Pie from scratch

I love to cook. Well, I love to bake. I do like to make pie though, but being a fairly lazy cook, I tend to use store-bought pastry.

Last time we went to the supermarket, Kel went and read all of the ingredients in the store bought pastries... There's a surprising amount of stuff that goes into a fairly simple product. Palm oil being one such ingredient and we aren't buying anything with this ingredient in (unless I've been lazy and just not looked before I've bought it...).

A few days ago, I wanted to make a steak pie. This time I made my own pastry and it was amazing. I'm not kidding- the pastry was everything you would want it to be- light, but not too flaky and delicious. Cheap to make too. And easy. Just flour, butter, salt and water.

So today, I will share the recipe for pastry AND steak and cheese pie. The pie recipe was written especially for a non cook friend.

Savoury short pastry:

2 cups flour

125g butter (more if you want a flakier pastry)

1/4 tsp salt

cold water

Sift flour and salt together. Cut in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. NB the butter needs to be cold. Mix to a stiff dough with a little cold water. Roll out lightly and try not to handle it more than necessary. It should make around 360g of pastry.

Steak and cheese pie:

500gm steak

Savoury pastry- enough to line a pie dish and make a lid- unless you top it with mashed potato.

Cheese- whatever type you like

Beef stock- the dry kind- oxo cubes are great

Salt, Pepper and herbs – to taste (we tend to use oregano and thyme)

Cornflour – this is a thickening agent

• Cut up the steak into cubes. Smaller pieces cook faster and are easier to eat, but make sure they aren’t too small, as they might break apart Add a little oil to a frying pan (not too shallow) and brown the steak (until browned all over, but not burnt). Best to brown it over a high heat for a few minutes and then lower the heat to a low temp, so that the meat can simmer.
• Mix up 2 cups of stock. Add to the steak and let simmer for around 30 mins. The liquid will still be quite watery, but that’s ok. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
• While the steak is simmering, turn the oven on to 180° C and make sure the tray is about half way down- too high and the top of the pie will burn.
• If your pastry isn’t pre-rolled, roll it out quite thin. Line the dish with one piece of pastry to make the crust- use your fingers to mould to the dish, even if it means folding over edges etc. make sure there is some excess around the sides so that the pastry lid can stick to the base and seal in the filling. Also roll out the lid at the same time. Blind bake the base in the oven for 10 mins
• Add 1 tablespoon of cornflour to a little cold water (needs to be cold or it wont work) and stir until a paste. Add to the simmering steak mixture. Stir and stir and stir until you feel that its starting to thicken- it should pretty much straight away. If it doesn’t thicken within a few mins, add another cornflour mix until you get a better consistency. It will thicken very slightly in the oven, but I would rather have it a bit thick than too thin or the filling will fall out when you cut it.
• Once the crust has cooled, remove the blind baking stuff and fill the crust with the steak mixture. You need to remember to keep some pastry crust free to stick the lid onto it. Cut up slices of cheese and layer on top. You just need enough to cover the steak. Fold over the excess pastry on the sides- this will make things a bit prettier and easier to seal. Brush this pastry with a little milk to make it stick Place the lid on top of the pie. If theres a bit too much lid, fold over the edges toward the middle, and if you are awesome, you could even add a bit of cheese to it before you fold them over as an incredible stuffed crust thingy.
• Brush the whole top with milk (or an eggwash if that takes your fancy)- makes it more crispy, and stab a few times (gently) with a fork so that the whole pie doesn’t explode in a ball of meaty goodness.
• Bake for about 30 mins or really until its golden brown- the inside is cooked anyway, so its all good.

So as Julia Child would say (can you tell I've been reading her book?) Bon Appetit!

Farmers markets

Though not always the cheapest place to buy food, buying from local farmers markets means that you support your local producers by buying direct from them, and buying food that hasn't traveled the length of the island from farm to auction to store is fresher and better for the environment. Also farmers markets are a great place to get organic and free range produce and to try something new. More than often you do end up picking up some great specials too!


Yesterday we discovered the Hobsonville Point Farmers Market which is located on the land where the Hobsonville Air base used to be. Its on every Sunday morning from 9am-1pm and is undercover so even though the weather wasn't so great today, we were still able to go and enjoy it.


One of the products we love to buy at the markets is local honey. We have bought EarthBound Honey which is produced in Bethells Valley many times and it is great (try the Pohutukawa). We also got some Harmony free range (dry cured) bacon for a steal! They are SPCA Blue Tick accredited and have a great range of other meats too.


Other farmers markets:
Oratia Farmers Market: Artisan Wines, 99 Parrs Cross Road, Oratia. Saturday; 9am to 12.
Parnell Farmers Market: Jubilee Building Carpark, 545 Parnell Road, Parnell. Saturday; 8am to 12.


There are many more out there (check out http://www.farmersmarkets.org.nz/) but we have been to Oratia and Hobsonville Point and have heard good things about Parnell from friends.


So check out your local farmers market and let us know what you think.

Winter Warmers

Hasn't the weather been horrendous? There's no doubting its winter here!

At least this weather is perfect for eating those hearty soups, delectable desserts and steaming hot drinks, so we thought that since we've been a bit slack with posting lately, we would share one of our favourite simple recipes for each of these categories!

Hearty red lentil and chickpea soup: this is yummy, cheap and easily modifiable

1 large onion (pref red as they are the best)

1 cup red lentils

4 cups vegetable stock (4 cups water with a few oxo cubes works fine too)

1 can of tomatoes

1 can of chickpeas or equivalent cooked

a few herbs- we use a bit of oregano and sweet basil from our garden

salt and pepper to taste

1. Chop the onion and fry over a little oil until soft.

2. Add the onion, stock, canned tomatoes and lentils to a pot and bring to the boil.

3. Reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes or until the lentils are soft.

4, Add the herbs and chickpeas and simmer for another 5 minutes.

5. Eat!

Mulled wine: simple to make and you don't need to use an expensive wine.

1/2 cup Sugar
1 1/2 cups Water
Grated rind of 1/2 Orange
6 whole Cloves
1 Cinnamon stick
1 bottle red wine

1. Put all of the ingredients apart from the wine into a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves.

2. Bring to a simmer for 10 minutes and then strain

3. Add the red wine and gently reheat but do not boil.

4. Serve hot with a sprinkling of nutmeg

Baked rice pudding- one of my favourites and a definite comfort food!

1 tsp vanilla essence
2 TB short-grain rice (or whatever you have, really- apparently it works fine with brown rice too, just not Quinoa- tried it- didn't work)
2 cups milk
2 TB sugar
1 Cinnamon stick

1. Preheat your oven to 150°C.

2. Rinse the rice and place in a baking dish along with the milk, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon stick. Stir to combine.

3. Bake for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

4. Best served warm and with a sprinkling of cinnamon on top

We have the lentil soup one probably once per week in winter as it really is a cheap meal and you can add all sorts to it for variation.

I'd love to hear what your winter warmer favourites are! Please feel free to comment below :)

Roundtable On Sustainable Palm Oil launch new Logo

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has launched a new logo, Read about it here. No idea if we will see it on products in NZ, but it raises some important issues. If you saw the logo on a product in NZ would it encourage people to buy it? Would that decision be based on sound information or simply because it sounds environmentally friendly? This blog article raises many issues, some of which I will look at here.

Lets get one thing straight, RSPO certified palm oil products are more environmentally friendly than non-certified palm oil products. The question is, are they good enough? I am a big fan of the idea that we don't need to buy ethically perfect products right now (many simply don't exist yet). What we need to do is buy the most ethical product that is available and create demand for positive change. But if palm oil free products are more ethical than RSPO certified products then staying palm oil free still the preferred option.


Whats the problem?

Auckland Zoo says "only around 4% of the world's palm oil is certifiably sustainable and this 4% cannot be traced back to the plantation that produced it... At present, being a member of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) - an industry led group, not an independent body - is still not a 100% guarantee that palm oil is from a sustainable source"

So even if a product carries the RSPO logo this is no guarantee that all of the palm palm oil used is sustainable. The RSPO at the end of the day is a voluntary, industry led organisation and has limits as to how much change it can make at the local level.


So if you have no palm oil free options then RSPO certified products could be worth buying. Or you could decide that on balance certified palm oil is better than the alternatives as Ecostore do, but I simply do not see how it could be justifed. Ecostore says "The other alternative to palm oil is a petrochemical, but this unsustainable." True, petrochemicals are unsustainable, one day they will run out; but is this a problem? I would rather we ran out of petrochemicals than orangutans. 


I could be wrong here, I'm no expert, what do you think?

Love food hate waste?

On Sunday, I saw four trolley loads worth of bread products being dumped in a skip by a local supermarket. I asked people (on Facebook) why this bread could not perhaps be donated or given away and was told that although some is often donated locally, there are issues of food safety and issues of legality*.

Is it just me or is this a little nuts?

Seeing this certainly got me thinking- not just about the wider wastage of food by large companies, but closer to home- the food we waste in our households.

We all do it. We cook too much, forget to put it away (or perhaps we don't have anywhere to put it) and then we throw it out. Or we buy products on special (coz its cheap!) which we don't use;they go off and then we throw them out. In fact, I know there are food items in our fridge right now which will be going in the bin for tomorrow's rubbish collection. Stuff which we should have frozen but didn't; things which we should have made an effort to use.

So how do we combat this problem?

I have found two great websites which deal with this issue.

Sustainability.govt.nz has a great section on reducing your amount of food waste under 'Shopping'.

Love food hate waste is a website run by a non-profit organisation in the UK. They promote recycling, home composting and most of all, wasting less food.

Both sites have a great section on tips and some of these I have collated below:

• Plan your meals-- we keep meaning to try this.
• Use your leftovers
• Store your food properly
• Check 'Use by' and 'Best Before' dates (and both sites explain the difference between these)

After seeing all of this wastage, We are going to try to dramatically reduce the food waste in our household. Part of this, unfortunately, probably means reducing the amount of baking I do, which for me is quite a big thing. We will try the meal planning idea which has never worked for us, but perhaps we are missing something.

Does anyone have any great ideas on how they have or will reduce the amount of food waste in their household?

Any ideas are greatly appreciated!

*ie if someone got sick from eating old food, the supermarket would be liable. There's probably a lot more to this as well, but this is the information I was told.