Lamb and Rosemary Pie

This is definitely not a meal to make on a weeknight as it takes a significant amount of time and the pie part is somewhat fiddly. However, it is pretty tasty, and making pie is fun.

The basic idea is to first make a filling for the pie in the slow cooker. You can also just do this without the slow cooker, thus drastically reducing the time required, but slow cooked things are nicer. I used lamb leg steak, though other cuts would also work fine - the main thing is to not put any bones in as they don't work so well in pie. I also added rosemary, garlic, beef stock, onion, potatoes, carrot, parsnip and green beans. As usual for slow cooking, brown the meat then layer your ingredients in order of cooking time (longest on the bottom).

This is what it looks like after being in the slow cooker for ~8 hours (and after being stirred to mix everything up).

Towards the end of the slow cooking process, you can start making the actual pie. For the benefit of anyone who hasn't made pie before, I'm going to go through all the steps. If you have made pie before, there's nothing particularly special here, so you can probably skip to the end.

Making the pie will naturally be easiest in a pie dish, but I've also made pie plenty of times just in a square crockery baking dish like you might use for a lasagna or something and it works fine; you just get a square pie. You should grease the dish first - I actually forgot to do this which made serving it a little tricky.

Next you make the pie base. I just bought some sheets of puff pastry. This is much easier than making your own pastry and they will have a nice even thickness which can be hard to get manually with a rolling pin. The main downside is that my pie dish is a bit too big to use a single sheet for each half of the pie, so I have to use two. I overlap them a bit so that the pie won't get a hole in it. I also use some of the extra to reinforce the sides where the pastry otherwise doesn't quite reach the edge of the dish. You just put the pastry in, shape it to the dish (making sure it is flush against the sides and bottom - be careful not to tear the pastry when doing this) and then cut off any excess pastry. It will now look something like this:

Now the pie goes in the oven for blind baking. This will make the bottom of the pie cook properly and go crispy, which it might not do if you just cook the whole thing together with the filling already in it. I used uncooked rice on a sheet of baking paper (to make removing it easy). Anything that will give enough weight to hold the pastry down will work, however.

After 10-15 minutes, you get this:

Now add the filling (and some pepper):

And put the top on the pie. Just put your pastry over the top and cut off the excess as before. You can also crimp the edges to help the bottom and top stay together - I just do this with my fingers. I then brushed melted butter over the top, added some poppy seeds and stabbed it several times to make air holes. It was then ready to go in the oven.

And after about 20 minutes it was ready to eat!

Mmm...pie

So, the moral of the story is, next time you are cooking something in the slow cooker, consider making it into a pie.