Happy New Year everyone! May it be filled with delicious, wonderful loveliness (your pie and your year!) We saw the year out with friends & family and welcomed the new year with a wintry walk in the beautiful surrey countryside. If like us you’ve over indulged this holiday you’ll be delighted at a pie recipe right now (ahem)!! If you’re looking at a fridge full of leftover meat though, it’s exactly the recipe you need! And if you have enough space, make it and freeze it for a few weeks until the guilt of the over indulgence has past?! Here it is though, the last festive recipe of the season before we all get back on the treadmill next week, metaphorically and literally I suspect!
Ingredients for the filling (Serves 6):
Around 500g leftover meat, for us it was turkey and ham
1 onion
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 carrot
2 leeks
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp dijon mustard
2 tbsp plain flour
300ml single cream
200ml stock (made from the boiled down bones from the turkey carcass)
1 sprig of fresh thyme
Olive oil
Ingredients for the pastry: 
200g plain flour
150g salted butter
100mls iced water
Pinch salt
1 egg
Method:
1. Strip the meat from the carcass or bone and put to one side. Add the bones to a large pan, cover with water an simmer for at least an hour to create a stock.
2. Meanwhile heat some olive oil in a separate pan, add a finely chopped onion along with the cloves of crushed garlic. Soften for a few minutes on a gentle heat.
3. Finely chop the leek, dice the carrot and add to the pan.
4. Stir an season with the black mustard seeds, thyme, salt and pepper.
5. When the vegetables have softened, add your meat along with the flour (which will begin to bind the ingredients)
6. Add the cream and the mustard, stir and add stock a ladle at a time until you have the ingredients bubbling gently in a thick, creamy sauce.
7. Transfer to a pie dish and leave to cool slightly.
To make the rough puff pastry:
1. Add the flour to a mixing bowl and chop the butter in to 1cm cubes.
2. Add the butter to the flour along with a pinch of salt and gently coat the butter with the flour. Do not break down the butter.
3. Add the iced water to the bowl an stir with a wooden spoon until the ingredients come together, fairly loosely, at which point gently squeeze the ingredients together so they hold.
4. Lightly flour a surface and roll out a rectangular shape with the dough, it’ll be streaky an lumpy with butter, that’s fine! Fold the rectangle in to thirds, turn sideways, roll out again and fold in to thirds, wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.
5. Repeat step 4 twice more (each time resting the dough in the fridge).
6. After the final rest, roll the dough out so it’s large enough to cover the pie dish.
7. Beat the egg an with a pastry brush, paint the edges of the dish. Place the pastry on top of the filling and dish, press firmly around the edges either with a fork or a thumb and trim any additional pastry.
8. Use additional pastry to decorate the top (words, cookie cut outs etc), brush with the egg.
9. Pierce the pastry 2 or 3 times an place in the oven for around 30 minutes or until the crust is flaky, slightly risen and golden… Enjoy!
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