Steak, Mushroom & Red Wine Pie

'I love cooking with wine...sometimes I even put it into the food.' - W.C. Fields.

If you read the Chicken and Mushroom Pie post you know how much Jeordy and I love savoury pies. I was not satisfied having only made one, so to celebrate Jeordy's return to chilly England from a trip home to sunny Los Angeles, I made a warm and comforting Steak, Mushroom, and Red Wine Pie. Pies are perfect for the long cold winter nights which are upon us.

Ingredients:

-1kg/2 lbs of beef steak

-6 rashers of bacon

-1 onion

-1 leek

-1 carrot

-1 pack of mushrooms

-1 cheap bottle of red wine

-1 egg (for glazing)

-300g/10.5 ounces of puff pastry

I began preparing the ingredients for my pie by cutting everything into small bite size pieces.

I set my oven to 170 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit) and heated a dash of oil in a frying pan. I cooked the bacon and beef for around 10 minutes.

Once the meat was done I set it aside and cooked the vegetables in a large pot. I added fresh thyme, salt and pepper to taste. Make sure you use a cast-iron or other oven-safe pot. Once the vegetables had softened I added the meat to the mix, along with two table spoons of flour. After a few minutes I added tomato puree to help the thickness of the gravy, and then half a bottle of cheap red wine accompanied by two little pots of beef stock.

I added just enough boiling water so that the vegetables were covered and let it simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes. This is to enhance the flavours. I covered the pot and placed it in the oven for 2 and a half hours. It can go in for a shorter time but the longer it is left in, the more time all the juices have to soak into the meat.

After the 2.5 hours I took the pot out of the oven. At this point I raised the oven's temperature to 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit). I placed the red wine-infused mixture into a baking dish. We didn't have a large enough round dish to contain the filling so I used a rectangular pyrex one. Is it still a pie if it's not round? Absolutely. I rolled out the puff pastry and placed it on top of the mixture. I then brushed egg yolk over the top of the pie and placed it back into the oven for 30 minutes until golden on top.

Happy pie making!