Mushroom pie

It's been many weeks in lockdown in the UK and as I've still not been able to find a new job, I'm using some of my time to cook new things. In the past few weeks, I've bought several batches of lovely button mushrooms, which I've baked with a little salt and this has led to an accumulation of mushroom stems in the freezer. My initial intention was to make mushroom soup with them, but I've yet to find a recipe that I like. Thus I decided to use some of them to make a pie.

Last week I also had the first ever opportunity to talk to my lovely friend Dr Cutie, who's reorganised her working life to be online for most things. She recently got diagnosed with coeliac disease and as she's been an avid baker for over 30 years, she's been experimenting with gluten-free flours and told me about a bread she'd made with teff flour. This reminded me that I've had a bag of teff flour in the larder for some time with the intent of making ingera bread, but never getting around to doing it so far.

These things spurred me to try out teff flour and so I reviewed the pie recipes in the blog and made adjustments to this recipe from my Mum.

Ingredients

Pie crust
150 g plain flour
100 g teff flour
50 g wholemeal flour
1 ml salt
150 g unsalted butter
3 tbsp water
plain flour for dusting if required

Filling
1 medium onion
1 clove of garlic
30 g unsalted butter
1.5 dl parboiled ceps
4 dl parboiled button mushroom stems
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 small pinch of grated nutmeg
2 large eggs
1.5 dl whipping cream
1 dl semi-simmed milk
salt and pepper

Method

1. Stir together the flours and salt in a large bowl, then dice the cold butter into the mixture and pinch together to fine crumbs.
2. Add the water, 1 tbsp at a time and keep carefully mixing the dough until it just comes together.
3. Divide into two equal parts. Wrap each part well and freeze one and put the other one in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
4. Peel and dice the onion, peel the garlic.
5. Heat up the butter in a deep frying pan on medium heat and fry the onion and press in the garlic until translucent.
6. Add the mushrooms, rosemary and nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper and fry until the mixture is dry.
7. Pre-heat the oven to 200 °C and take the dough out of the fridge and roll to a thin sheet, about 3 mm thick.
8. Line a round pie dish of 27 cm diameter and let the dough go a little over the edge of the dish so that it doesn't sink back.
9. Prick with a fork and blind-bake for 10 minutes until it's dry.
10. Whisk together the eggs, cream and milk in a bowl and season with salt and pepper.
11. Spread the mushroom mixture in the pie crust and pour the egg mixture over.
12. Bake the pie until the surface of the egg mixture has turned golden brown, about 30 minutes.

This was very tasty and I'm particularly pleased that I have a second batch of dough in the freezer for the next savoury pie. The filling was a bit too little. I should have used one more egg I think and topping with cheese would have filled the pie dish. Obviously the last bit is not an option with Lundulph sadly, so if I make this recipe again, I'll need to revise the amounts.

Otherwise, the pie disappeared quite quickly, Lundulph did like it, as did I, and it would be a good one to serve the vegetarian contingent of the extended family if they ever come to visit us in the future.