Steak and mushroom pie

What better food to eat on a rather cool June long weekend in England than pie.  We decided to make two pies fish pie and steak and mushroom pie.  Jackie was in charge of the fish pie and I took responsibility (with a little help) for the meat pie.  We picked up some braising steak from the store and set that to cooking before we walked up to the Chipperfield fair

getting ready for the children's races

First I browned the steak that was cut up in to chunks in pot with a little olive oil. I did this in 3 batches as we were making two meat pies as there was 12 for dinner.

You really do not want to overcrowd them. Then when the last batched was browned I added 3 small onion chopped by my able co chef Jacky.

I stirred these in to cook with the meat and then when they were softened added about 2 tablespoons of flour.

I stirred this in for about a minute to allow the flour to absorb the fat and cook a little, then I added about 3 cups of beef stock.  I was using a stock cube, so I did not add any salt and pepper at this point as I did not want the sauce to be too salty. I put a lid on the pot and put it on the lowest heat level on top of the stove and went sample the delights of Chipperfields Jubilee Fair.

If I had been at home as I have a gas stove, I would either have put this in the slow cooker or in a low oven.  Any way when we got back after a couple of hours I turned the heat up a little as there was still a lot of juices.  Jacky was concerned about the colour declaring that it looked gray.  I assured her that with cooking down and the addition of a little red wine all would be good.  So we added about a 1/4 bottle of red wine and the beef simmered away for another couple of hours as we visited and got the rest of the dinner ready. Near the end I was stirring fairly frequently as I did not want it to stick on the bottom.

So after about 4 hours in total of long slow cooking I declared the juices had reduced enough and set about preparing the mushrooms, there were two kinds, tiny little button mushrooms and a large one that I had not had before.  I sliced the larger mushrooms and fried them up in a little olive oil until they had browned a little on the outside.

when they were browned I added them to the beef added some fresh chopped parsley and then turned the whole lot into two casserole dishes.

After it had cooled down a little I draped some pastry over the top, I used my basic pastry that I use on meat and potato pie

This baked in the oven for about 20 minutes until the pastry was cooked and the filling nice and hot.

To go along with this we had of course the fish pie, mashed potatoes, mange tous (sugar peas) carrots cooked with honey and some broccoli.  A meal fit for a Queen or at least for 12 people celebrating her jubilee.

Really with amount of times we toasted the Queen these few days you would think we were ardent royalists, we really just like a reason to celebrate is closer to the truth.