Happy Australia Day!
And what a perfect excuse to make a delicious steak and mushroom pie on a cold and dreary day in North London. Australia Day only rolls around once every year and it would be very rude not to get back to my roots and indulge in some fine Australian “cuisine”.
The ingredients you will need:
- half an onion
- teaspoon of cumin
- half a teaspoon cinnamon
- a few bay leaves
- a few cloves of garlic, crushed
- braising steak
- good few handfuls of mushrooms
- glass of red wine
- can of chopped tomatoes
- 500ml beef stock
- cornflour if needed
- plain flour for dusting steak
- puff pastry (I cheat and buy a pack!)
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
The first thing you will need to do is crush the garlic, chop up the onion and sauté until cooked.
Meanwhile, chop up the steak into bite sized pieces and dust with the flour.
Braising steak: chop into bite sized pieces
Season with salt and pepper.
Add the steak to the pan (or in my case the slow cooker) with the garlic and onion.
Add the cumin and cinnamon. Add the bay leaves.
Roughly chop up the mushrooms and add them to the pan.
Give it all a good stir
Add the glass of red wine and cook and stir until the wine is evaporated. Then add the beef stock and chopped tomatoes.
Slow cook the mixture for at least 3 hours until the meat is tender. You may or may not need to add some cornflour if it needs to be thickened.
Roll out the pastry for the base of the pie dish (greasing the dish first just incase it sticks).
Add the mixture to the pie dish.
I decided to do a lattice pastry top, literally cut the pastry in strips and lay over each other in opposite ways.
A lattice top makes it a bit lighter
Cook in the oven at 180 degrees for about half an hour or until golden brown on the top.
Cook until golden brown (and until the delicious smell permeates your house)
Serve with with mash, peas and carrots.
Fosters beer and Aussie scarf is optional. However, devouring this tasty pie is compulsory, no matter which side of the world you are.
mum with a pearl earring 