Mike van de Elzen: Mike's Moroccan beef family pie

Mike's Moroccan beef family pie 

COOK TIME: 40 minutes 

PREP TIME: 40 minutes 

SERVES: makes 1 bid pie 

500gm diced beef  

1 onion, peeled and sliced  

6 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed  

1 tbsp fennel seeds  

1 tbsp paprika  

1 red chili  

500ml beef stock  

1 tbsp tomato puree  

Sea salt  

sunflower oil  

4 tbsp arrowroot 

1 can chickpeas, drained  

1 pkt flaky pastry, cut to size. 1 bottom & 1 top 

1 egg, lightly beaten 

Preheat your oven to 180*c  

Start by placing the fennel seeds onto a tray and toast in the oven for 10 minutes or until fragrant. Heat a large cast iron pan and start to sauté the onions in a tbsp of oil ,then add in the garlic followed by the beef. Continue to cook on high until the beef starts to colour.  

Add in the fennel seeds, paprika, chili and sauté for another minute before adding in the tomato paste and beef stock. Lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until the beef is tender. Check the seasoning and add in the chickpeas and turn off.  

Once cool slightly remove one cup of the braising liquid and mix with the arrowroot. Bring the beef mix back up to heat and mix in the arrowroot slurry. The beef mix will thicken quickly and then turn off.  

Take a family pie cooking dish or aluminium tray and lightly spray the inside, line the bottom with pastry and spoon in the meat.  

Brush the topside of the pastry with egg wash and then finish with the lid, press down and brush the top with the egg wash.  

Cook for 40 minutes or until golden brown. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks 'b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Resident chief Mike vander Alison. Good morning, good morning, Good
to have you with us. How's your long weekend going?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Quite long? Quite long? We we had a massive class
yesterday and then we backed that up with farm Shop today,
So I'm doing toy of our shifts. Used to be
a piece of cake for me, but now I'm fifty two.
Holy smokes, they're getting a bit harder.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Mikey're young, you're young. Still, you're young. You should be
able to handle this.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Woo, I tell you my ankles cheer.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
And we've got a chair in the shop. Can you
just get a do it off? From a chair on wheels?

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Is a big roll around the place? Yeah, but all good,
all good.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well do you know what I was thinking to myself?
The weather has been pretty effie. Hasn't it a bit
miserable in some parts of the country. And I got
the recipe for Mike's Moroccan beef family part. I thought, yeah,
it'd be good to tear into that right now.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Absolutely. We we've got far Shop today and I made
three types of pies for Farm shops today, and one
of them was this Moroccan beef family pie, and I thought, ah, oh,
write this recipe out and share it amongst everyone, because
it's pretty. It's a pretty epic pie. We kill our own,
we raise our own beef here, and so I'm always

(01:27):
using new and clever ways to use up all that
beef because I've got a freezer full of it, and
beef pies, beef family pies are amazing way to use it.
So this does make quite a big pie. So it's
going to feed at least six of you. It uses
half a kilo of dice beef. So for that dice beef,
you could just use any and you know, you could

(01:48):
use top side, you could use skirt steak, any of
those sort of secondary cuts. And what you want to
do is preheat your other to one hundred and eighty
degrees and then I start by placing a tablespoon of
fennel seeds onto a tray and fire them into the
other for about ten minutes or until they start to
become fragrant and you can start to smell them because
those seeds are leading off all those essential oils. Take

(02:10):
a large cast iron pan, chuck that onto your cooker,
and then start to sautee some onions. I've got one onion,
one large onion that's been peeled and sliced, and then
into the you've got six cloves of garlic that's been
peeled and smash. Saute those guys off while you start
to get a little bit of color on them. Add
in half a kilo of the dice beef. Crank up
the heat you want to saute. You want color on

(02:31):
that beef, color as flavor while you start to get
a little bit of color on to that beef, and
goes those fenel seeds that have been toasted. A tablespoon
of the all important paprika. You can use two. You
can just use sweet paprika if you want, or if
you want to go fancy pants, you can get some
of that smoked paprika. So a tablespoon of paprika, I
chuck in a red chili, saute that off for another minute,

(02:53):
and then it goes. A tablespoon of tomato paste and
then half a litter of beef stock. Lower the heat.
You can put in a little crack of pepper and
some salt in there as well. Lower the heat. Turn
that down and then just cook that into its tender
or please you take about thirty minutes for that, and
then after thirty minutes I turn it off, if you've
got the time turner off, and.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Just let it sit.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Just allow that beef just to chill down a little
bit and soak up all those delicious flavors, and then
we add and so the thickening. For this, Normally I'd
use a root, but for this I've gone down the
road of using arrowroot. So arrowroot will set your filling
mix in a clear shiny way of post to using cornflower.
So four tablespoons of an arrowroot, and then I just

(03:34):
take out maybe a ladle of your brazing liquor that's
just cooled down ever so slightly, mix that with the arrowroot,
and then add that back into your pan, bring it
back up to the ball so that it thickens up.
And then I chuck in a can of chick beers
that have been drained. Set that aside. That's the pie mix,
ready to rumble, and then take a family pie dish
or an aluminium tray, whichever you're going to use. Line

(03:56):
the bottom with some flaky pastry. Put in your pie mix.
And then just around that top edge, I just brush
that with an egg wash, and then you put the
lid onto it that connects to that egg washed and
egg washes the glue to keep the top onto the bottom,
and then just go around lightly press it, and then
I just prack it with a fork That just stops
it from blowing up if there's any excess here inside

(04:17):
there as it cooks, and fire it into the oven.
You can use your egg wash on top if you
want a nice shiny top, Maybe finish a little bit
of smoke my brick or on top. That's going to
take forty minutes in the oven, and then once it's
cooked you can serve that straight away. You can also
just half that time if you want to use that later,
so you could harve it to twenty minutes at one eighty.

(04:38):
Pull it out. That sets the shape of the pie.
And then from then on you can chill it, you
can freeze it, and you can use it in a
couple of days.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Can I ask you a really random question about chilies?
Do you go chili's? Yes? He Is there any reason
why my chili crop from all the same kind of
chili we had? I cooked with one the other night,
and my goodness, we our lips were on fire. We
were on fire. But I haven't had that with the
other ones.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
It was it a different type for chili. Well, no,
that's the same chili.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
It was the same chili.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
We've got these little tiny ones that called sky hot,
and they are sky hot sometimes you know that they
heat the chili is actually in the white that holds
the seeds.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yes, no, no, you're right. And do you know what,
maybe they was just a random one pudding. Maybe I
had Maybe I had a hot one put in with
the normal ones. Thank you so much, Mike. Good to
hear from you.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.