Mushroom, chestnut and potato pie

Here it goes: The VegHog's attempt to tackle a British style shortcrust veggie pie with its own ideas! This was a result of a brainstorm of what might go well together and be suitable to a pie. This will also mark the end of the British Pie Week 2013. It has been a blast but I'm also happy to eat something else for a change.

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry:

60g Butter

60g Margarine

100g Wheat flour

100g Rye flour

A pinch of salt

3-4 tbsp Cold water

For the filling:

200g Baby button mushrooms

8 Small new potatoes

120g Chestnuts

A bunch of spring onions

A glass of white wine

200ml Vegetable stock

Some dried porcini mushrooms

A sprig of rosemary

2 Garlic Cloves

Butter for frying and greasing

Olive oil

Method

Make the pastry first. For the special VegHog touch the pastry had to have rye in it. Put the soft butter and margarine into a bowl and add both flours and the salt. Pinch the dough with your fingers until you have it all mixed properly. The texture should be like small crumbs. Add 3-4 tablespoons water to bind the dough and keep kneading until you have a firm ball of dough. Put the dough into the fridge in a cling film and let it rest for at least 30 minutes.

Prepare the vegetable stock and put some rosemary in with it. Peel the potatoes and cut them in half. Heat some butter in a pan and first fry the potatoes there until they get some colour, then add some vegetable stock (up to the middle of the potatoes) and boil them under lid until tender. This is a similar method to making fondant potaoes. Now you can add the dried porcinis into the vegetable stock for later usage. I decided to add porcini mushrooms to the pie to get a more intense mushroom taste.

Wash the button mushrooms and spring onions. Cut the mushrooms in half and the spring onions into small rings. Finely chop the garlic. Fry the spring onions, mushrooms and garlic in some olive oil until they are pretty much done. Deglaze the pan with white wine when it's hot and let the wine evaporate. Then add the rest of the vegetable stock and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Towards the end, put the chestnuts in. I used cooked chestnuts from a can so they don't need much boiling. Let this mix cool down before putting onto the pastry.

When the filling is ready and the dough has rested long enough in the fridge, start filling the pie. Take a pie baking tin (Ø 20cm) and grease it with butter. Take 2/3 of the pastry and roll it out thin. Place the pastry into the tin and start filling it.

First put the fondant potatoes on the bottom. Then cover them with the mushroom and chestnut mix. Roll out the rest of the pastry to a lid and place it on the top. Seal the edges and make some patterns on the lid with a pastry cutter or a knife.

Bake in the oven at 180C for 40-50 minutes. Let the pie settle before serving.

Enjoy your pie and hopefully you've had a good pie week! I can hardly wait until next year to make much better pies.

Your VegHog