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.

Tuna Fish Pie

Tuna Fish Pie

Makes 2 servings

1 tin of tuna

4 baking potatoes

25g margarine

25g plain flour

375ml milk

100g grated cheese

1 bag of spinach

Frozen peas (optional)

This recipe uses tinned tuna because you are a poor, penniless student. An even poorer more penniless student could use tinned sardines instead but I know you won't go near them. When you are no longer poor or penniless you can use any poached fish you fancy.

Today you will learn how to make a thick cheese sauce base for the pie and how to make really good mashed potato.

First make the cheese sauce.

You will need:

25g margarine or butter

25g plain flour

375ml milk

100g grated cheese

Put the margarine or butter, milk and flour into a microwaveable casserole dish ie Pyrex. Use a whisk to blend everything together as best as you can. It will look a bit weird at this point and the margarine will just float around in a lump. Worry not.

Cook in the microwave on high for 1 minute.

Whisk like crazy for a few seconds then put back in the microwave for another minute. Repeat the whisking/1 minute microwaving until the sauce is smooth and thick. It shouldn't take more than three or four minutes.

Once it's done stir in three quarters of the grated cheese and leave to cool.

Make the mashed potato:

Peel the potatoes and cut into even sized 4cm-ish chunks. Put into your largest pan and add enough cold water until the potato chunks are just covered. Cover the pan with a lid and bring to the boil, add a pinch of salt then lower the heat slightly and let the potatoes cook until they are really soft when you poke them with the tip of a sharp knife. This is really important and may take up to 20 minutes. If you don't cook the potatoes for long enough your mash will be lumpy.

As soon as the potatoes are tender either tip everything into a colander to drain off the water or use the pan lid to hold the potates back in the pan while you carefully pour off the remaining water. Put the cooked potatoes back in the pan and half cover with the lid and let them to steam for a couple of minutes.

Now use a potato masher or a fork to mash the potatoes until you have a nice smooth purée. Add a knob of margarine or butter and a splash of milk and cover the pan again with the lid. After a couple of minutes the marg/butter will have melted and the milk warmed a little so then you need to use a wooden spoon to mix everything in. Once everything is well mixed you must really beat the mashed potato hard with the wooden spoon. This is what makes your mash really really good instead of just ok.

Cook the spinach:

Stab the bag of spinach a couple of times with a sharp knife. Place the bag in the microwave and zap for 1 minute on high.

Open the tin of tuna:

…. ok. You can do that without detailed instructions. Make sure you drain off any liquid in the tin though.

Assemble the pie:

Carefully open the bag of spinach (it will be quite hot) and dump the contents onto the top of your cheese sauce. Using kitchen scissors, snip the spinach into smaller pieces then stir it into the sauce along with the contents of the tin of tuna. If you aren't a pea-hating lunatic *stern look to camera* you can also add a couple of handfuls of frozen peas at this stage. Level the surface of the tuna mixture with the back of the spoon.

Now carefully spoon over the mashed potatoes - I always put spoonfuls all around the outside first before putting some in the middle. Then gently blend the potato together until it covers all of the tuna mixture, making sure you take it all the way to the edges of the dish to seal everything in.

Sprinkle over the remaining grated cheese and dot with a few bits of margarine or butter.

Put the casserole dish on a baking tray and bake in a moderate oven 180c/gas mark 4 until the cheese top is golden brown and it's just beginning to bubble here and there at the edges. Remove from the oven and leave it to stand for 10 minutes before serving.

This is nice with extra vegetables but as it has spinach in it, I will let you off.

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H: Does it need to be cheddar because I still have loads of red leicester

'Nope it can be any cheese you like'

H: Not sure if this will send but I am in the student shop

'Ooh not a big choice... Any salad leaves? They can sub for spinach.'

'Perfect'

H: I have no weighing scales...

'Right. Flour and marg - a heaped dessert spoonful. Cheese - about 6cm square from the block, but not hugely important - just use as much as you like to make it taste right x'

H: Okay!

H: Should I use actual butter or spread?

'Entirely up to you. Butter tastes nicer though :) if you have some'

H: I do!

'Huzzah!'

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'It's all gone awfully quiet....'

H: I got distracted then started peeling the potatoes

'No probs, was worried it had all gone to rats'

H: Ahaha nah

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H: Do I cook my baby leaves?

'You can just stir them into the tuna/cheese sauce. There's not many of them and they aren't in a bag so a bit too complicated to instruct on the hoof :) '

'They will wilt when the sauce heats up'

H: Okay

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'Quiet...'

'Photos are good if you have nothing to say'

H: I am crushing small innocent potatoes with my mighty fists

'Totally laughing like an idiot'

H: Also you should see my oven mitts....

H: They are BEAR PAWS

'I am in AWE'

'Jealous much?'

'In fact I think I might say I am in PAW (on the blog) - geddit? #wackawacka'

H: Ehehehe 

(I sense a little ennui re my humour here..)

'Oh. My. Word. And does it taste ok?'

H: It's still in the oven!

'Ahhh ok - bring on the final final photo... It looks good though :) '

H: I can't wait.

H: Pie pie pie

H: It's great!

'Photos??!!'

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H: I ate it already and put it in the fridge...

'Fail'

'Photo of the fridge?'

H: Ahaha fiine I'll go back to the kitchen

*head* *desk*

'People will be leaving. In droves. Having just found us. No pressure darling. No, really '

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Well I think that worked quite splendidly.

Well done that girl :)

Well done x