Vegetable Pie

Serves 6

Veg pie is a fantastic winter food, a light crispy pastry filled with hot, tender, stodgy, vegetables is very rustic, completely unpretentious but spectacularly good home cooked food that is guaranteed to fill you up and keep you going on a cold winter’s day.

As well as pies being great winter warmers this vegetable pie recipe is perfect for winter months, the main ingredient is root vegetables which are in season from September to March. Food is always at its best in season; it has more flavour, better taste. As well as flavour food in season is more likely to be locally grown and not flown from miles and miles away, so you reduce carbon emissions and help fight against climate change. If you’re living the good life and have your own allotment even better, you can't beat anything grown in your garden freshly picked right before dinner.

For those of you with a large hungry family veg pie is a very hearty meal and a great reason to spend time together. Vegetable pie is also wonderfully cheap so you can feed your family a tasty meal while on a budget and still have some left over for lunch.

Ingredients

• 500g puff pastry
• 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 leak
• 225g mushrooms, of your choice, quartered
• 275g root vegetables, of your choice, peeled and chopped into 1cm cubes
• 1 tablespoon cornflour
• 1 pint vegetable stock
• 1 egg, beaten

Method

1. Heat the oil in a large pan and gently fry the onions, leek and garlic on a medium heat, until soft.
2. Add the mushrooms and cook gently until tender, about 10 minutes.
3. Add the root vegetables to the pan and stir well. Cover and fry for 10 minutes, stirring regularly.
4. Add the cornflour to the pan and stir to coat the vegetables.
5. Add the stock to the saucepan.
6. Simmer gently over a low heat for 30 minutes, until the vegetables are soft and the stock has reduced and thickened. Season with salt & pepper.
7. Preheat the oven to 200C.
8. Roll out the pastry to 5mm thick and line 20cm pie dish with a little excess pastry hanging off the rim. Leave enough pastry for a lid to cover the pie.
9. Spoon the filling into the pie dish.
10. Place the pastry lid on top and press the edges together.  Brush the top with egg, make a few small holes for steam to escape.
11. Bake for 35 minutes, until the pastry is risen and golden.