin :-S

It looks pretty rustic, and it collapsed a bit in the middle, but it smelt of spicy appley goodness. To be honest, I've no idea how it tastes as it's now all wrapped up in freezer awaiting a last minute cake emergency situation.

Tarting it up

The theme for the last Private Pie Club meeting was Great British Pies, as it was being held on the Tuesday of British Pie Week. I decided to do something North-Eastern, as I'm a Geordie girl who very much loves the North East.

I had a look through my local cookery books and found a recipe for a North Country Tart, which I thought sounded perfect. And if we ever do a "pie that describes you theme", this recipe would do for that also :)

The tart is basically a sweetcrust pastry base, with a layer of raspberry jam topped with a golden syrup, egg, sugar and coconut concoction. Why it is north country, I have no idea- The streets of Newcastle don't appear to be lined with native palm trees sprouting coconuts or raspberry jam, but never mind. 

I wanted to use some local ingredients, so I got myself down to Mmm Newcastle, and got a few other bits and pieces in the Grainger market also. I remember when the Grainger Market was a place that your grandma went to, and it was possibly the uncoolest place to be. Nowadays it's getting really quite vibrant, and i love being in there. It's so much cheaper for fruit and vegetables than supermarkets too. I just wish that it was open a bit later so i could nip in after work. Anyway, I got a jar of J.R. jams raspberry jam from there. I do love a jar of jam with a hat on!

 The recipe only asked for 2 tablespoons of jam, but to be honest the jam was so good that I went ahead and put pretty much the whole jar in. 

jammy goodness

Then after that, the gooey golden syrupy coconutty goodness went in....

The tart was starting to look good, but i felt it needed a bit of extra panache. All that expanse of topping with nothing to break it up... And I felt that some special British Pie Week decoration was in order. 

There was only a small sliver left at the end of the Pie Club meeting, and that was quickly snapped up by the bar staff, so I think it went down quite well. I did have a little bit of it, but then swiftly managed to get distracted by spilling my pint all over myself. 

And, if you want to get all North Country yourself, here is the recipe for a 12 inch tart dish:

Ingredients:

• 250g sweetcrust pastry. 
• 1 jar of JR Jams Raspberry jam
• 75g butter
• 37.5g caster sugar
• 1&1/2 tablespoons of golden syrup
• 150g dessicated coconut
• 1&1/2 eggs, beaten.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180oC (fan oven)
2. Line a tart tin with the sweetcrust pastry. Spread the jam onto the bottom of the tart.
3. In a saucepan, melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup together until it has all gone lovely and gloopy. Take off the heat.
4. Stir the coconut and beaten egg into the syrup mixture.
5. Turn the mixture into the tart tin. Decorate with pastry offcuts and glaze with egg yolk, then put into the oven to bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the filling has set and the pastry is golden and crisp.

Steak and Mushroom Pie

At the moment, my life appears to revolve around one thing.

Pie.

Pie has become the epicentre of my very being. You can read all about the exciting goings on in team Private Pie here.

Meanwhile, Boyf and I are attempting to plough through the Hairy Biker's Perfect Pies book to get some serious pastry-based experience in.

So, last weekend we made a hearty steak and mushroom pie from their book. Bear in mind that I was rather hung over after drinking an awful lot of wine the night before, and the recipe entails using a fair amount of red wine. Luckily, Boyf was willing to stand in at that point to take over and to limit the amount of alcoholic fumes i inhaled. 

Now, if you ask me, an ideal pie has some sort of decoration which reflects what's inside it. It turns out that all of my bento-ing experience seems to be coming in handy for this purpose. For the pastry  mushroom, I used an idea from Cute Yummy Time, with a punched- out nori happy face. Meanwhile, Boyf had responsibility for  producing the cow. 

Of course, a little bit of basic maths never goes amiss either when considering pie decoration. And who could argue that steak + mushroom = yum?

NOM!

 

Chicken Pie Is a Drug

I got a lot of pie-related goodies for Christmas, what with being a co-founder of Private Pie and all. Santa seems to approve of this new venture of mine, as I got a new pie dish, a pastry server, a blackbird funnel, and both the Pieminster Cookbook and the Hairy Bikers' Perfect Pies book.

The latter was a present from Boyf, so we decided to make a pie together on New Year's Day. We went for the first recipe, a creamy chicken, ham, and leek double-crusted pie.

The recipe was really simple to make, and my goodness, it smelt wonderful when it was baking. We probably spent longer decorating the pie that we did actually preparing it!

Chicken! Cos it's got chicken in the pie, you see!

One beautifully baked narcotic pie

Pig! because of the ham content!

Plate of Pie Joy. The warm, creamy filling doesn't make for perfect presentation

We each had a slice and it was really scrumptious. So we each had another slice. And we instantly felt pleasantly happy and sleepy. Much napping on the sofa ensued... This pie appears to have opiate-like effects on the central nervous system. I suspect it may also be as addicted as morphine. 

Hayley xxx

UPDATE: Today I woke up with a really sore, stiff neck. I can confirm that, having consumed a slice of this pie, my pain rating has decreased. Big Pharma should be investigating this. I would be a willing participant in any clinical trials.

Cooled pie makes for much more presentable slices.

Finally, the Christmas pie recipe you've all been waiting for!

Hi there my lovelies,

Finally, I'm getting round to catching up on some blogging. Not sure how useful this here Christmas pie recipe will be to you, now that the festive season is over and done with for another year, but here it is in all it's glory, ready for you to print out and frame to put above your mantel piece :)

It's a surprisingly easy recipe, but really well-loved by all who try it. It makes for a perfect Christmas Eve tea. You can just use frozen shortcrust pastry if you're short of time, but the basic recipe i use is so easy to make it seems daft not to whip up a batch of your own delicious pastry. This recipe is based on one from BBC Good Food magazine from years ago, but over the years i've made a few tweaks which i think improve it quite a bit. The other great thing about this pie is that it can be made well in advanced and frozen- i usually make a couple at a time- one for work, one for christmas, and this year, one for pie club!

For the pastry, I use the BBC Good Food basic shortcrust recipe... So easy, but it's best to double up the quantities to make sure you've enough for this substantial pie. I also add a tablespoon or so of paprika, which makes the recipe my own and means the pastry has a lovely deep colour when it's baked.

Ingredients:

-2 tbsp olive oil
- knob of butter
- 1 finely chopped onion
-500g sausagemeat
- dash of lemon juice
-100g fresh white breadcrumbs
-85g dried apricots
-60g canned or tinned chestnuts, chopped
-2 tsp fresh thyme. dried will do if you can't get fresh, but the smell of fresh thyme is so delicious it's a shame to miss out!
-100g dried cranberries
-500g turkey breast, diced into bite sizes pieces
-beaten egg to glaze

Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees (170 degrees for a fan oven)

1. Heat the olive oil and butter in a frying pan or wok and gently fry the onions and turkey until nicely browned and cooked through. Leave to cool down for a bit

2. In a large bowl, combine the sausagemeat, lemon juice, breadcrumbs, apricots, chestnuts, thyme, and cranberries. Add the onion and turkey pieces and mix using your hands.

3. Roll out 3/4 of the pastry and cover the bottom of the pie dish. Now, squidge all of the christmassy goodness filling into the case. Brush the edges with beaten egg.

4. Roll out the rest of the pastry and cover the filling. Either pinch the edge or use a fork to seal the edge.

5.  Brush the pastry with the beaten egg to glaze. Use the off-cuts to decorate in any way you wish... christmas cookie cutters are always a good option. I quite like to glaze the top of the pie, but not the decoration, which gives a nice contrast.

6. Bung your lovely pie in the oven. Bake for between 40-60 mins depending on your oven, until it has turned a lovely brown colour.

Enjoy. Delicious served warm or cold!

A Very Exciting (and Secret) Development

I'm quite rubbish at keeping daft but exciting secrets, so I'm going to tell you all about this Top Secret and marvellous thing that is happening at the moment..

Inspired by the lovely Lisa, and the Clandestine Cake Club, my friend Nancy and I have decided to make our very own food-based secret society.

A secret pie club! Similar principles to the CCC, (you only find out about the venue 24 hours before, you can bring a non-baking friend, you have to make a pie that will feed 8-12 people), but with a more savoury option, although sweet pies are still very much welcome.

Our website is under construction at the minute, but i've started off a little blog 

Aaaand, we have a twitter account ( @private_pie)

Aaaaaaaaaaaand, we have a Facebook page as well 

So, once i am back from my holidays, we are going to go and have a look for venues. We have somewhere in mind which i think will be perfect, but fingers crossed that it all works out.

I am really, so excited about this!

Hayley xxx