Beef and Guinness pie

 

Fellow blogger, Jo Romero, has dedicated her little corner of the web to one of my favourite things – comfort food. So when she asked me to do a guest post for her blog, comfort bites, I jumped at the chance.

Comfort bites for me means hearty and warming foods like pies, stews and casseroles; those things best eaten when it is cold and miserable outside. And if I had to choose it would be a pie every time – stew with an added bonus, pastry. As you know, I am a big fan of pastry!

Most traditional English fare is very comforting indeed, hardly surprising given the weather we have to put up with. So for my guest post I chose an old British staple, the Beef and Guinness pie.

You can read my guest post here, and while you are at it have a look round Jo’s blog, there are lots of delicious recipes to try.

For those who prefer to cut to the chase, I have provided the recipe below. Makes four individual pies or one large pie for four.

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Fernandez and Leluu supper club

Updated on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 12:30PM by Vix

The boyfriend doesn’t take well to surprises. He had been in a strange mood all day. I had put it down to a silly squabble we had had in the morning, but it turns out that he was anxious. I should have taken the hints; he had been desperately trying to gather more information on where I was taking him that evening.

I wasn’t letting on much, but he had managed to ascertain the following: 

• It was not The Streets concert in Brixton (disappointing)
• We were heading East
• There would be food involved
• He could wear trainers (he didn’t)
• He needn’t wear a shirt (he did)

But it wasn’t enough. When I stopped the cab a mile too far down the road without explanation it all became too much.

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Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Sticky apple balsamic spare ribs... sort of

I say ‘sort of’ because when one reads the name of a dish in the title of a post, one probably expects to find the named ingredients to be central to the dish. I am sure Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall thinks they are, but I do not have apple balsamic to hand in my cupboard. Indeed I have never in my life come across it. I imagine most people are in the same position.

Actually a quick search on the internet suggests that I have been living a somewhat sheltered existence. The fact that I have never seen apple balsamic in any supermarket does not mean it is not widely spread and abundant. Those two words produced no fewer than 1,200,000 results on Google. In fact, I could quite easily have purchased it online a few days earlier had I done this simple search then not now, post-making, cooking, eating.

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Vicky Brown sauce

I’m all about the sauce at the moment. It's thanks to a family friend Dawn, who taught me that homemade ketchup can be good. Tomato sauce is usually a regular item on my shopping list, but it has been struck off since the beginning of the year when I started making my own.

Next weekend a friend of mine is hosting her 30^th birthday at a coach house in the country. I have been appointed as one of five chefs catering for the occasion. We will be doing a big breakie on the Saturday morning and then a BBQ that evening, so there will be plenty of good excuses for splashing sauce about.

I’ve got Tommy K covered, original and Bloody Mary style, but what about brown sauce? I know lots of boys (one in particular) who like it splashed all over their breakfast.

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Skin-on chips with Bloody Mary ketchup and celery salt

It is unusual for me to post two nights in a row, but I really had to move the pictures of sausage stew down the page a bit. A friend of mine told me that at first glance the thumbnail on Facebook looked like the inside of a Portaloo after a festival. She quickly followed this up by saying that when she looked closer she realised what it was and it sounded delicious. Note she said "sounded" not "looked". 

The empty fridge problem endures, but I have a notepad full of recipes that I have cooked and photographed, but haven’t got round to writing up yet.

I would like to say that I chose the skin on chips because I just couldn’t wait to share them with you, but the real reason is that they are straightforward and require little in the way of a preamble. Still, for those of you who liked the look of the Bloody Mary ketchup I posted a few weeks ago, this is a nice way to use it up.

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