Monteith's Beef & Black Pies

Submitted by Bondnz

"We picked up this recipe at lunch last Sunday & had been waiting all week to make it. I'm posting so as not to lose it in the junk draw... They went down a treat with the siblings. Such a simple yet elegant meal. Serve with some fresh baked buttered bread to soak up the delicious gravy. Monteith's Black is my favourite of the Monteith's range, it's a dark beer blended from five malts with biscuit, caramel, chocolate and coffee flavours - you can substitute but you wont find anything that'll come close to this wee beauty!!!"

 

• Ready In: 2hrs 40mins
• Ingredients: 17
• Serves: 4

ingredients

• 1 1⁄4 kg beef, suitable for stewing
• 1⁄3 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large brown onion, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
• 50 g pancetta or 50 g bacon, finely sliced
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 1 cup beef stock
• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 330 ml monteith's black beer
• 1 teaspoon thyme leaves
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon Italian parsley, finely chopped
• 4 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
• 1 egg, beaten with a few drops of milk

directions

1. Preheat the oven to 150c. Dust the beef chunks in 3T of the flour.
2. Heat the oil in an oven-proof casserole dish & brown the meat, then add the onion, garlic and pancetta or bacon and cook over a high heat until lightly browned. Add the celery and carrot and mix through. Add the remaining flour and season with salt & pepper. Cook for a minute or so, stirring until the flour has been incorporated. Add the stock, Water, Worcestershire Sauce, Beer and the herbs and stir to combine. Place the lid on the dish, bring the contents to a boil, then carefully transfer the dish to the oven and cook for 2 hours. Remove from the oven and fish out the bay leaves with a slotted spoon.
3. Preheat oven to 200c.
4. Depending on how much pastry you want to use in your meal and the shape of your ramekins you can either divide casserole into 4 small oven-proof dishes & top with pastry or you can do what we did last night, stretching out the casserole to 5 studio bowls, we folded 5 square sheets of pastry to form pouches in our ramekins then filled 3/4 high with casserole mixture, then twisted the top corners of the pastry to form cute little purse-like pies. They were very effective but not so manly lol!
5. Brush the tops of the pies with the egg and milk mix and bake until the pastry is golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.