A Tale of Two Loaves … and a Knife

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I finally splurged on a new bread knife (Mercer 10 inch offset) so I had to bake a couple of loaves of bread to test it out on.

I made a plain white yeast loaf and a sourdough loaf (John Kirkwood easy loaf) with two kinds of cheese (old Cheddar and Monterey Jack) and jalapeno pepper, because it’s been a while since I used my sourdough starter to actually make bread with, and I wanted to make something a bit different.

   

The yeast loaf … just a plain dough.

  

Aussie Meat Pie … sort of

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This meat pie was inspired by an Aussie meat pie posted on a FB group I belong to.

My version has a ground beef, mushroom and carrot filling with a pastry made with the recipe on the Tenderflake lard box but I used 450 gm of AP flour to 150 gm lard, 100 gm unsalted butter and 50 gm of margarine for … reasons. I made 4 x 6 inch diameter pies with the pastry and still have 300 gm of leftover pastry. Very tasty for a first attempt.

I ate it with ketchup as a dip though I’d like to try it with mashed potatoes with beef gravy poured over both the potatoes and the pie.

Aussie Meat Pie – makes four 6 inch diameter pies

favourite pastry crust recipe (enough to make 2 double crust pies)

1 tbsp vegetable oil
454 gm mushrooms, thickly sliced and halved
500 gm ground beef
1 cup carrots, diced
1 cup vegetable stock (didn’t have any beef stock), divided
2 tsp Worchestershire sauce
1/4 cup Marcella Hazan’s marinara sauce *
1 tbsp ketchup *
3 tbsp all purpose flour
salt and pepper to taste

* (instead of one small onion, diced and 1/4 cup tomato sauce)

In a large frying pan, fry the mushrooms in the oil over medium high heat until browned. Transfer to a separate bowl and set aside.

In the same frying pan fry the ground beef, drain off extra fat. Add the mushrooms, carrots, 3/4 cup of stock, Worchestershire sauce, marinara sauce and ketchup. Bring to boil, cover and simmer for 15 min.

Whisk together the remaining 1/4 cup of stock with the flour, pour into the frying pan, stir to mix, cover and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Stir a couple of times so that the thickened mixture doesn’t stick. Taste and season to taste (1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper).

Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature.

Roll out pastry and divide into 4 bases and 4 tops.

Fill bases, brush edge with egg wash, put the top on, seal and brush the top with egg wash.

Bake in oven preheated to 400 deg F for 20 min, turn the heat down to 350 deg and continue baking for another 30-40 until the top is nicely browned.

Remove pies to a cooling rack. Let cool for 1 hr and then serve warm.

Beef and Mushroom Chop Suey

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A recent trip to a Chinese restaurant, where I enjoyed this dish as part of a combination meal for three, led me to make my own version of beef and mushroom chop suey. It was tasty in the restaurant but the pieces of beef were few and far between. The dish was mostly bean sprouts. My version was much more generous on the beef front with about half a pound of steak divided among two portions.

The only change I made to this recipe was to ‘velvet’ the beef by marinating the sliced beef with one teaspoon of baking soda, for half an hour, before the beef was thoroughly rinsed in cold water, patted dry and then marinated.

Spinach-Feta Scrolls/Rolls

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I wanted to make something with spinach and feta for Easter for some reason. I was brain storming a pork roast roll up with the two items in the middle but then switched gears to making a bread instead because the leftovers from the rolled up roast would not be as flexible for future meals.

I ended up making these rolls/scrolls using a wreath filling recipe and the enriched duck fat dough recipe I’ve used in the past.

The results were delicious though they’re best served fresh. I ended up microwaving for about 10-15 seconds on low to get them back to that soft texture.