Nici Wickes: Beef, beer, and blue cheese pie

This pie is an absolute winner - hearty and rich, it’s packed full of meat and gravy, spiked with tangy blue cheese and topped with flaky pastry. It’s golden!   

Serves 4  

 

Ingredients: 

500g beef chunks – I use chuck or blade steak  

2 tbsps flour  

1 large onion, diced 

2 carrots, diced  

3 cloves garlic, crushed 

330mls beer, ale or lager but not too sweet  

2 tbsps tomato puree 

1 bay leaf  

½ tsp salt & ¼ tsp cracked pepper to season  

100g blue cheese  

1-2 sheets ready rolled flaky pastry  

Egg wash 

 

Method: 

1. Sprinkle flour over beef chunks and toss to coat.  

2. In a saucepan heat the oil and brown off the meat.  Do this in batches. Set aside. 

3. In the same saucepan, sauté onions, carrots and garlic until beginning to soften. Pour over beer and as it bubbles up scrape off any yummy bits from the bottom of the pot. Add meat back in, along with tomato puree, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Lower the heat and simmer for one hour or more, until meat it meltingly tender. Cool.  

4. Heat oven to 200 C. Grease a 23cm (or similar) pie dish. 

To make the pie:  

Ladle the cold pie filling into your pie dish. Feel free to pile it up as it will settle as it cooks. Sprinkle over blue cheese. Roll out pastry to fit as a lid and egg wash the edges (this helps them to stick and seal your pie.) Drape lid over filling and squeeze and pinch pastry onto the rim of your dish to seal well. Use a sharp knife to make plenty of steam holes in the pastry. Brush with beaten egg. Lower oven temperature to 180 and bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown and bubbling.  

Serve great spoonfuls of pie with mashed spuds and peas or my favourite, a fresh leafy green salad 

 

Nici’s note:  

- I’m in the habit of making the filling a day ahead as I think it improves the flavour.  

- Usually I avoid using tomato puree (too strong) but for this recipe it keeps the liquid to a minimum whilst dialling up the flavour.    

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Ab Right, our resident chef Nikki Wicks joins us.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Now, good morning, Yes, good morning Francesca and very cold morning.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh is it out there?

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Is it chilli? But chilli? Yes? That's okay? Wow, but
hearty fair exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
And of course it's been the Pie Awards this week,
so I'm thrilled.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
I love pies, Oh, pies at a best and I
love that New Zealand has Pie Awards. I mean, I
know the Olympics are going on, but I was a
little more tuned into who was going to win the
gold and the silver and the Supreme Pie Awards.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I think we've had. I think a lot of New
Zealanders have shown just as much interest as where they
can get a good pie from.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
I'm really going to encourage listeners to do one of
two things. Or maybe boat and let's go on to
the Pie Awards website and find out where there is
a good pie in your neighborhood because you will find
that out, I'm sure. Or and or make this pie.
I've got a beef, beer and blue cheese pie for
us this morning. How does that sound sounds delicious. I

(01:18):
know it's so good, and look it's super easy. I've
cheated a little bit. I wouldn't be able to enter
this one in the Pie Awards because I make a
beautiful filling and then I pop that in a pie dish,
and then to save any sort of soggy pastry drama,
I just put one layer of pastry on the top.
So technically not really a pie. It's more of a

(01:40):
pot pie. But I'll tell you what, you will not
regret your decision to make this. Here's what I do.
I take about this serves about four or maybe six,
but i'd say four five hundred grams of beef chunks.
Now I use a chuck or a blade steak, which
does require some cooking down. If you want to make
a sort of make it shorten the time a little

(02:01):
bit the cook time, what you can do is you
could use rump steak for this would be really great
as well. Francesca that up into nice sort of bites
of large, bite sized pieces. Sprinkle some flour. I use
about two tablespoons of flour, and it's going to sticken
up our gravy and our pie. Sort of toss the
beef in that, and then in a saucepin, heat a
little bit of oil and then take a large onion,

(02:23):
Oh sorry, a little bit of oil, and then brown
that meat off. And I do that in batches so
that it doesn't stew. If you don't have enough air
circulating around the meat, then it will just kind of stew,
which is not what we want to do it. And
a couple of batches and then just sort of set
that aside. Use that same saucepin saut a one large
onion that you've diceed. I use two carrots because I
love a bit of carrot and a beef pie. And

(02:44):
I also use three cloves of garlic crushed, so saute
all of that. You can scrape off all the yummy
bits that get stuck on the bottom. Pour over three
hundred and thirty mils, which is basically a can of beer.
I'd set an ale or a lager, but something that's
not too sweet. I'd go for a darker ale, but
probably not a stout might be a little bit too strong,

(03:05):
and so pour that beer over it and just let
that bubble up a little bit. Add the meat back,
and then I take two tablespoons of tomato pure, just
a little word on that. I don't love tomato pure
because it's often a little bit concentrated for me. But
in this dish, I don't want too much liquid in
their Francesca, so I don't want to add sort of
just plain tomatoes if you like, so tomato pure works

(03:27):
of real treat one bay leaf if you've got it,
and then a decent amount of salt and lots of
craped pepper. Lower the heat and simmer it for an
hour or more with the cover on, with the lid on,
and that's really until the meat is well tenderized. Again,
you could cut that cooking time down if you wanted
to use a rump steak, but a good chuck and
a blade. They have lots of flavor, but they to

(03:47):
take a bit of cooking. Then you need to cool
that off heat. So you can do this a day
before as well. Heat the oven to two hundred degrees Selsius,
because pastry loves are really hot. Oven grease are kind
of a pie dish or a ceramic dish, either one.
This makes about a twenty three cent to meat around
dish around about that. If it's square, you make the

(04:08):
adjustment laid all of your beautiful cold filling into your
pie dish, and really pile it up, Francesca, because it
will as it cooks in that gravy, you know, I
suppose warms up and goes a bit more liquidy, it
will sort of sink down. So make sure that you
pile it up. Doesn't matter if it's a little mini
mountain of your filling. Sprinkle over some blue cheese. I've

(04:29):
used one hundred grams of blue cheese here, get a
nice strong one. Roll out some pastry you can use
ready rolled if you like, I use flaky pastry for this.
You could get away with a short pastry that it'd
be fine. Just make a lid out of that obviously
big enough that's going to stretch and cover over that
that filling. Give it a bit of an egg wash
around the sides, which is with a little whist egg

(04:49):
drape that drape the lid over the filling, Press it
down to seal it really well in the rim of
whatever dish you're using, and then use a really sharp
knife and make a few steam holes in the pastry.
That means you get a beautiful crisp pastry topping on that.
Brush it with the beaten egg. With that beaten egg,
lower your oven temperature now to one hundred and eighty
bangness in the oven about forty minutes until the pastry

(05:11):
is really good and golden brown. Most common mistake with pies,
I think, is that people don't quite or any sort
of pastry cooking. As people undercook the pastry, they think, oh,
that's gold and make sure it's sort of golden brown.
And so big spoonfuls of this pie, maybe with some
mashed buds or peas, or even a fresh leafy salad,

(05:32):
because salads aren't just for summer, and sometimes the heaviness
of a pie can be really nice to have something
fresh with it. So how does that sound?

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Let's talk about the blue cheese and the beer, because
blue cheese can be a little bit polarizing. Does it
overwheling the taste of the pie or not?

Speaker 3 (05:49):
It really doesn't. It just provides a beautiful tang. So
great question. Look, if you really aren't a fan of
blue cheese, you could use a good cheddar would work, well,
just sort of maybe great the equivalent of that over it?
It just give it gives a beef a beautiful little tang.
If you didn't want to use beer, You could use
the equivalent amount of stock if you like, so just

(06:09):
a veg stock or something like that. And don't worry
that when you're making the beef mixture, when it's hot,
it will look quite liquidy, but it'll sticken a little
bit with that flower. But then once it's cooled down,
it should be quite sort of solid, so that it'll
sit in your pie nicely. And then of course once
it gets reheated, that gravy starts to loosen and you'll

(06:30):
have a beautiful result.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Is beer like wine? Do you when you cook it?
Do you burn off alcohol? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (06:36):
You do, so even if you're a non drinker as
I am, it won't matter because that will have all evaporated.
I've made a similar pie using a bit of a
combination of red wine. Red wine as lovely as a
pie as well as stock. But again, you know, well
we're out of dried your line now, at least for
those people that were doing that. I think you should
carry on and do good August or something as well.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well. You know a lot of people do, don't they.
A lot of people get toine gog. Yeah, I feel
pretty good.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
I know something's a bit of money, takes a bit
of money. Hadn't had any any mornings where I feel
a little shabby carry all of that. Though I'm a
non drinker, I have plenty of alcohol in the house
because I do love to cock with it. I think
it gives it that extraordinary sort of slight so tang

(07:28):
for meant that mysterious flavor. So wine and beer and
that sort of thing is pretty lovely. But no, by
all means you could replace that with stock.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Thank you so much, love you to talk to you,
Nicki Wixon. Of course you'll be able to find that
recipe on our website Newstalk ZB dot co dot nz.
Forward slash Jack.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to News TALKSZB from nine am Saturday, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio