Beef, Guiness and Stilton pie

My take on Jamie Oliver's no nonsense beef, Guinness and cheese pie. Substituting the cheddar for Stilton turns this pie into real man-food.

Beef, Guinness and Stilton pie ingredients

• 800g stewing beef, cut into chunks
• 500ml Guinness
• 3 small onions
• 3 cloves garlic
• 4 sprigs rosemary
• 2 medium carrots
• 3 sticks celery
• About 75g Stilton
• 1 tablespoon plain flour
• 4 portabello mushrooms
• Homemade spelt rough puff pastry
• A little egg

How to make beef, Guinness and Stilton pie

1. Heat a tablespoon  of rapeseed oil in your largest Le Creuset casserole dish. If you don't have a selection of Le Creuset dishes, buy a large one to start with then ask for varying sized ones for birthdays and Christmas. The initial outlay may be expensive, but the rest of this recipe is pretty economical. 
2. Heat the oven to the Magic Cooking Number 190 degrees C.
3. Chop the onions roughly and fry gently for about 10 minutes.
4. Chop the garlic finely.
5. Roughly cut the celery and 1 of the carrots into large pieces. Grate the other carrot. 
6. Pull the needles off the rosemary and chop finely. 
7. If you're lucky enough to get your beef from an over-priced butcher with its own branded waxed paper, spread the beef out on the paper and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon plain flour then season generously with salt and black pepper. Pull up the 4 corners of the paper and give the whole lot a good shake to coat the beef with the seasoned flour. 
8. If your beef comes from a normal butcher or (heaven forbid!) a supermarket, just put the meat, four, salt and pepper in a large bowl and toss together. 
9. Add the garlic, carrots and celery then turn up the heat and add the floured beef and the rosemary.
10. Fry for about 5 minutes till most of the meat is browned.
11. Add the Guinness - if this doesn't completely cover the contents of the pan add some water so it does.
12. Cover with the lid and bring to the boil.
13. Put in the pre-heated oven for an hour and a half.
    
    My mum marinades the beef overnight in the Guinness when she makes this pie, but Jamie doesn't. As a compromise I got to this stage on Saturday evening and then switched the oven off, leaving the cooked beef in the Guinness overnight.          
14. The next day I cooked the beef for a further hour with the lid off to thicken the sauce, again at 190C.
    
    This actually reduced a little too much, but luckily I had a small pot of beef stock in the freezer which I added, ending up with the right amount of liquid.
15. Remove from the oven and leave to cool while you make the pastry. You can of course use bough puff pastry if you prefer.
16. Tip the beef into a pie dish and crumble the cheese into it.
17. Roll out enough pastry to cover the top.
    
    I normally only cover the top of the pie with pastry, much to the disgust of Ollie, who says this is not a real pie. Today, because I'd made double quantity pastry, I did a top and bottom pastry pie, or, essentially, a giant pasty. However, I was right in my assumption that this would result in a soggy bottom - next time it will be top only.
18. Drape the pastry over the pie dish and press down firmly around the lip of the dish. 
19. Score the pastry with a knife in a criss-cross pattern. 
20. Brush the pastry with a little beaten egg.
21. Cook at 190C for about 45 minutes. 

Steak for pie

For some reason I forgot to take a picture of the actual pie, although I took one of the steak, raw and cooked:

Steak and Stilton before the pie bit was added

I do, however, appear to have a collection of photos of pies, so here's what it could have looked like: 

 

A pie (slightly blurred)