The 5 course pastie PART III

All I did to finish this off, was cut a corner from the cheese so it wouldn't break through the pastry. This didn't work and it was impossible to transfer to the pan for baking.
Although as you can see I did a lovely crimped crust before I attempted to lift it.

OK. This wasn't as fantastic as it could have been. I made a few crucial and critical errors, such as forgetting the salt (properly seasoning is probably lesson #1 in chef's school)
Could have done with veg stock or something for more body. The bacon went soggy and I managed to mess up my fine pastie look as I was attempting to transporting raw pastie to pan and then from there to plate was a nightmare. My thoughts are I could either pre-cook the bacon and the crust or make the pastie in-tray? Hmmm.
Need a better cheese than cheddar something that will keep it's shape yet taste interesting and complementary, perhaps a goats cheese veg pastie to keep my friend Matt Borg happy.
The only other criticism I have of this is that I forgot to sweeten the coffee to taste first. I take sugar, and it would be a good idea to ask how people like their coffee before baking it all up.

I will post again with the new improved pastie when it's made.

The 5 course pastie PART II

I have realised the dream and it was ... well, it needs a little work, but it's getting there.

Surprisingly the espresso jelly worked out well and it was the main filling that let me down.

Anyway, to tide you over until I write up all the details and paste up some photos from photobucket (my photos are here, but there's a lot of other rubbish there, too...) Here's the diagram I based it all on ...



It's not very clear, I was originally considering an additional hard-baked handle for carrying it, but talked myself into thinking it was a friend's mistake and that all it needed was some good crimping.

Plan Reads (left to right:

• asparagus tips (wrapped in the word bacon)
  
• Pork, fennel, coriander, white wine, coriander, sweetcorn and barley
• Apple puree and cardamom
• cheese and a grape (which I bought but forgot to put in)
• digestive border
• espresso jelly

Mmmm, still sounds good.

Beef stock

Some throw-away comment from Rosa on Friday inspired me to ask in the butchers if they had any beef bones. They gave me a large plastic bag-full for free, so I spent Sunday stinking out the kitchen with a simmering pot of beef and scum.

Having never made beef stock before, the first thing I did was track down a recipe. All my classic cookbooks failed me. I found no mention of it in Mrs Beeton's Household Management. Edouard de Pomiane simply uses it, he has someone to make these things for him, probably in these new-fangled 'cubes'.

Getting a bit more contemporary, an excellent book mum gave me for christmas, Living and Eating by John Pawson and Annie Bell (which is a bit of a snob's bible to all you need to know) told me that there was a virtual PhD in stock-making available it could attain such artistry, and then proceeded to only give me a recipe (which I made with good results just after christmas) for chicken stock. Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall got me all excited by having a reference to it in the index of The River Cottage Cookbook, but it turned out only to refer to its existence as a recipe. Finally! Gary Rhodes came up with the goods in his New British Classics book. Here's his recipe in summary (from memory):

• 5kg beef bones
• 6.5-7 litres of cold water
• 3 onions
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 carrots
• 1 leek
• 4 tomatoes
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 sprig thyme
• salt

Roast the onions slowly for two hours or so. The Roast the beef bones at 200^oC for half an hour. Ten minutes in, chuck the roughly chopped carrot and celery in with the bones. Put everything in a big pan. Bring it to the boil and keep it there for 8 hours, skimming the scum off the top every now and then.

I ballsed up the thyme and chucked in some dried stuff, that I then skimmed off twenty minutes later. I also ballsed up by not having a large enough pan to fit all that water in.
By about midnight last night it was ready, if a little too reduced, even. I strained off the lumps, and took the bones out of these. Then I pureed the remainder into a further stage opf soup, that made a grinding noise with the blender as the bits of gristle and bone whizzed round (I had to hack the some of the roasted bones in half with a butcher's cleaver - no simple task for a first-timer). Two minutes later, this final by-product was in the Council compost bin, which marks the territory of our doorstep like the piss of a randy old alcoholic fishmonger. Can't wait for summer!

By 1 am, I'd finished pouring it into various containers to cool, and sort the skimmed-off matter to get some second servings of stock, true blemished skimmings and purest beef lard (pure except for a bit of thyme and leek).
I'll let you know if it was worth the effort when I actually make something.

The chicken stock has made some really really nice stew with a recipe from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diary, which I got for christmas and am spending the year reading so that I can appreciate the food and get inspiration for seasonal cooking.