Mushroom and Red Wine Pies

Yesterday mushrooms were on sale at my local store. Without anything clear in mind to do with them (apart from eat them, of course), I bought a bag and then dived in to my extensive selection of recipe books to seek inspiration.

Maggie Beer’s sour-cream pastry is a legend in my home country (Australia) and a photo of an Asparagus and Leek Tart using this pastry attracted my attention in her gorgeous book Maggie’s Kitchen. (The recipe is also on her website along with some other recipes that use it.) A mushroom tart? I continued my search and stumbled across Simon Rimmer’s Peppered Mushroom and Stilton Pie in The Seasoned Vegetarian. Not a tart. A pie. A delicious, warm, wintry pie (it was raining in Prague yesterday.) But here I hit a problem; I didn’t have any Stilton, nor any green peppercorns in brine. 

What the heck? It’s no fun following a recipe, is it? So I played around with and came up with my own delicious mushroom pie. Here’s the recipe.

Mushroom and Red Wine Pies

 

Sour-Cream Pastry (based on Maggie Beer’s recipe, but I substituted some of the plain flour with rye flour)

80 g plain flour

45 g rye flour (or skip this and use 125 g plain flour)

100 g chilled butter

60 ml sour cream

1.      Using a food processor, blitz together the flours and butter until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs

2.      While food processor is running, add about two-thirds of the sour cream at first. If pastry doesn’t come together, add more of the sour cream – but only as much as you need to form a ball. (The amount of liquid you need depends on your flour.)

3.      Form the pastry into a rectangle on a lightly floured board or bench. Wrap it in plastic film and chill for at least 20 minutes.

Mushroom Filling

1 onion, chopped

500 g mushrooms, ripped into pieces

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon tomato puree

1 tablespoon soy sauce

125 mls vegetable stock

125 mls red wine (if you don’t want to use red wine, use 250 mls stock)

Salt/pepper to taste

1.      Fry onions and mushrooms in the oil until soft.

2.      Stir in the tomato puree and cook for about 5 minutes

3.      Add the soy sauce, stock and red wine. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer until liquid has reduced and you have the consistency you want for your pie filling. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

To Make and Bake the Pies

1.      Preheat the oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6.

2.      Divide the mushroom mix between three or four individual pie dishes, or just two if you like big pies with loads of fillings.

3.      Divide the pastry - this recipe is probably about enough for four. I have trouble being more accurate because I made quite small pies … You can freeze the left over pastry

4.      Press or roll the pastry until it’s about 1 mm thick. You want it thin, but you don’t want it breaking because it’s too thin.

5.      Dampen the edge of your pie dishes with water, and then put a piece of pastry on top of the pie. Cut a small hole in the top of the pastry to let steam out while it’s cooking.

6.      Brush each of your pies with whole, beaten egg – this will make sure that your pastry is a rich, golden brown when cooked

7.      Bake the pies for about 20 minutes.

Eat and enjoy with a glass of red. I served mine with green beans. Simon Rimmer serves his mushroom and stilton pie with mashed potato and beans. I’m sure it would go wonderfully with a crisp green salad too.