| By SAM SIFTON There may be no finer deep-winter dish than the British meat pie, though arguments rage over what the term even means. Steak and kidney. Chicken and ham. Game birds and ox tongue. The chef Fergus Henderson, whose St. John restaurant in London is a kind of beacon of British culinary excellence, a place where clichés about sodden English cooking wither and die, said recently that his cooks are working on some eel pies. If they end up containing bacon, they would certainly qualify, and they might even be delicious. But let us stipulate right from the start: meat pie for our purposes today is beef in dark, silky gravy composed of fat and reduced stout, flecked with tender vegetables, covered (if not encased) in pastry, served alongside peas and, perhaps, mashed potatoes. Cooked on a dark February afternoon as low clouds scud across a distant horizon, meat pie will fill your home with good cheer and the promise of contentment across the table at dinner. Eating it — salty and rich, buttoned with sweetness — will occasion thoughts of a coming walk or a nap on the couch with the dog, in equal measure. You’ll want some red wine to drink. You should not stint on the size of the pie, or make individual portions in the manner of a pub, sports bar or Williams-Sonoma catalog. A meat pie should be large. “It should feed lots of people,” Henderson said. “The singular pie,” he continued, “is a weird modern anomaly.” At St. John, the meat pies are cooked in a delicate suet pastry, their innards enriched by generous applications of what Henderson calls “trotter gear,” a lip-sticking stock that comes of simmering pigs’ feet in broth for hours, then straining the liquid and adding to it the plucked flesh of the trotters themselves. Making Henderson’s stock is a long and occasionally icky process, but not a difficult one, and it results in a great deal of jellied stock that will punch up stews and soups alike, providing an intensely flavorful, unctuous quality to all that it touches. “Lip-sticking,” Henderson said, “is a very reassuring aspect of pies.” But if trotters are hard to find, and suet — solid beef fat — nearly impossible, so be it: we can cheat. We can use cheese instead of trotter gear. (“Cheese?” Henderson said, slightly aghast. “Cheese is a bit racy!”) We can use butter in place of the suet, or lard. Jamie Oliver, the celebrated British television cook, supermarket pitchman and advocate against processed foods, has no meat pies on the menu at his Fifteen restaurant in London. But he offers a recipe for a fine one in his new cookbook, “Jamie at Home”: steak, Guinness and cheese with a puff-pastry lid. It’s a wonderful base for meat-pie experimentation: more mushrooms, for instance, a little less rosemary, perhaps some Stilton in place of the Cheddar. But you ought to avoid the puff-pastry lid, even if you use the best-quality, all-butter stuff available at fancy markets. It works just fine; it’s even pretty. But heed Henderson. “Frozen puff pastry,” he said, “is a pie evil. It is an orange nylon T-shirt. It connects neither to the person wearing it nor to the outside world.” A pie crust, he said, “should commune with the pie’s interior. The pie should wear its crust with pride.” Oliver might not disagree. “He always supports making things yourself,” his publicist said in his stead. And there is indeed a great moment in one of his live television performances, in which Oliver calls a pizza shop and orders a pizza, then sets out to make a superior one himself, finishing before the delivery man shows up at the set. Making a proper pastry crust for your meat pie is about as time-consuming and delivers as wonderful a result: a perfect golden lid that recalls both American apple pie and a long lunch down the pub in Leeds or Eccles or Poole. It is worth the minor effort. As Henderson might say: Please. To the preparation, then: vegetables softened in butter, lots of Guinness, thick chunks of second-cut brisket — breast deckle, as it’s called in some of New York’s better precincts (where trotter gear, by the by, is known as trayf city). That cheese, half mixed into the stew and the other half sprinkled across the top. Or a cup or two of trotter gear. Or both! A medium-high oven. The pie crust: rolled out on a floured surface and draped across the top of the pie plate or casserole dish, slashed carefully with a knife, pressed tight around the edges with the tines of a fork. Simply bake, remove to table and serve. Hail, Britannia! For the stew: 4 tablespoons butter 2 large red onions, chopped 4 cloves garlic, minced 2 carrots, peeled and chopped 2 ribs celery, chopped 10 mushrooms, trimmed and sliced 3 pounds brisket (preferably second-cut) or stew meat, chopped into bite-size pieces Kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper 2 tablespoons flour 1 sprig rosemary About 4 cups (2 cans) Guinness or other stout 1 cup trotter gear (recipe here) or 8 ounces freshly grated Cheddar For the pastry: 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup (1 stick) very cold unsalted butter, diced 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten. 1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. 2. In a large, ovenproof pan fitted with a lid, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium-low heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until soft, about 10 minutes. 3. Add the carrots, celery, mushrooms and remaining 2 tablespoons butter and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms are dark in color and the moisture released by them has evaporated, about 15 minutes. 4. Season the beef pieces all over with salt and pepper. Add the beef, flour and rosemary to the pan and cook over high heat, stirring often, for about 5 minutes. 5. Add enough Guinness to just cover the beef. Cover the pan and put it in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. Remove from the oven and stir. If using trotter gear, stir it in now. Return to the oven and cook for 1 hour more. If it remains thin, set the pan over medium-low heat, remove the lid and reduce the liquid. Season to taste with salt and pepper. If using Cheddar, fold in about half. 6. While the stew is cooking, prepare the pastry: sift together the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Using a pastry cutter or your hands, quickly work the butter into the dough until it is the texture of coarse meal. Add ice water, a splash at a time, until a firm dough forms. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. 7. Place the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap and, using a rolling pin, roll to the thickness of a computer mouse pad. Pour the stew into an 8-inch-square, 2-inch-high Pyrex dish or a deep 9-inch pie pan. If using Cheddar, scatter the remaining cheese across the top. Place the dough on top of the pie and pinch it closed around the edges using the tines of a fork, then slash the center lightly with a knife. Brush with the egg yolk, place on a baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes, or until the pastry is puffy and golden. Serves 6. The stew was adapted from Jamie Oliver; the pastry was adapted from Fergus Henderson. Trotter Gear By SAM SIFTON 3 trotters (pigs’ feet) 2 red onions, halved 2 ribs celery, chopped 2 carrots, peeled and chopped 2 leeks, cleaned and chopped 1 head garlic 2 bay leaves 12 black peppercorns 2 sprigs thyme 1 cup Madeira or other sweet wine, or one bottle red wine About 1 quart chicken stock. 1. Place everything but the liquids in a large pot. Pour in the wine and enough chicken stock to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce to a simmer and cook for 3 hours, until the meat falls off the bone and, in Henderson’s words, the trotters are “very wobbly.” 2. Remove the trotters from the pot. Strain the stock. Pluck the meat, flesh and skin from the bones and chop. (There are a lot of bones.) Discard the bones. Stir the meat, flesh and skin back into the stock. Makes about 6 cups. Adapted from Fergus Henderson. |