The best Game Pie, made for Farmer's Choice (Free Range) Ltd

Tucked away - nay, nestled - in our freezer for the last few weeks has been a pack of mixed diced Game, (being venison, rabbit, pheasant, partridge and wood pigeon), just waiting for the stars to align and for me to come up with a recipe.

Those lovely people at Farmer's Choice (Free Range) Ltd were kind enough to respond to my promise of a good Game Pie recipe and very obligingly supplied the necessary, for which, my thanks.  (Follow the link here which will take you to the relevant page of their website).  However, none of us quite reckoned on just how good this good Game Pie recipe would be.  It was more than good - it was (to quote my hubby) "a triumph".

Now bear in mind that I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to Game.

Yes, I've cooked several wild rabbits with success in the past, I've had a very bad experience with someone else's pheasant dish that was so high it was inedible and consigned two Mallards to the bin that just didn't even bear description.  So I think you could considered my experience somewhat chequered.

Undaunted, however, I had a vision of a Game Pie in my imagination and that vision was just busting to be made real.  Not a raised Game Pie (a sort of wild meat version of a pork pie) but a good old fashioned country style, hearty, stick to your ribs kind of pie.  One with a golden crispy crust that hides the cornucopia of deliciousness below.  All I can say is that I just wish I had this kind of vision more often, as the actuality exceeded expectation by a factor of many - and the expectation was pretty darned high to begin with!

I dare you to identify any one piece ... lol

I had the picture of the pie mapped out in my head from an early stage.

What I was lacking, were the links and balances between ingredients which would result in a great combination.  My starting point is always "what does the primary ingredient taste like?".  Now I have tasted venison before, but only in a sausage.  Rabbit I'm well versed in, pheasant - not so much, partridge was a new one and wood pigeon I've had once previously and loved.  So I had an idea of how the meats would taste, but only an idea.  (Incidentally, I had no compunction in eating wood pigeon having had many tubes of niger seed go down their gullets instead of into the intended goldfinches.  I considered it payback).  I knew I wanted BIG flavours, flavours that were easily accessible by most home cooks and a nice selection of herbs.  After that, it was open season.

A couple of rashers of smoked bacon were a definite, so the next question was what vegetables would go nicely and look appealing in the pie?  Good old favourites onion, garlic, carrot and celery always make a great start to a good flavoured gravy and sliced carrots add colour.  Mushrooms are excellent for flavour and baby button mushrooms look delicious, too.  I knew I wanted to use red wine, so I was looking for something to combat the acidity that the red wine would bring.  Carrots were a good start, but I needed something that would echo the earthy, whilst balancing the acidity with sweetness.  Something that would go well with Game.  Something like ... chestnuts.  Having had the chestnut idea, it led on to considering prunes.  Prunes - just a few cut in half - would lend their deep sweetness, fruity flavour and dark colour to the equation perfectly.

It was all coming together nicely.

The last question was regarding herbage.  My dislike of thyme is well documented and I felt it was too easy to just opt for that.  It's rapidly becoming today's Herbes de Provence.  Way back in the eighties, that hideous stuff was in just about every Delia Smith recipe that had been documented and as such I'm sick to death of it.  The same goes for thyme and .. whoops, narrowly avoided an anti-thyme rant.  *phew*

I remembered my two front-door herbs, rosemary and bay.  (So called because they are either side of my front door).  Both would be perfect with the wild flavours of the Game and I liked the idea of those straight away.  My mind was wandering along pine nut routes when I suddenly remembered Juniper berries.  They would provide a gorgeous aromatic quality, along with a subtle citrussy fruitiness that would be hard to pin down but very "there".  Oh yes, it was all coming together beautifully.

The pastry was an unspoken given, in that I would be using my superb (and it IS superb, I kid you not) butter/suet pastry.  Just the sheer fact that it contains suet qualified it for the job, but the deliciously crisp lightness of the end result was absolutely spot on.

I added a few more ingredients over the course of the cooking process - the spoonful of tomato puree both for colour and fruitiness, the Knorr stock pot for its invaluably deep, dark colouration and excellent flavour - and I can safely say that each and every ingredient became as important as the next in the production of the pie.

Yes, it is basically a day-long labour of love to make this pie - but oh my gosh it is worthwhile.  Taken in stages, the process becomes an easy matter which I grant you is time consuming, but not difficult.  If you're looking for a dish with which to impress (and you could easily prepare the pie filling ahead of time and freeze it - which would make things a whole lot easier) you don't need to look much further.

"The nicest pie - both filling and pastry - I've had in many a long year" was my hubby's verdict. I think he liked it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I have a few Cook's Tips for you.

The most important thing is not to rush this pie.  Give yourself a complete day in which to produce it if you're intending on making it all in one day, as it does take time.  Cutting the oven time short will only result in a potentially tough or undercooked filling that has none of the deep, developed flavours that a long oven bake will bring.

Don't make the pastry until the filling is made.  That way the pastry has a shorter time to wait and won't deteriorate in the fridge.

Don't be tempted to add the pastry to the pie until the filling is, at worst, luke warm or at best, stone cold.  Any significant heat will instantly melt your pastry, which will dissolve distressingly before you can get it into the oven.

Lastly, don't be scared to add a good deal of black pepper.  It gives a lovely warmth to the sauce that lingers on the tongue like a delicious echo.

You're also in luck that August is currently within Game season  - so invest in some mixed Game and tuck it away for a rainy day that can only be salvaged by the application of delicious Game Pie.  Your family will thank you.


GAME PIE     (Serves 3-4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil
10g butter
500g mixed Game, diced  (I used venison, rabbit, pheasant, partridge & wood pigeon)
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
1 large carrot, half finely diced, half sliced small
1 stick celery, finely diced
2 rashers back bacon, diced
10 small round shallots
150g small button mushrooms, left whole
3 bay leaves
1 tsp fresh rosemary
8 juniper berries, crushed well
200ml red wine
1 heaped tsp tomato puree
1 Knorr rich beef stock pot
500ml water
10 semi dried prunes, halved
100g chestnuts.

For the pastry :

150g plain flour
50g vegetable suet
50g cold salted butter
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
Carbonated mineral water as necessary.

1 egg yolk to glaze.

Method :

In a deep frying pan, heat the olive oil and add the butter.  When the butter is frothy, add the game and sear over a high heat with a tiny pinch of sea salt and a good pinch of black pepper.  Just get two or three sides of the meat coloured, then remove to an ovenproof casserole dish, using a slotted spoon.

Add the chopped onion, garlic, carrot (both sizes), celery and bacon to the pan.  Season with a small pinch of sea salt and black pepper.  Fry over a moderate heat until the onion is transparent and the bacon fat has begun to render.

Add the whole shallots and button mushrooms and increase the heat under the pan.  Fry until everything has gained a little colour - around five minutes, or so.

Add the bay leaves, rosemary and crushed juniper berries and stir through.

Add the red wine and tomato puree, stir through and allow to boil rapidly for 2-3 minutes, then reduce the heat to moderate and add the beef stock and the water.  Stir through again to ensure the stock has melted properly.

Simmer the pan contents for 10 minutes, then taste for seasoning and add more salt or pepper, as necessary.

Add the prunes and chestnuts.

Decant into the casserole dish and gently stir to mix the game through.

Cover the casserole dish and place into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas 4 for 2 hours.

Once the cooking time is up, decant the casserole contents into your pie dish, cover lightly and set aside to cool.

Make the pastry by gathering all the ingredients except the water (and egg) into a large bowl.  Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour and suet, until you have a cross between breadcrumbs and cornflakes.  Add around 100ml of water and stir with a knife.  You will probably need a little more water, but what you are looking for is that the pastry dough just clings together and is damp, not wet.  Do not knead the dough at all, just pat and push it together then place onto a sheet of cling film and wrap tightly.  Rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before using.

When your dough is rested and your filling lukewarm, roll out the pastry to just bigger than the size of your pie dish.

Using a pastry brush, brush egg yolk around the lip of the pie dish.

Carefully lift the pastry on top of the pie, so that it overhangs the edge.  Using the tip of a knife, press down all around the edge then trim off the excess.

Brush all but a small amount of the remaining egg yolk over the surface of the pastry, taking care to go right to the edges.

Cut out some leaves or other decoration from your leftover pastry and lay them on top of the egg wash.  Brush egg onto the leaves.

Take a sharp knife and cut some holes into the pastry to allow the steam to escape.

Place into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas 4 for 35-40 minutes until the pastry is crisply golden and the filling is bubbling hot.

Serve with buttered new potatoes and vegetables of your choice.

Printable version

Slow Cooker Beef Stew with Herby Dumplings

I was shocked to realise, a few days ago, that it was (very) early Spring and I had yet to make a beef stew with dumplings in the slow cooker!  Just goes to show what a relatively mild (albeit horrendously wet) winter we've had.

Now I absolutely adore beef stew - and a beef stew made in the slow cooker (the right way) is right up there amongst my favourites.

I can hear you all asking what I might consider to be "the right way"?  Well, those of you who have been reading along all these years (well done, if that's you - and thank you!) will recall my saying that I went through a phase of getting lackadaisical with the slow cooker and expecting miracles from it - and not getting them.  You see, to successfully cook in a slow cooker is all about what you put into it - and I'm not just talking the quality of your ingredients (although that does feature, but in a rather smaller way than with other situations).  No, what I'm talking about here is your preparation.  Meat has to be seared, or at the very least browned for additional flavour before being added.  Onions need to be sweated at the least and caramelised at the most, all for additional flavour.  The size of the pieces of meat and/or vegetable that you include, makes a huge difference to the flavour of the end product.

I began to think that you could throw a quartered onion in the slow cooker with a sliced carrot and some chunks of beef and expect a stew at the end of it.  Well, I dare say what I got had definitely been stewed - but was it "a stew?".  No, very definitely not.  No flavour, just hot and wet.  Bleugh.

Whatever you are cooking in the slow cooker - pretty much without exception, savoury wise - needs to have the meat seared or browned.  The difference in flavour for such a simple action, is incredible.  I opted to use beef shin for this stew as I knew the slow cooker would be on for best part of the day (we were visiting my parents so would be out for the day) and such long slow cooking is just perfect for beef shin.  Plus, it is one of the least expensive of all the beef cuts.  We managed to pick up around 500g for £5 - which is perfect.  Yes, shin requires a fair amount of trimming - especially when you've got menfolk who are as sensitive about finding "globby bits" in their stews as mine are - but it is so worth it.  Plus dustbins 1, 2 and 3 (the dogs) are always happy to take care of the trimmings.

Below, I talk about "big" and "small" pieces of vegetables and their role in the creation of the stew.  The same applies to the meat.  Pieces of beef that are relatively lean are kept for the "big" pieces - slightly smaller than 1" square - whereas any pieces that are shot through with impossible to remove sinew and/or fat, are chopped into tiny pieces to dissolve into the gravy.  Nothing gets wasted - it all adds to the glorious flavour.

So having said that, whenever I'm including vegetables, I sort them out into the said "big pieces" and "small pieces" - some of which, like carrot, celery, onion, potato and mushroom, will qualify under both categories.  The "big pieces" go into the slow cooker straight away, without any further preparation than peeling and cutting to size.  However, the "small pieces" vegetables get chopped finely with a view to their disintegrating as they cook (which you definitely don't want the big pieces to do!) and adding their individual gorgeousness to the whole that is the gravy.  Not only that, but the "small pieces" get pan fried - most especially the onions - before being added.  Raw onion added to a stew continues to taste like raw onion.  Even when adding whole shallots, I still pan fry them to get some colour on the outside - which lends flavour to the sauce or gravy and prevents them from tasting too "raw" at the end of it.

In the case of this stew, the "small pieces" I included were onion, garlic, carrot, celery, mushroom and potato.  Everything excepting the potato was there to add to the gravy, the potato was there to add to the thickening.

The "big pieces" included potato, carrot, mushroom, turnip, parsnip and butternut squash.

I also added a whole plethora of other flavours, all of which were there to bump up the gravy from just "gravy" to "WHOA! Awesome gravy!".  I started off with a Knorr Rich Beef Stockpot - just invaluable for dishes like this - then included some horseradish sauce, wholegrain mustard, Bovril, Essential Cuisine's veal stock, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and to thicken the gravy just before serving, some of Bisto's "Rich and Roasted" Best beef gravy granules.  Oh - and a good pinch or more of freshly ground black pepper.  Now, because of ingredients like the stockpot, the horseradish, mustard, Bovril, Worcestershire sauce and gravy granules, the requirement to be super-careful about using salt is paramount.  In fact, I resisted adding any additional salt - and just left it to all those ingredients to do my salt seasoning for me, which turned out very successfully.

 
As for herbs - can't leave out the herbs! - I used a couple of tablespoonfuls of finely chopped fresh parsley with the stalks included and a couple of bay leaves.

Yes, I threw pretty much everything except the kitchen sink at the stew - and it was fabulous.  The slow cooker went on at 9.30am and we came back late in the afternoon to a house filled with the gorgeous smells of stew cooking and with next to no preparation required other than to mix up the dumplings and warm a few bowls.

So, hopefully, you will see that using a slow cooker - or crockpot - is one of life's Very Good Things, however you can't expect it to do your flavour creation for you.  You get out of it what you put into it.

Now, where the dumplings are concerned, I decided to make them herby as the stew only had two herbs in it.  A chicken stew tends to have more in the way of herbs, so I like a plainer flavoured dumpling in that instance.  With a beef stew, the world is your oyster where flavouring your dumplings is concerned.  Pretty much anything goes - horseradish, cheddar, herbs, chillies - get creative!  I went for oregano, thyme and parsley and they were gorgeous.  The recipe is simple - just 100g of self raising flour, 50g of suet (veggie suet is fine), a pinch of salt and whatever flavours you're using.  Add 4-5 tbsp of water in stages and mix together to form a soft, but not sticky, dough.  Divide into six evenly sized spoonfuls and either roll into balls or simply drop into the gravy with an hour to go, for more freeform shapes.

I haven't written out a stew recipe here, because other than beef, the remainder of the ingredients are entirely up to you.  Just remember the "big pieces/small pieces" rule, the pan frying advice and remember that if you use any tender vegetables like cabbage, peas or cauliflower, to add them half way through the cooking period or they'll just disappear to mush.

Try not to drown your stew in gravy to begin with, as the veggies will give off a lot of liquid.  You can always add more water or stock as you go through the cooking period, which is a lot more satisfactory than winding up with a gallon of gravy!

Now if you've not got a slow cooker, by all means assemble the stew in a large casserole dish and cook it in the bottom of a low oven - but make sure you leave it there for a long old time.  My slow cooker version was cooking for around 9 hours - just to give you an idea of how long we're talking about.  I should think a minimum of 6 hours at 120/140degC would do the trick.  Oh - and don't forget the dumplings.  This stew needs dumplings.

Be aware, you've not got very long until the full loveliness of Spring is upon us - and barring more eccentric weather (please, no!), your window of stew opportunity is shrinking.  So don't delay - your slow cooker (not to mention your belly) needs this beef stew!