Adventures in Pie - Beef and Guinness and Green Tomato Pie

Adventure: to engage in daring undertakings.  That's Webster for ya.  He never goes into the wonderous implications.

I say, adventure is to engage in daring undertakings of which you do not know the outcome.

Adventure racing, Xterra, even Ironman are not really adventures.  If you've trained enough, you pretty much know how they're going to turn out.   And if you haven't trained enough?  Well, you know pretty much how that will turn out too!

Sometimes a ride a round the block can turn to an adventure, or a trip to the grocery store, or bringing in a bowl of green tomatoes and broccoli flowers from the garden....

The broccoli flowers went home with the Chickenless Chick. (TheChickenlessKitchen.blogspot.com)  

She had a project in mind that required edible flowers.  Yes, they're edible - and beautiful on  salad.  But, that was a past adventure. 

Today the adventure is pie.

Green Tomato Pie.

Beef and Green Tomato Pie.

Beef and GUINNESS and Green Tomato Pie.

Yeah!  Now we're cookin' up an adventure!

There's a lot of recipes for Steak and Guinness Pie floating around out there in cyberspace.  Grab one, not that you're going to use it.

Recipes are merely jump off points for adventure cooking.  Including this one, so do what you will with it.

(Oh.  And take the day off.  We're talking major time suckage here.)

Beef and Guinness and Green Tomato Pie

1 1/2 pounds stew beef

2 T. flour

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp pepper

2-4 T. sesame oil

1 medium sweet onion, chopped

1 1/2 c. mushrooms, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

3 T. water

3 cups green tomatoes, chopped into 1 inch chunks

1 1/2 c. baby carrots

1 c. frozen cut green beans

1 1/2 T. tomato paste

1 c. Guinness

1 c. beef broth

1 T. Worcestershire Sauce 

1/2 tsp dried thyme

Pie dough for 2 crust pie

2 T. Minute tapioca

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Put flour, salt, and pepper in a zip loc bag and mix it up.

Put the beef cubes into the bag with the flour and shake to coat.

 

Heat oil to hot.  Brown beef in batches.  Set aside.

Using the same pan, add the mushrooms, onion, garlic, and water, and cook til the onions are soft.  

Add tomatoes, carrots and green beans.

Add the tomato paste, stir.

Add beef broth, beer, Worcestershire, and thyme.

Add beef.

Bring to a simmer.

(Breathe this in. Ahhh.)

Pour it all into a cassarole dish, cover, and transfer to oven.

Cook 1 1/2 hours.

Go for a ride or a walk or something.  You're going to need the calorie deficit!  :)

After 1 1/2 hours, remove and let cool 20-30 minutes, while you roll out two pie crusts. 

Or you could just forget the pie crust, get a bowl, and start eating now. 

But I choose adventure, so I go for pie:

Turn the oven up to 425 degrees.

Scoop your beautiful brown Guinness'y stew into a pie plate lined with crust.

Sprinkle 2 T. tapioca over the filling.

Put the top crust on.  Seal the edges, trim the excess dough.  Poke a couple vent holes in the top crust.  Brush with egg wash.  

Bake 45 minutes. 

Make your salad while that's cooking.  You are having salad, right?

*Put some aluminum foil around the edges of the pie crust after fifteen minutes in the oven, or it could get really dark, especially if you used spelt flour in the dough, like I did. 

And if you forget the egg wash, which I also did, be warned, unvarnished spelt crust is pretty ugly.

Ugly or not, take a moment to breathe this in.  The aroma is incredible. 

And the taste?  Oh yes. Heaven on a plate.

Hmmm, now what to do with leftover beer??? 

No adventure there.  Popeye's home from the gym.  I know that outcome!