Cheese and Onion Pie

The Student is very busy with Uni stuff at the moment. I posted the above pie photo on the Facebook page and have been asked by a few people for the recipe/method. So I've decided to post it anyway.  The instructions were written with H in mind but feel free to hate peas and ponder on your Lancashire genes.

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The following recipe/instruction is for a classic Lancashire cheese and onion pie. In my completely un-humble view this is the best cheese and onion pie in the world. 

Despite you being a weird hybrid of being born in Yorkshire and living in Devon for most of your life you do have a massive Lancashire gene load – so you should be hard-wired to like this. There's nothing fancy about this pie, just simple pastry, cheese and onions. An equal weight of cheese to onion keeps things nice and moist and providing you make sure the onions are cooked properly, there's no squeakiness to be pooky about.

Today you are going to learn how to make pastry. You can make pastry with all butter, half butter and half lard, all lard, half margarine half lard or all margarine. You can even make it with oil. I use half butter half lard because that's what my mother and grandmother always did and they made the best pastry in the world. But you can use whatever you prefer/have in the fridge/can afford. I would say though that if you are going to use margarine you should buy the stuff that comes in a block like butter rather than the softer spreadable ones.

As this is a Lanky cheese and onion pie I have stipulated Lancashire cheese but in truth any crumbly white cheese would do if you can't get any for some reason, although possibly not white Stilton. Cheshire, Caerphilly or Wensleydale would be my suggestions for a substitute.

Make sure you read through all the instructions and understand what you are doing before you start. Then wash your hands.

You will need:

200g plain flour

100g fat (see above)

pinch of salt

cold water

250g Lancashire cheese

250g onion, finely chopped

Some milk

Make the pastry:

Put the flour in a roomy bowl. Cut the fat into small pieces and add to the bowl. Add the salt.

Now rub the fat into the flour. You do this by scooping up a small amount of fat and flour together then rubbing the mixture between your thumb and fingers, allowing everything to fall back into the bowl then repeat. Keep scooping and rubbing away making sure you go all the way to the bottom of the bowl. Gradually the two elements will mix together and you will find you have a sort of fine sandy rubble in the bowl. The way to tell when you've done enough is to pick up one of the bigger lumps and squish it. If it is mostly butter or whatever fat you've used then you need to keep going, if it looks like a paste then you're done.

Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of cold water over the mixture in the bowl then take a kitchen knife and start cutting through the rubble and mixing in the water. Gradually the paste will clump together but you may need to add another tbs or so of water before it does. Go slowly with the water though – too much will make the pastry difficult to manage. You are aiming for everything to stick together and leave nothing behind in the bowl but not something so sticky it resembles an alien life form trying to assimilate into your body. Pat the pastry into a neat ball and either cover it with clingfilm or put it into a plastic bag then stick it in the fridge for half an hour to rest.

If you try and use pastry straight away it will shrink when you cook it and the end result won't be as nice.

While the pastry is resting prepare the filling:

Put the onion into a microwaveable bowl, add 4 tbs of milk and 2 tbs of water. Cover the bowl with clingfilm. Poke a hole in the top then microwave on high until the onion is completely soft. The ones I did today took a total of 9 minutes in three lots of three mins with a shake of the bowl in between each. Keep checking - some microwaves cook things more quickly than others. Once the onion is lovely and soft carefully remove the clingfilm and leave to cool a little.

You can also do this in a pan with a lid, over a low heat. It might take a bit longer to do but it is a perfectly acceptable way to do it. For some reason your Nanny always used the microwave, so I do too.

Grate the cheese on the big holes of the grater.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/Gas mark 4

Assemble the pie:

Take the pastry out of the fridge and unwrap it. Cut off a third and set aside. Scatter a little flour on the worktop and your rolling pin** to stop things sticking and roll out the remaining pastry into a circle big enough to line your tin with a bit left over to hang over the side. Gently fold over the circle of pastry in half then into a quarter and lift it into the tin. Unfold and ease it out and up the sides of the tin making sure there are no air bubbles or gaps between the pastry and the tin. It helps to use a small wodge of pastry to push things into place - fingernails, however short, will cause holey damage really easily. If the pastry does tear for some reason don't panic, you can easily repair it – just break off a small piece, dampen it with a little water and press it over the tear until it sticks.

Once the pastry is in add the filling. I usually do a layer of onion then a layer of cheese. Don't worry if there's still a bit of liquid left in the onions, just stir it in before you spoon them into the pie. Repeat the layers until everything is in.

Now roll out the rest of the pastry making sure you roll it big enough to cover the top of the pie. Before you put the top on just wet your fingers and run them around the top edge of the pastry base to dampen it a little and help the lid to stick. Then place the lid on the pie and press all around the edge to seal. Trim away any excess pastry to leave a neat finish. You can now press all the way around the edge with the tines of a fork if you wish, it's just a simple way to 'crimp' the edges together but you don't have to if you don't want to, just make sure everything is glued together with water and a little pressure. Poke a couple of holes in the top of the pie to allow the steam to escape and brush the top of the pie with some milk if you like, this helps it look nice when it's cooked.

Put the pie in the oven and bake for 30-40 mins until the top is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to stand for 15 minutes – it tastes much better when it has cooled slightly.

You can have this with salad (hollow laugh), or peas... [looks to camera], or baked beans and oven chips if you must.

**if you don't have a rolling pin, any straight sided glass bottle (wine, beer etc) will do the job perfectly well.