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The only time I entered an ICSA I missed the deadline, and though people were kind and let me post, technically this is my first entry. Welcome to the daddy of pies. Difficulty:  My ten month old son wants all my attention. Right now he's wanting me to stop writing and give him more bananas / show him a cat / walk around the house. So, the daddy of all pies:  It's Steak and Kidney.  Okay, let's get into this. Cube your Chuck steak. It needs to be a slow stewing / braising cut because the filling is a slow braise / stew. So cube it, toss it in well seasoned flour.  Take the fat trimmed off and render it in a pan. Throw in a few mushrooms. and a little butter and cook gently.  Whilst they cook, tend to your kidney. Yes, it's where your pee is made. This kidney is a cow/ ox / bull. It's firm and has only the faintest odour of urine. It also comes as a nice and handy sectioned lump. Use those sections to guide your knife. All that fat (suet) has to go. Also there are sinews in the kidneys that you have to remove. Give them a rinse under cold running water, dry, and flour like the steak.  Brown that steak. Don't grey it, brown it.  Remove Steak, add Kidney.  Remove kidney, add in fine dice of one large onion and a couple of fat garlic cloves, minced. Sweat them until translucent. Add in about 400ml of red wine or Stout or Brown Ale. Slowly reduce by one third. Return meat, kidneys and mushrooms to the pan. Add roughly 400ml of Beef Stock (I use home made frozen beef demi here), a large blob of tomato paste, a good sloosh of worcestershire sauce, sprigs of thyme and a couple of bay leaves. Some salt and pepper.  Slowly slowly very gently over a couple of hours cook to a fine brown sticky mess.  Remove meaty and mushroomy bits from the pan, along with the herbs. Add a blob of marmite to the sauce. Using salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce season it up to taste as you reduce it further. You're looking for something that'll end up being a fine glossy covering, not a gravy.  Sprinkle with a good handful of herbs (Parsley and Chervil here), cover and refrigerate over night. It's going to relax and the flavours are going to mingle with each other.  And so to pastry. Steak & Kidney pies seem to normally be served in a pie tin, under a crust of puff or flaky pastry. Not today. I have here 225 grams of All-Purpose flour, 70 grams of good butter, diced small, 30 grams of grated Bone Marrow, a generous pinch of salt and a couple of table spoons of English Mustard Powder.  I wanted to beef up the flavour of the pastry, and you can do that with the fat. Lard would make it too piggy, suet I threw away by mistake, so I used the bone marrow I had. The mustard adds a slight flavour, a little in the background. If this was for a sweet dish I'd be adding sugar and vanilla, maybe some bourbon too. Sift flour into large bowl so that it's as fine and lump free as possible.  Everything goes in. Everything needs to stay cold.  Using your finger tips, rub the flour into the fat, letting it fall into the bowl from a great height. This helps somehow. You're wanting it to get to a breadcrumb like state.  Using ice water a little at a time, bring it into a dough.  Set dough to rest, wrapped in cling film, in fridge for an hour or so. Roll out on clean surface, using only a little flour, until it's about 4 mm thick. Wrap a ramekin in cling film and pull the dough around it, trim it and invert.  You now something akin to a medieval pastry coffin. Only made of edible beefy shortcrust pastry. Put them in freezer for fifteen minutes. The fat needs to cool down from being worked. In fifteen minutes you can take them out, remove the ramekin and shape the pastry to what you want. Etch designs on it, whatever.  It was at this point I noticed police running around outside with guns drawn. I take the kid and hunker down, hoping to keep out of the way of any bullets. Turns out a neighbour four doors down was either shot by his wife or shot himself. He had guns in a house with three kids and in a neigbourhood full of children. The gun was fired in a duplex where children live on both sides. gently caress that. anyway, there's police cars, photographers, news vans, fire engines, ambulances and mild chaos as people suddenly find a reason to walk their dogs around here. But it meant I forgot about the pastry in the freezer, and with no time to defrost, had to rip the ramekins out and redo the pastry. This time I buttered the outside of the ramekins, froze for ten minutes, pulled the pastry around them to make the shell, trimmed, froze for a little. Put the PIE FILLING in a pot and gently reheat on the stove. Give the pastry an eggwash and bake upside down on the ramekin at 375F / 190c. It's going to dome up and that's fine. Check after around 20 minutes. If they feel like they've developed a firm pastry skin, are solid and starting to get golden, remove from oven. Flip and remove ramekins, trimming away any pastry that'll prevent that. Eggwash again and return to oven until golden inside and out.  Ready the condiment:  Spoon filling into pastry cups, decorate the top however. I used spooky halloween cats. Because that was the nearest cookie cutter. Sprinkle on some herbs, serve with honey glazed carrots and waxy potatoes finished with olive oil and garlic confit. Get medieval on the Pie  
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Oct 22, 2015 17:05
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 02:35 |
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I want to eat so many of these. I want to eat them til I get meat sweats. I want to throw it up and eat the throw-up.
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Oct 22, 2015 19:49
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This looks amazing.
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Oct 23, 2015 23:22
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Aww, RIP pastry. I hate when police action interrupts good cooking. Is there a way to do pork and kidney pie? Because I keep acquiring these pig kidneys (along with other pig parts) and it seems a waste to huck 'em. I do keep the hearts to bulk up lean sausage for mom though, no one's the wiser.
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Oct 24, 2015 01:26
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gently caress this is a hard NICSA to vote on. That looks amazing.
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Oct 27, 2015 09:46
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I keep coming back to drool at this pie. You earned that win! What does the kidney add to the flavor? Could it just be made with the steak?
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Nov 1, 2015 19:00
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 02:35 |
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Kidney does have a distinct flavour, but it is mild. Though pig kidney's I find to be strong. Their flavour adds a depth to the sauce, and the texture has a nice firmness. Kinda like a mushroom, which is why I always include a few. Steak & Mushroom is as much a classic as Steak & Kidney. So's Steak & Ale or Steak & Stilton.
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Nov 2, 2015 22:22
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