RECIPE: Full English Breakfast Pie

Pie for breakfast? Well, I'm not advocating that! But breakfast for dinner, aka dinner, is a popular thing, especially among those of us who aren't ready to face the faff of cooking all that food at the crack of dawn, and because baking seems to be such a lockdown obsession (when we can get flour) with so many of us, I had the urge to turn a breakfast into a pie.

Recipe (serves 4)

1 tin baked beans (450g size)
1 medium onion
6 rashers streaky bacon
4 sausages
2 large tomatoes
2 eggs
puff pastry (bought or home made - read to the end of the recipe for details)
a little vegetable oil
milk for brushing

Boil the eggs until just hard (I used extra large eggs which are just right after 8 minutes). Crack the shells all over under running cold water, leave in a bowl of water until completely cold, and peel them - I find this way of cooling them makes them easier to peel.

Roll out the pastry to fit the top of your pie dish, cover and set aside to chill.

Empty the beans into a bowl. Peel and thinly slice the onion and fry until well browned in a little oil. Add to the beans. Chop the bacon and add to the pan the onions were cooked in, and fry over medium heat until fat has run out and pieces are turning crispy. Lift the pieces out with a slotted spoon and add to the beans and onions. Add the sausages to the pan and cook slowly until well browned and cooked through.

While the sausages are cooking, heat the oven to 230C (210 fan),  450F, gas mark 8. Mix the bacon, onion and beans together.

Place a ceramic pie funnel, if you have one, in the middle of your dish then spoon the bean mixture evenly around it. Arrange the halved tomatoes and eggs around it. When the sausages are cooked, add them too.

Place the chilled pastry over the top, cutting a hole in the centre and, if you are using a funnel, making sure it pokes through the hole.

Decorate the edges if you wish  then brush all over with milk and bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated oven until golden.

I would have glazed it with egg rather than milk in normal circumstances but eggs are pretty precious at the moment and with two already used in the pie I didn't feel I was justified in using a third. 

We loved this pie - served with peas for a touch of green, although I wouldn't have peas on a cooked breakfast. If we'd had any mushrooms,  they would have gone into the pie, either sliced, fried and added to the bean mixture or halved, poached and arranged with the sausages, eggs and tomatoes.

Now on to the pastry. Despite being a keen cook and always making my own shortcrust pastry, I've only attempted making puff pastry once,  when I was expecting my first baby. That "baby" turned 40 last year - and making the pastry had seemed like such a faff that I've never done it again since. However lockdown means it's no longer easy to simply pop out and buy a pack of ready made, so I decided to have a go at making rough puff pastry. 

Here is what I used: 

200g plain flour

½ teaspoon salt

125g butter

Cold water to mix - about 100ml

I mixed the flour and salt then diced the butter into small cubes, about 4mm each, and stirred them in with a knife, gradually adding the water to make a soft dough. 

I rolled it our on a well floured surface into a long narrow rectangle, then folded the bottom third up and the top third down and gave it a quarter turn so the folds were at the sides. Then I repeated the rolling and folding process 4 more times. After the final fold I wrapped it tightly and placed it in the fridge to rest before rolling out to make my piecrust - it needs at least half an hour but longer won't hurt it.  

This amount made plenty to cover my largest Le Creuset pie dish with enough left over to make a batch of cheese straws or tapenade or pesto nibbles. (Must have a look in the fridge to see what I can use it with today! ) 

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to make, and would probably have been even easier if I'd used hard baking margarine instead of butter. However the butter gave the pastry a lovely buttery taste and in any case I'd finished up the margarine baking some oatcakes which will appear on here in a few days' time. 

So that's rough puff pastry mastered - now I might push the boat out even further and try proper flaky pastry next time!