This is my favorite winter comfort recipe. There is nothing better than a steaming hot pie served with ketchup or chutney. These pies can be made a little wicked with puff pastry or you can make your own crunchy oaty pie crust. This pie is great for substituting with seasonal vegetables or what is left in your fridge before your next shop.
Makes 6
Ingredients
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup flour
1 liter plant milk unsweetened
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon stock powder
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional)
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
2 medium potatoes
2 small kumara
2 cups frozen vegetables
1 can lentils
6 sheets pastry/ 2 x crunchy oaty pastry
Filling:
Peel potatoes and kumara and cut into 2cm cubes. Cover with water and microwave for around 20 minutes until soft (or boil on stove). Drain water and gently mash around half the potatoes and kumara which will make your sauce nice and thick but still give texture. While potatoes and kumara are cooing, finely chop onions and garlic and saute in oil on a medium heat until soft. Add flour, curry powder, nutritional yeast and stock, stirring constantly until flour has cooked off for a few minutes. This will resemble a crumb. Slowly add plant milk , 1/4 cup at a time to start with, stirring vigorously to avoid getting lumps. Stir often until sauce thickens for around 15 minutes. Add frozen veges and cooked potatoes and kumara to sauce. Drain and rinse lentils and add to sauce.
Pastry:
Pre heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease 6 individual pie dishes (or one big pie dish) and line with pastry. Blind bake for around 15 minutes*. Add filling to pie dishes and top with a pastry lid. Prick each pastry top with a fork a few times so it can let out steam and brush with a small amount of oil. Cover with sesame seeds and a little salt and pepper.
Cook pies in oven until golden around 25 minutes at 180 degrees.
Crunchy oaty pastry
2 cups oats
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/3 cup coconut oil (at solid state but still soft)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 flax egg (2 tablespoons ground linseeds with 4 tablespoons water)
1-3 tablespoons ice cold water
Process oats in a grinder or bullet to make oat flour. Add oat flour, tapioca, salt, flax egg and coconut oil to a food processor and pulse until just combined. This will look like a course crumble. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time and continue to pulse until mixture comes together. The trick is not to over mix. Shape into a ball. Place between two large sheets of baking paper and roll over the top to flatten into a sheet. Cut into pie dish shapes and gently press into your dishes. You will likely get some breakages but you can patch these up with your fingers. Blind bake as below and then you are read to fill your pie.
*Blind baking helps cook the pastry at the bottom of the pie so you don’t get an under cooked base. Grease then line the bottom and sides of your pie dishes with pastry. Pastry will puff up and get out of shape if you bake without a filling so you will need to weight it down. To do this put a sheet of non stick baking paper on top of the pastry and use an oven proof weight. I usually use a small ramikin which fits snugly in the dish or some dried beans or rice. Once you have blind baked your pies for around 10 minutes take out the filling and baking paper and put back in the oven for a few minutes. Then remove again and you are ready to fill and bake your pies.