Smoked Salmon Pie

As mentioned the other day, half of the ravioli filling was left over and so I decided to make a pie.



This worked out very nicely indeed, the recipe for the pie crust is from my Cordon Bleu book.

Ingredients
3 dl plain flour
1 tsp salt
1.2 dl unsalted butter
1 egg
2 - 3 tbsp water

Method

1. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl, then cut the butter into thin slices into the flour and rub in. The mixture should look a bit like pale polenta.


2. Add the egg and water (a little at a time) to form a dough. Shape into a ball and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Do not over-work it or it'll become difficult to work with.


3. Roll out to the size of the pie dish and transfer carefully to it. Careful not to stretch the dough during rolling, as that'll make it shrink during baking.


4. Blind bake at 180 degrees C until it develops a bit of colour, duration depends on how thickly it was rolled.


5. Remove from the oven and allow to cool a few minutes, then add the filling. Use any left-over dough for decoration or if the pie dish is small, as a lid for the pie.


6. Bake at 200 degrees for 30 minutes until the pie has baked through.

I only had one egg left and I used it in the dough, so couldn't brush the bottom crust with egg white before the blind bake. Otherwise it's a good idea to do this, it'll protect it from going soggy from the filling. Also the yolk can then be used either in the filling, if doing a quiche or brushing the dough decoration/lid of the pie, which again will make it more attractive visually.

We had it with pickled gherkins, roasted artichoke hearts and pickled roasted chillies. This last lot of the chillies was a bit of a disappointment, since the chillies in question had been picked way too early and had not developed any spiciness to speak of. However, the flavour of fresh chillies came out very strongly and they were still very tasty, I just fancied a bit of spicy heat as well.

Still, the pie turned out very nice and tasted great too and got me thinking that this would be a good way of using up left-overs, especially when there's not really enough for a full portion to freeze. I might just mix a couple of batches of the crust dough and freeze and have ready for such situations.