friederike's Reviews
13 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 13Sort by: Title 
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Pie
By Angela Boggiano
Cassell Illustrated - 2006
Beef and Ale Pie : page 36
We thought we'd start with a very classic pie - Beef and Ale Pie. Though I'm not a big fan of Ale (tastes like watery beer, and then I'm not even a fan of beer), the filling was really delicious! The meat was very tender and the flavour was just great! The carrots were too soft for my liking; next time I would fry them so that the sauce can take on some flavour of the carrots, and then take them out and add them shortly before the whole thing goes into the oven.
I also didn't feel that the pastry topping was really necessary, but then it wouldn't really be a pie, would it? It was slightly dry, and I'm wondering whether that had anything to do with the coating of egg (I normally use milk).
All in all, I'd definitely make it again, though I'd change the way I cook the carrots and the top layer of the dough.
Edited 7 August 2015:
Made one of these for the freezer, but unfortunately the pastry didn't survive its excursion to the North Pole. Therefore I decided to serve the filling with potato dumplings (store bought) and Red Cabbage with Appels and Red Wine instead, and actually this worked really, really well - so well that I'm actually considering to stick with the potato dumplings and red cabbage in the future!
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Chicken, Leek and Tarragon Pie : page 56
So-so. The tarragon was far too strong; because we used dried instead of fresh, that may be our fault entirely, as it's then hard to estimate the correct quantity. We used a little more than a teaspoon, I think; half a teaspoon or so is probably better.
But apart from that, the filling tasted strangely flat. It missed a depth of flavour, it tasted like a bland chicken fricassee. DH suggests that before you make the stock, you chop the chicken into pieces and roast the bones to give it more flavour. Also, you could add fried bacon to add more depth. Chicken with tarragon is of course a classic; but I'm not quite sure if leek is an ideal pairing, it's too diffident. At the moment I can only come up with broccoli, but I'm sure there must be other options.
We made progress with the pie pastry. We made 1.5 times the quantity of pastry, which should have meant 1.5 eggs; instead, we used 2 eggs but 1 tbsp less water. It turned out just as delicious as the previous attempts, but a lot more subtle and easier to handle. We think it might be due to different levels of gluten in the flour as discussed a few months ago.
Edited a day later:
DH suggests oyster mushrooms, or well-fried onion rings, or perhaps even chopped chicken livers to deepen the flavour. Or a combination of the above.
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I chose this pie mainly because I wanted something simple, and I couldn't have been more mistaken. I think I started around 18.15 (with the pastry already waiting in the fridge), managed to put the pie in the oven at 19.40, and finally had dinner at 20.30. Admittedly, it didn't help my humour that I spent the hour before deboning chicken thighs.
Midway through making the pie, I was afraid it was going to be a failure anyway. I've never made an Avgolemono sauce before, and I was quite suspicious at how liquid the sauce seemed. I whisked until it was foamy, but it only seemed to thicken minimally. Also the three lemons produced an enormous amount of juice, so I only used the juice of two and a bit.
The shortcrust pastry made me worry as well. Perhaps the second tbsp of water wasn't really necessary, but I added it anyway because the recipe said "2-3 tbsp water" - can you see the big red flag I see in retrospect? Always trust your instincts above the recipe! The pastry also might have been a bit too cold as it had been in the fridge for a few hours; it was very crumbly when I started to roll it out, but eventually, I was able to make a nice pastry pie lid.
Last, the pie had to bake 50 min instead of the required 25-30 min.
I found the resulting pie actually quite pleasing, although a bit too sour. DH was less happy; he thought it was just edible, though not much more than that, and way too sour (and think of it, I didn't even use the juice of all three lemons!). It probably would have helped to give the amount of lemon juice in ml. Also, he complained that the potatoes weren't fully cooked - this can probably be helped by cutting them into smaller pieces, cubes of 1 cm. The chicken, however, was very nice and tender - definitely use chicken thighs, and not filets!
Edited 3 May 2014:
It seems we just can't win with this pie. We made it again, that is to say, DH made it this time while I attended to the Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble we had as dessert.
The potatoes seemed fully cooked this time, but we still wondered what they did in the pie at all, they just didn't seem to work as pie filling (though I'm sure there's some kind of classic something-and-potato-pie I don't know of). However, the sauce separated - no idea why that happened. DH used only the juice of half a lemon, and the zest of two whole ones, cut into strips - he thought it was still too sour, I actually thought it wasn't sour enough - just a tiny bit of zing to give it a proper lemony flavour. DH also complained that chicken and lemon don't go together - of course I don't agree. Maybe it's time to make a different dish with a proper avgolemono sauce. I used only 1 tbsp of water for the pastry, and while it was still crumbly, it made a good flaky crust.
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Cornish Pasties : page 95
Not impressed. The pastry is very similar to the Short Cut Pastry in that the fat is first frozen, then grated into the flour, which makes it a very fast and cold pastry - but unfortunately, this recipe uses lard, and lard doesn't freeze well. Instead, it just made a huge mess and spread out all over the grating wheel of my kitchen machine. Also, the pastry tore easily once I had it rolled out, and tasted really, really dry - not very pleasant!
The filling was nice (definitely nicer than the one of the cornish pasty we had last week in Cornwall! But then again, we discovered too late that it had probably been made in some factory and not in the shop where we bought it), but it was a pain to cut everything into 5 mm cubes! And what kind of joke is this: '250 g beef skirt, chopped into rough cubes about 5 mm square' - rough cubes of 5 mm? You must be joking!
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Empanadillas : page 106
Let's start with the positive aspects: they are delicious, and they're ideal finger food because they won't get soggy if you wrap them and they won't drip or spill either.
However, it's a lot of work to make them, and most of all, the dough was a disaster. It wasn't entirely clear in the beginning what the ideal consistency was, but even when I thought I had reached the best result I could, the dough kept tearing holes and kept shrinking once I began to move it.
DH actually made the first batch with the double amount of filling and dough - never mind how much he rolled out the dough, in the end he was only able to use half of the filling. He used a plastic empanda cutter. Quite a lot of his empanadillas burst. I suspect that the plastic empanada cutter trapped some air, which then expanded when it became hot and made the empanadillas burst.
Seeing what happened to his empanadillas, I filled mine by hand, rolling out the dough a second time even after I had cut the circles, and made sure mine didn't trap any air. This worked (though before baking, mine weren't looking as nice as his - that changed a lot after baking!), but I hated having to find out by experimenting; a good book would have addressed both the trickiness of the dough and would have pointed out the problem with a air; thus only 3 stars instead of at least 4.
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Free-form Cheese, Bacon and Onion Pie : page 41
This seems to be an English version of Kapsalon - lots of things that are delicious on their own because they're heavy on the fat are thrown together in one dish, and the result is... not really delicious, because it's just to much. This pie is nothing but cheese, bacon, and puff pastry, with a fig leaf of potato thrown in.
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Rich Shortcrust Pastry : page 16
I can't imagine I haven't reviewed this pastry before! I've used it at least twice, with the Beef and Ale Pie and the Chicken, Leek and Tarragon Pie.
With the Beef and Ale Pie, it was fine albeit a bit dry. For the Chicken, Leek and Tarragon Pie, I made 1.5 times the quantity of dough, which should have meant 1.5 eggs; instead, I used 2 eggs but 1 tbsp less water. It turned out just as delicious but a lot more subtle and easier to handle. I think it might be due to different levels of gluten in the flour.
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Sausage, Apple and Sage Plate Pie : page 49
A very simple but also very delicious pie! The only thing we'd do differently next time is to use the shortcrust pastry as a topping only - using pastry on top and below results in too much pastry compared to too little filling.
DH made this dish for Perfect Day of Pi (3/14/15) - only to realize upon serving it that he had used a square baking dish... ouch...
We used the shortcrust pastry from Ottolenghi.
Edited 19 December 2016:
We've been making this pie regularly ever since. It's quite easy and very delicious, but there are a few things we've changed:
- The dish doesn't contain any vegetables at all (I don't count the 'two small apples' as vegetable, because they are, well, fruit). Because I'm too lazy to make an extra vegetable side dish, we added three chopped carrots to the filling (add them to the frying pan before adding the sausage and after adding the onion), and an extra apple (Granny Smith apples work well).
- As mentioned before, we use shortcrust pastry as a topping only, because doing otherwise results in too much pastry compared to too little filling. However, as we've started adding carrots and an extra apple, our pie now has more filling than it used to and we might give the pastry lining another try. It's really important though to make the pastry thin. I think I'll also use a metal dish next time to see if that helps (this is only mentioned in passing, so I always forgot and used a ceramic dish).
- Even with the carrots and the extra apple, it only yields four very small portions; it's three rather than four servings.
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Short Cut Flaky Pastry : page 19
Very nice pastry, and most of all - so incredibly easy if you use a kitchen machine. I normally don't, I had one bad experience where the kitchen machine didn't work at all so I usually make my pastry by hand. But as in this case the frozen butter had to be grated, I thought I'd try it with the kitchen machine and it was so easy. It was also easy to roll out and tasted very nice.
Used for the Smoked Salmon, Prawn and Herb Pies
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Shortcrust Pastry : page 15
I can't imagine we haven't made this pastry before! This is the standard pastry recipe given in this book, but looking at the dishes I've made, none of the recipes until now actually used this pastry.
The pastry was quite difficult to roll out, it was very crumbly and got holes easily. It might have been too cold as it had been in the fridge for a few hours; also, against my own instincts I added a second tbsp of water, just because the recipe said "2-3 tbsp water" - in retrospect I of course realize that I shouldn't have done that - always trust your instincts above the recipe!
In the end, however, I was able to make a nice pastry pie lid, and it tasted fine.
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Smoked Fish and Cider Pie : page 73
My first impression was that the puff pastry was nice, but that other than that, I prefered our usual fish pie, a somewhat simple family recipe. That is until I found myself taking a second helping. And a tiny third one, too. And licking my plate. Twice. I guess now there's no denying that I really liked it. I even considered a 5 star rating, but DH vetoed that, saying it's too unrefined to serve to guests. But that depends on which guests, doesn't it?
He used significantly more salt that indicated, which might be due to how sweet the cider is (we used Strongbow). And I'll concede that once you cut the pie, its presentation is all but elegant.
Edited 25 April 2014:
I vaguely remembered that we used a smoked fish last time that didn't work well because it had a too strong individual flavour - but was is smoked mackerel or smoked trout? This time I used smoked herring, and that worked perfectly.
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Smoked Salmon, Prawn and Herb Pies : page 99
Very delicious, a bit expensive. It's not quite enough for a single meal, but would work in combination with several other dishes, i.e. for a picnic.
I made these using the Short Cut Flaky Pastry from the same book.
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Spanish Pepper and Chorizo Pie : page 62
Very delicious - though its suspiciously similar to a general run of the mill pizza with salami/peperoni and peppers. The pork loin was dry and didn't have any added value; if you want to add it, at least get a cut that can be cut into chunks and then braised for a whole hour or so; but either way, I think I would rather replace it by another vegetable as the pie already contains chorizo and parma ham anyway.
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