Steak, Stilton and Guinness pie

British pub grub at its best. Simple to make and teams up wonderfully with a few boiled carrots, green beans and a dollop of mash. This is definitely an Armstrong favourite!

Recipe
Start by chopping 1kg of beef steak into small chunks and placing them in a large dish. Pour 1 can (250ml) of Guinness beer over the steak making sure the steak is covered. Add 2 cloves of shopped garlic, 2tsp peppercorns and 3 thyme leaves. Cover and leave for 2 hours in the marinade.

Meanwhile turn the oven to 180C and prepare the pastry. For this recipes i like to use both shortcrust and puff pastry, as shortcrust makes a sturdier base, and puff gives a light, crispy top. Roll out the shortcrust pastry (450g, ready made saves loads of time!) and line a baking dish, leaving the pastry to overhang slightly.

Line with baking parchment and baking beans, and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Then remove the baking beans and parchment and bake for a further 5 minutes, until golden brown.

Once the steak has finished marinading, strain off and reserve the liquid. Dip the chunks of steak into a little plain flour and in small batches, sear the steak in 2tbsp oil until brown, then set the meat aside. Fry a handful of quartered mushrooms and 1 large sliced onion in the oil and beef juices, adding 1tbsp tomato puree, 1tbsp cranberry jelly and a dash of worcestershire sauce. Pour over 440ml of beef stock and add some of the reserved marinade.

Finally add a dollop of dijon mustard and the beef, and simmer gently for at least an hour.
Once the filling is ready, spread 3tbsp of dijon mustard over the pastry base, then layer slices of stilton cheese over the mustard. Using a slotted spoon, add the meat, mushrooms and onion with a little of the sauce, until the pie is filled. Any remaining liquid can be thickened with a little flour to make the perfect accompanying gravy! Season the pie, then cover with a lid of puff pastry (again ready rolled), and glaze with a beaten egg. Make sure a hole is pierced in the centre to allow hot steam to be released whilst cooking; this also prevents the pie collapsing when it later cools off.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes until the pie is golden brown and piping hot, then tuck in!

Chunky chocolate ice-cream

Although ice-cream is notoriously difficult to make, don't let that put you off because i am convinced that i've found the easiest recipe to follow, and tastes so good it will give (dare i say it) Ben and Jerry's a run for their money!


Ingredients
250ml full-fat milk
250ml double cream
175g caster sugar
300g dark chocolate
4 egg yolks
150ml water

Gently heat the milk, cream and 25g of the sugar in a saucepan, but don't allow it to boil. Then pour the hot liquid over 200g of the chocolate and stir until all the chocolate has melted. Set aside to cool.

Whisk the egg yolks to thicken them slightly. Heat the water and add the remaining sugar. Stir until all the sugar has dissolved, then add the syrup to the egg yolks and whisk on high for around 5 minutes, until it becomes thick and pale (will double in size).

Add the chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and stir, taking care to make sure they are fully mixed together. Once the mixture has completely cooled down, add the remaining chocolate broken into small chunks. Adding the chunks when the mixture is warm will melt the chocolate leaving the ice-cream chunk free!

Pour into a container and refrigerate for 2 hours. Stir it around and then place it in the freezer for at least 4 hours. If small ice crystals form, take it out and stir the mixture again after 2 hours in the freezer.

Gingerbread House

 
Deciding to get into the holiday spirit, my mum and i spent hours yesterday decorating the house in more lights and tinsel you could shake a stick at, and kept with tradition by watching our favourite christmas movie, 'Elf'. Today, wanting to carry on my festive mood, decided it was gingerbread-house baking time!

I made one last year on christmas eve, but used a little kit (cheap supermarket one), so feeling i'd cheated a little, wanted to make one from scratch...and it couldn't be easier! Once the basic house is constructed, you're free to decorate it in thousands of different ways, and can either be swiftly destroyed and eaten, or left to harden and make a great centrepiece that lasts for a good week or two.

I used a template i found on the internet (link below), but its equally as simple to design your own.

www.bbcgoodfood/recipes/4900/simple-gingerbread-house

Gingerbread Recipe
(180C)
Heat 250g unsalted butter with 200g golden caster sugar and 6 tbsp golden syrup, until all the sugar has dissolved.
In a large bowl, mix together 600g plain flour, 2 tsp bicarbonate soda, 5 tsp ground ginger and 2 tsp cinnamon. (Mixed spice and nutmeg also taste great with it.)
Fold in the wet mix to the dry mix, and form a soft dough. Roll out the dough onto a floured surface until its approx. 0.5cm thick, then place the pieces onto a lined baking tray and bake in the oven for 12 minutes.

Leftover dough can be re-rolled and used to make various other shapes like christmas trees, stars or little gingerbread men, or can be stored and frozen fro up to a month.


                                            Assembly
Once the 6 pieces have cooled, sandwich the two side walls between the taller end walls, held together with piped icing (recipe below), and hold for 2 minutes until the icing is firm enough to stay in place with little support. If it's still not firm enough, use card to prop the pieces up. Then repeat a similar procedure for the two roof tiles, and once completed its best to leave for 24 hours (covered if you're making it with the intention of eating it) to harden, making decoration much easier. Finally using a variety of chocolate, icing and sweets, have fun decorating your house!

For my little house, i used piped white icing, snowies, chocolate buttons, chocolate fingers, wine gums, and candy canes. There's also plenty of leftover sweets to much on while you go!

Thick White icing
Mix together 1 egg white with 300g icing sugar, to make a really thick and glossy icing, which can either be piped for decoration or used as 'glue'.

The Mountain Pizza

Now this idea was inspired by a pizza i had in Arizona earlier this year, where they would stuff the base of the pizza rather than stuffing the crusts, giving a much deeper and 'meatier' pizza to bite into. By stuffing both the crusts and the base, each slice really does feel like an entire meal, and it can be a challenge to fit it into the humble oven, but i can promise you that it's definitely worth a try! Serves a small country (or 12 ravenous people).

Pizza Dough (for this pizza double the mixture..at least!)

• Combine 375g strong white flour, pinch of salt and 7g dry active baking yeast in a large bowl.
• Mix in 2 tbsp olive oil and 225ml of warm water, then leave the dough (covered) to rise for 20 minutes.

Construction

• Pre heat the oven to 180C
• Roll out just over half of the dough forming a giant base (approx. 18'') and transfer to a lined baking tray.
• Spread a tomato sause base (i use passata) on the dough, leaving a large gap around the outside and top with grated cheese. Thinly slice strips of cheese and place around the tomato sauce circle in the middle, this cheese will form the stuffed crust.
• Roll out the remaining dough to form a circle slightly smaller than the previous one, and place on top of the first base.
• Then, taking the bottom base, bring the sides over the cheese strips and clamp onto the top base and continue around the pizza, forming the crust. If it doesn't hold in place well, brush over with a little egg or water.
• Bake the pizza for 10 minutes. This allows time for the dough to cook a little and make sure the base stuffing won't get overlooked.
• Now top the pizza as you would an ordinary pizza. For this particular mountain pizza, i used chilli con carne as a base topped with cheese, mushrooms, peppers, chillies, olives, chicken, pepperoni, tomatoes and more cheese, with a few herbs and spices thrown in for good measure!
• Then depending on its size bake in the oven for around 20-25 minutes until golden brown and piping hot.

In the case of leftovers...served hot or cold this pizza makes a FANTASTIC midnight snack, lazy morning breakfast, or (and) packed lunch for work!