With more and more of us eating less
meat these days the chances of you
lovely people having a vegetarian around
the Christmas table is very high, so let
me give you the most incredible edible
present that the veggies are going to
kiss you for and the meat eaters are gonna
fight you for. Introducing the one and
only veggie pithivier. It's the most
incredible French style pie, a parcel of
puff pastry, crispy and gorgeous with
layer upon layer of amazing sweet slow
roasted celeriac creamy gorgeous
mushrooms, and even a little bit of sauce
on the side.
Guys it starts here with celeriac, we're
gonna take the top off, you want to leave
the skin on, take some olive oil, give it
a drizzle up, sea salt, lots of black
pepper, get your hands in there and have
a little rub up and when that starts to
roast on the outside of the skin it's
gonna be truly delicious.
Now I'm gonna wrap it in tinfoil, just
put it over like that and there you go.
That now goes in the oven for an hour
and a half, we're going to cook it at 200
degrees celsius, which is 400 Fahrenheit
and the flavours that will happen in here
will be absolutely immense. Now it's time
to make the sauce, a lovely bechamel
style sauce with sweet leeks, garlic and
mushrooms it's gonna be a joy. So I have
two leeks, the ends I'll just take off,
get your knife run it down the length of
the leek and just go as thin as you can.
Let's get cooking, I'm going to put some
butter, the white part of the leek's,
get yourself two cloves of garlic, slice it up, garlic goes in. Look at that, already smells amazing.
We've got a standard button mushrooms and our
chestnut mushrooms, but absolutely you
can upgrade for wild mushrooms at this
time of year. Whether you go for the
cheapest mushroom, or the most expensive
it's still bloomin delicious. So in the
pan with our mushrooms, cook those for
about 10-15 minutes and it's this stage
of making a sauce that's gonna give you
the oomph, the flavor. I'm going to use a teaspoon
of English mustard and then I'm gonna
use two heaped tablespoons of just plain
flour
that's your thickening, agent and then
we're gonna let it down with eight
hundred mils of milk, and as I add the
milk it will start to just get silkier.
We'll let that simmer now, just enough
time for me to get some herbs chopped up.
So just finely slice the parsley you can
see it's nice and thick I'm gonna turn
off the heat and there's one last
ingredient, 120 grams of beautiful blue
cheese. Have a little taste,
Oh,
beautiful, now let's make the filling.
Right let's have a little look, look at that there you go.
You see it's caramelised, it's shrunk a
little bit, and then slice it like a
piece of ham don't worry if it breaks or
if there's a few bits that sort of plop
off.
Get yourself a regular bowl, olive oil
and then just put the cling film through
like that, use your hand to push it into
the corner and now what I want to do is
take beautiful slices of the celeriac,
place that just up the side like that
and it doesn't matter if you do this
well or badly right just line the side
don't panic, don't stress, and then a base
like that. That is what you end up with
then we're going to go over to our sauce,
just put a little bit of that in there
and then again layer that celeriac,
beautiful creamy sauce. So last layer
push it right around and use those last
little bits to make your topping and
then at this stage we'll use that cling
film, just pull it tight and get yourself
a little plate so you can weigh it down
and then if we put that in the fridge
overnight the fridge temperature is
gonna make it really firm and then it's
really really easy to turn into the most
incredible pie, it's gonna be beautiful.
This has been in the fridge so it's
firmed up, but then we need to encase it
in some pastry. I'm cheating I'm using
all butter puff pastry it's even rolled
out for us. Take it as a square like that
all the way so we now have the base I've
got some egg yolks here, take our filling
just turn it out into the middle of our
pie like that and then I'm going to use
another roll and we want to flap it on
top. So line up and just go over and this
is almost like making the most
incredible little Christmas present.
Right pat the top we'll go to one side right
into the corner define that shape and we
want to cut about a centimeter and a
half around the pie like this. We don't
have to waste this right, you can put
parmesan in there, a bit of cayenne pepper, a few
little twists do a nice little nibble.
Get yourself a little chair, come down to
this beautiful pies level, get myself
some flour, take one finger forefinger,
you push it in, you take your thumb and
forefinger and squeeze around it and as
you squeeze pinch it at the end and you
get that and what's great about this is
it seals the two bits of pastry together
we'll put a little cross in there, that
will let the steam out, and I'm gonna
give it a really nice glaze and this is
gonna give it the most incredible bronze
tan. This is a French pie that's come
truly via Essex, look at that tan come on,
and then I'll take my knife from the
centre and just turn it
and score it, and I go back, and then I'll
turn it and score it. You do not want to
cut all the way through. Now last but not
least a little bit of my off cuts, cut a
little circle out find something round
you can just cut out that center part
like that, and then lay that over our
little cross and you can do that one, two
days before Christmas. That is a
celebration of a dish. Now because it's
Christmas,
get yourself a wad of rosemary, get
some olive oil on there and dress it up, it's
gonna smell nice, look nice, it's like a
little reef. That will be cooked at the
bottom of the oven at 180 degrees
celsius which is 350 fahrenheit for two
hours. Ho ho ho! Look at that, it's a thing of
beauty. Ho ho ho ho ho, yes! This is a veggie dish that
meat eaters will fight for, so good. Come on a
nice little drizzle of the sauce,
come on, just beautiful let's go for the
end.
Wowsers, your guests will not know what's
happened. Merry veggie Christmas.
