Chilli Cheese Dog Pies

I know it's a little bit late for the 4th of July, but here's a little tribute to America, the undisputed kings of junk food. Chili cheese dog pies.

I would have loved to have brought a whole pile of chili dogs to the July Band Of Bakers event, but it wouldn't really be practical. It wouldn't really be baking, either. So this is the next best thing.

First of all I obviously had to make the chili. I made it fairly hot, with a large chili pepper, cayenne pepper, chili powder, cumin, Tabasco, and smoked chili paste. Once it had cooled, it was time to assemble the pies.

Twelve individual pastry cases with hot dogs inside...

Topped with chili...

And red cheese...

And yellow cheese (as I imagine Americans might call it). Then baked in the oven for 20 minutes.

Served warm(ish) with a dash of American mustard.

It's funny how things always taste hotter when you're cooking them. My wife coughed and spluttered when she tried a spoon of the chili, but in the final pie format, it tasted rather tame. Just as well I brought the mustard!

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Celebrations Pie

Our corner of South London has it's very own baking club, known as Band Of Bakers. My wife has been a proud member since its inception, and often brings home all manner of tasty cakes and breads. They seem to take it all pretty seriously, and they even had a brief flirtation with fame, when teak-faced housewives' favourite Paul Hollywood visited them for one of his TV shows. Now, baking isn't really one of my strengths, but stuffing my face with cake certainly is - so I finally managed to gatecrash one of their meets last week. The only catch was that I had to bring something with me.

As this was to be their first anniversary, the theme was 'celebration'. I anticipated multi-tiered cakes, opera cakes, croquembouche, and all manner of extravagant creations. But I had a rather different interpretation of "celebration". Hence, the Celebrations Pie was born. A chocolate covered tart, consisting of three sections inspired by Mars, Snickers, and Bounty bars.

I started by making the pastry base - I'm no baker, so rolling out some shop bought sweet pastry into a tin is about as technical as I get. The packet promised "perfect pastry every time", which seemed optimistic, but it turned out about as well as I could hope for.

I then made the first filling - "Bounty" - by mixing dessicated coconut, condensed milk, and icing sugar. No cooking necessary, but it did need to be chilled in the fridge to solidify.

When it came to creating the malty "Mars" filling, I found plenty of recipes online for making fluffy nougat. But they were all way too technical, involving sugar thermometers, "hard ball stage", and all sorts of nonsense. My own version consisted of melted chocolate, half a jar of marshmallow fluff, and a couple of teaspoons of Horlicks.

I also used the marshmallow fluff for the Snickers filling, this time mixing it with melted white chocolate and roasted peanuts. I didn't think of it as cheating - just common sense.

Obviously the Mars and Snickers sections needed a caramel topping. I made this by taking another can of condensed milk with some glucose syrup and golden syrup, and sticking it in the microwave for a few minutes. Finally I topped the whole lot with melted milk chocolate, and it was ready to go.

So, how did the celebrations pie go down at the baking club birthday party? As predicted, there was a plethora of impressive cakes on display, and mine did look a bit sad in comparison. One person even mumbled "urgh, I'm not eating that", which I found pretty funny. But actually most people were very positive and encouraging, and generally kind towards the special kid in the class.

In fact, my creation was (almost) all gone at the end of the night -  but I did manage to rescue a slice of "Mars" to take home. I was fairly happy with it, but if I were to be critical, the Mars filling needed a stronger malty flavour, and the Snickers needed more peanuts - and maybe even a pinch of salt.

I went home happy, with a belly full of cake and booze, and a big box full of amazing cake. And if they'll have me back again, I may just have a few more tricks up my sleeve...


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Pork and Apple Pie Pie

I love pork pies. Those fatty, dense slabs of pastry and meat - it's the kind of food that could only really come from Britain.

I also love apple pie. And since we all know that pork goes with apple, why not combine the two dishes? But I'm not talking about a simple pork and apple pie. Oh no. I mean a pork pie with a whole apple pie inside it. Making a pie within a pie has long been an ambition of mine, even though I'm not really much of a baker. But after I came up with this concept, I just had to give it a try.

Pork pies are made from something called hot water crust pastry, which is made from water boiled up with lard or butter (I used both), then combined with flour. It's really pretty easy to make, and requires almost no stirring. You just pour the hot liquid into a well in the flour, and it all just sort of magically combines with a minimum of persuasion.

I made the apple pie in a small ramekin, using lots of thin layers of apple, and just a little bit of sugar. I rolled the pastry as thinly as I could without breaking it.

Next I prepared the filling for the pork pie. Sausage meat, chopped pork shoulder, sage, onion, a drop of oil, and salt & pepper. I use the term "sausage meat" - I'm not sure how much actual meat these sausages contain. "Grey sludge" might be a more appropriate description. But it's really just there to plug the gaps between the shoulder meat, thus ensuring maximum density.

Once the inner pie had cooled, it was time to start assembling this monster. You're supposed to make these free-standing, but that sounds way too hard, so I used a small cake tin. I put a layer of pork at the bottom of the pie, then put the apple pie in the middle, and surrounded it with as much pork mixture as I could cram in. I put the lid on the pie and crimped the edges, and brushed it with egg.

These things take a LONG time to cook. After half an hour on a high heat, I removed the pie from the tin, and cooked it at a lower heat for another hour before it was ready.

The finished pie was delicious, and well worth the wait. The pastry of the inner pie was a little undercooked, but it tasted great anyway!

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Pot Luck Curry Pies

I've only ever been to one football match. It was in Berlin, and the game itself bored the hell out of me, but I did enjoy the bratwurst and currywurst, washed down with a nice German bier (foreign languages are a talent of mine). I understand that here in the UK, one of the most popular snacks at football stadiums is the chicken balti pie. I'd never tried one, but a loyal member of my fan club recently suggested that I tried to create one. It was an intriguing prospect.

A few weeks earlier, another event had occurred which also fired my imagination. I was in a Chinese restaurant enjoying some dim sum, and picked up what I thought was a char siu sou (mini pastry filled with roast pork and hoisin sauce). But no, we had been tricked... it was actually filled with curried lamb! It wasn't the best thing I've ever eaten, but I loved the idea of expecting one thing but tasting something completely different.

Then I had a vision. A vision of a big plate of individual pies, identical in appearance, but with different fillings. But not just any fillings... different types of curry. Ranging from mild and sweet, to hot and fiery. I imagined the expression on people's faces as they nervously nibbled the edge of the pie... followed by either obvious relief or contorted agony.

So, I took three curries... a creamy vegetable korma (home made), a chicken balti (left over takeaway), and an extra hot lamb vindaloo (bought from Sainbury's and spiked with extra chillies, hot sauce, and black pepper). I made sure that everything was cut up nice and small.

I greased a muffin tin, rolled out some puff pastry, and cut it into discs to make the bottom of the pies. I waited for the curries to cool before spooning the mixture into the pies.

I put a further disc of pastry on each pie, brushed them with a mixture of egg yolk and melted butter, and put them in the oven at 200 degrees. I was getting hungry, but luckily there was quite a lot of leftover curry for me to eat while these bad boys were cooking.

Considering that I don't really bake, these looked pretty tempting! And after a couple of minutes of cooling, they were ready to eat. Not only did they look good, they tasted good. Damn good.

Yum, yum, and thrice yum.

There are lots of variations you could make on these. Some alternative ideas might be apple / cherry / durian. Or maybe veggie / halal chicken / pork. *

I look forward to hearing some of your own ideas!

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*disclaimer - The Fish Finger Sandwich blog does not condone tricking people into contravening any dietary restrictions, self-imposed or otherwise.

Chilli Nacho Pie

"What's that?" my wife asked as she arrived home, smelling something cooking. "Lasagne?"
"Not exactly," I responded hesitantly.
"Shepherd's pie!", she exclaimed, peering through the window of the oven.
"Erm... sort of".
"What is it, then?"
"Er... chilli pie. With tortilla chips in it".
"What? What the hell? Why would you do that?"
"Because it tastes good", I replied, truly believing I was stating the obvious.
"I'm going to tell everyone on Twitter what my stupid husband is eating for dinner".

And so it went. But I maintain that this pie really does taste good.

This is a dish of layers. Chilli, tortilla chips, more chilli, then mash. I like my chilli with lots of cumin, fresh chillies, and tomatoes. Sainsburys "basics" tortilla chips are actually perfect... not too salty. And most importantly, cheap.

To make the mash extra tasty, I added cream, butter, egg yolk, grated cheese, salt and pepper, tabasco, some surplus gravy from the chilli... and a few handfuls of crushed tortilla chips.

After half an hour in the oven on a high heat, you have a nice crispy crust!

To be honest, this pie isn't really all that filthy. In fact it's practically proper food - it even has vegetables in it. But it tastes great, and for my money it's much more enjoyable than a crappy old shepherd's pie.

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