The Leek Pie You’ve Never Heard Of — A Real English Village Recipe

Oh look, oh Mr Earls Barton there's your pie, that is absolutely incredible. Hi everyone, welcome to Backyard Chef, I'm Rick. Today we're doing a traditional British pie, you know it's not forgotten in Northamptonshire but you know around the country people don't make pies like this anymore, you know people pack it full of seasoning, even me you know, pack it full of seasoning, thyme and Worcestershire sauce and things like that. This pie, this Earls Barton pie is a classic okay, we've got beef, we've got bacon, we've got leeks. Leeks are locally grown in the village and they put together the bacon and the beef and they made their own pie. It's unique and this beef in here is bits of shin that's left over and I've got some bacon which is the offcuts, I buy the offcuts for making pies. So we've got this and that and we've got some leeks. So in the village of Alney in Northamptonshire the locals are affectionately known as Barton leeks. There you go, there's a bit of information. Right let's crack on, right traditionally this would be going in a tray, it would be going in the oven. We're going to change it round, I'll cut it, put it in here but I'm going to take it out of here and put it in an instant pot. I'm cooking it in the pressure cooker for speed, we don't need to be cooking it in the oven for one and a half hours but you can. Okay all it is is meat, bacon, some water, a little bit of pepper, in the oven one and a half hours. We're just going to put, I'll cut it and put it in there, come on. So like I say we've got this offcuts of, in fact we'll do the leeks first, come on let's put the, cut the leeks and put the leeks in a bowl. Leeks we want one to two centimeter pieces that's all. Now the leeks have already been washed, cleaned and the outer leaves taken off so we can just crack on. So one to two centimeter pieces, do all your leeks the same, chuck in a bowl, there you go, in a bowl, ready to go. Okay so that's what we're doing with all our leeks, nice and straightforward. Okay nice and straightforward there you go, leeks to one side, right our meat, bacon. I've got these offcuts here okay but you know if you can't get offcuts just use the streaky end bacon, just cut it into a few cubes like that. Now you can use as much as you like, in the recipe I'll have about 400 grams, something like that. Back in there, beef the same, now these are already cubed up because this was cubed up for stewing anyway. So we've got this on here and we're going to go just a little bit smaller look, we're not going to go too small because I actually want it to have structure when we cook it in the pressure cooker. Okay this was probably prepped up for curry, actually. Again about 400 grams, it's probably about 600 here actually, going to look more once we've cubed it up really small. We'll leave those, that's good enough, we'll have a couple of bigger bits in there. Okay we are bringing in the cooker, now what we are doing, grabbing a pan on there, what we're going to do is fry some colour on the beef. Now we're not going to go crackers, come on, a little bit of oil in there, get a flame on, heat it up, chuck your beef in. Why are we doing it? Because if you cook this in the oven that would be in there in water and you would get a little bit of colour on in the oven. Okay we can't get that colour so we have to put it on okay and then put it in the instant pot. Why are we cooking in the instant pot, pressure cooker? We're cooking in there because it takes about 20 minutes, that's it. In the oven it's an hour and a half, in there, come on. So we're going to start this off and then we're going to chuck that beef in in here as well. Let's render out some goodness into this pan. So this is going to cause that Maillard reaction which is just a fancy term for browning and I don't do all the fancy terms as you know. So get a little bit of colour on this and that will give us that depth of flavour inside the pressure cooker when we cook. Leave it a couple of minutes, turn it, leave it a couple of minutes. Let's get some colour on there, we're not trying to cook it. Okay give it a turn over. Now like I say we're not cooking it as such, just put a little bit of browning on. I can't remember if I said this, this is shin beef. Okay so it is a bit fatty and stuff but you know it's a fantastic flavour when it's cooked and it's the old-fashioned beef that used to get used up for stews and things you know. Any cut of beef will do, anything marked up as stewing beef, anything like that. Don't have to like your way to get shin. We're making it easier today, we are using ready-rolled pastry. I'm using my own obviously, link on the channel if you want to go make it, that's up to you. If not ready-rolled shortcrust pastry. Bring in the instant pot. In there that bacon, let's give that a little turning over in there as well. Give us some of that really nice caramelised fat. Fabulous smell, come on. Let's get that nice little bit of bacon in there. So this pie very much goes on the flavour of the bacon and the beef in the pie with the leeks. There's no seasoning in this pie originally okay, so don't be thinking about shoving thyme and anything else in if you want to keep to the original type recipe. We'll thicken the little bit of gravy that comes out with a little bit of flour and then we're good to go as a pie filling but we have to cool it down before it goes in the pastry. Okay that will do it, look let's get that flame off there. We are just going to put that in the instant pot liner. So dump that in there, you have to go in there with about half a cup of water at least okay, it's just going to sticky up. Now this is corn flour slurry, I'm just going to put a little bit in there and hopefully when all that cooks in there the juices are going to come together and it will give us a start on a pie gravy. There's some goodness there look. Right that goes in the instant pot. Get your lid on and we hit the pressure cook button and we want 25 minutes. That's it, job done. There you go we're at 25 minutes and then we'll let it have 10 minutes natural release and we're good to go. Okay we've had our 10 minutes on there look, all we need to do now is manually pressure release. Let it pressure release, we're going to take it out, put it on here to cool down. We're going to boil up some leeks. Let's get that out of there, onto there. So all we're going to do is let that cool down. Fabulous. We're getting our water warm through there look, in there with those leeks. Now if you've got a lid, shove a lid on. You want to boil these for about seven to eight minutes. Nice steady one on that. What we're going to probably do is use some of this leek water with that juice to make up a gravy. Okay that will do, we want to get that out of there and we're just going to let it go cool. Now you can take these leeks as far as you want, you can have really soggy leek in there if you want but you know it's about the leek. So it's up to you, really up to you. We want to make up a little bit of a thick gravy you know, so we're going to take some of this water and we're going to mix it with the meat juice from here. We want a thick gravy inside the pie. So we'll get our meat filling out of there, come on. Oh yeah, oh there's some goodness there, look at that. So traditionally what would you do, you would actually thicken this meat juice with a little bit of flour okay, but for me I'm going to change it just a tad. I want to go in there with a little bit of butter, of course I do, come on. Just warm through that butter and then we want the flour in there. In there a little bit of flour, about a tablespoon and a half actually, give that a little cook in that butter. Now the only reason why I'm doing this is there's not enough fat in there really because of the water content. So we'll just cook out this flour in here and we're going in there with that and all the bits and everything that's in there. So just bring it in, come on. Don't worry about the lumps, they'll all hydrate and disappear. So just reduce that into a nice thick gravy and you can see look, the lumps of flour are just dissolving. They've got to rehydrate, you know, get a nice little cook, nice little stir. But we actually want a little bit of a thickness on this one. A little bit of pepper in there for seasoning. That is all the seasoning that we have. We've got that bacon fat, that beef, we've got that leek and now we've got that pepper. That'll do, come on let's get the flame off. So all we've got to do is get this cooled down and we can start rolling our pastry out, come on. Right, this is an 8 inch springform tin. Let's get some pastry rolled out to fit it. So it's a quick roll out. Now it's ready roll pastry like I said but I'm using my own on the channel. A little bit on there, come on. So just a little bit on there and a little bit on the pan and let's get going, come on. Now someone said the other day, don't turn the pastry over when you're rolling. Why? A new one on me? Okay, that in the 8 inch tin lined. Oh I reckon that's got it, don't you? That is too much of an overhang. We want overhang but not that much, come on. We want to work comfortably, don't we? Okay we've got a beautiful pie there, pie base. In here look, before I actually beat it up, I've got an egg and I want to take that egg white and brush the bottom of this pie. That is going to help seal up the bottom because we're putting leek in and leek has got quite a lot of fluid to come out of. So we just want to seal the pie. An old-fashioned trick and it really works and then we can give that a beat for an egg wash. Now our meat, we want to add some of that gravy that we made. I want to get some of that thick stodge in there. The rest we'll save for gravy. Now this stuff is absolutely amazing. All the gelatins from the meat are in here, everything and that bacon, it is a superb flavour. Better than any, any gravy or gravy granules. There you go, we've got that going on. Right, bring in that pie, here we go. Leek in there, in there, that meat. More leek in there and more meat in there. There's some good chunks of meat there, look. Look at that stuff. You know I'm going to sneak a little bit more of that in there, look. Always sneak me. There we go and I've got a little bit more leek for the top. That looks amazing. Okay, we want a top for that, of course we do. Come on. The oven should be on at 200 degrees, thereabouts. Right, what we're going to do, we're going to work with this but there might be too much there. We want to fold it in but you know we don't need all that, come on. Straight forward, bring up, roll over. We want a good old-fashioned crust on here. There we go. Do we need all this? No, we don't. We'll do it anyway. There we go, beautiful, beautiful pie. We want a couple of really good vents in the top like that. Okay, we're on there. Egg wash. Let's get a beautiful golden top on our pie. Nice and steady. That is our Earls Barton pie ready for the oven. Oven, oven, 200 degrees. That's going in there for about 30 to 40 minutes. There you go, come on. When you've had your time, that pie is ready to come out of there, on there. Look at that. Okay, we're just going to give that, give that pie, oh, a good 10 minutes and then we're going to get it out of there. Oh, look at that. That is beautiful. Could have done with a bit more colour on the side but we're not grumbling, come on. Well, it's just got to be done. Well, we're going to have to get in here and I think it's going to collapse. Should have gone for a different plate, I reckon. Oh, in we go. Oh, look at that. That is sensational. Oh, Mr Earls Barton, there's your pie. Look at that. That is absolutely incredible. Just look at that. Some of that gravy that we made. Oh, yes. That is stodged there. What a perfect gravy. We can't hang around for this one. We know the pastry's okay. We made it, come on. Oh, look at that beef. That's what we want to see. Look at that. Look, look, look. That is amazing. Oh, that is ridiculous. Oh, I love that. Oh, yeah. Oh, come on. In here. Wreck it. Oh, you just can't beat this beef. Look at it. Look at that. Oh, happy bunny. Absolutely love that. That's our Earls Barton pie made. There you go. So easy to make a traditional classic pie. Earls Barton pie from Honley in North Antonshire. There you go. I hope I get known as an honorary Barton Leek. There you go. Absolutely fantastic. Share with your friends. And if you like what we're doing, big thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, ring that bell. Catch you in the next video. Obviously serve with potatoes, mash, veg, anything you like. Oh, yeah.