I see you baby, 'mirin my pies....

Vegetable Pies

We get an occasional vegetarian come through the bakery, and I always feel bad that we dont provide a constant line available for vegetarians.  However, from time to time, we do produce vegetable pies, which I think (and I'm not being biased - not at all!) are absolutely amazing!  I beleive that a good vegetable pie has to be packed with vegetable goodness, and have a good amount of pepper to boost the (sometimes) bland vegetable flavours.

On another note, I was once told that salt and pepper are like the Jazz Fingers of the cooking world.  Eg, you can dance all you want, but when you use "Jazz Fingers" it makes it better.  Just the same, you can cook all you want, but if you add just the right amount of salt and pepper, you turn a good meal into an amazing meal!  (Maybe Google "Jazz Fingers", its a thing - beleive me!)

This pie is comprised of two components - a white sauce made the traditional way using a roux, and the meaty (in this case, vegetabley) filling.

White sauce:

Butter           500g
Flour            800g
Milk             4.5L


Melt the butter in a suacepan on low, then add flour.  Once this is a thick paste, add milk in 4-5 parts, mixing the milk into the roux each time to make a paste.  Once all the milk is added, keep the white sauce on a low heat, and regularly stir so that the bottom of the saucepan doesnt burn.

Filling:

Onions            1.5kg
Mushrooms    1.5kg
Carrots            1Kg
Vegetables     10kg
Salt                  60g
Pepper             50g
Chicken Stock  1L
White wine      500mL
Garlic              200g

Start the filling by frying off the onions, mushrooms, carrots and garlic.  Once this has cooked and softened, add the chicken stock, white wine, salt, pepper and assorted vegetables.  We used potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, squash and zuchini.  It should be noted however, that the squash and zuchini dont take much cooking, so we added them towards the end of the process.

Simmer the mix until the potatoes are just becoming soft.  Add the white sauce to the mix, and stir until it is an even mix.  We found that our mix wasnt thick enough, so we added a cornflour mix to thicken the final product.  We added 500g cornflour suspenended in 800mL water.

Combine this filling with our already amazing (again, im not biased!) pie pastry, and you have an epic stomach filler for a cold winters lunch!

Who would have thought that using such simple ingredients could result in such a vegy dice product?