From Ireland to Your Land: Chicken Pie with Leeks, Potatoes, and Mushrooms

All who think the Irish have great food, say, “Aye!”  There seems to be but few responses.  I’m saddened. Ok, let’s give ‘er another try, but first let me tell you I promise a pint of Guinness to every brawny man and pleasing wench who screams, “AYE!”

Now that’s more like it, lads and lassies, or as they say in Gaelic, leaids and beans, which is pronounced lads and bans.

But, you’re finishing off that pint like a wee cuddler of a gull!  Come on!  Finish-er up! Grab another and let’s put this pie on the hearth!

The winter winds are beginning to bluster and wiggle through the cracks in the walls. Drag out the woolens and lay out the gloves and scarfs. Time for a pot full o’ cookin’!

This savory pie is Irish style, but call it what you will, on a chilly winter’s eve, chicken and vegetables in a rich sauce, with a flaky crust is just the thing to calm your ragged nerves, warm your tortured soul, and settle you in for a comfortable night.  Of course, you also need some Guinness.  Why do I even need to bring that up???

Chicken pie with Leeks, Potatoes, and Mushrooms

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed

4 smooth skinned potatoes, peeled and cubed

2 leeks, washed and the tender parts sliced in rounds (not the heavy green leaves)

10-15 small to medium mushrooms, sliced thickly

1 heaping Tablespoon of dried tarragon

2 ½ Cups of milk

4 Tablespoons flour

6-8 Tablespoons butter (Hard to be exact.  Keep more butter handy.)

1 Package Phyllo dough

Salt and Pepper

Heat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC)

Boil the potato cubes in salted water until barely tender, then remove from the pot and set aside.

Add a Tablespoon or two of butter to a large frying pan and toss in the cubed chicken.  If you used unsalted butter, dust the chicken with salt.  Cook only long enough to get the chunks a bit brown.

Add the leeks and mushrooms to the frying pan and cook for three minutes.  Stir in the flour and cook for a minute or two longer. 

At this point, you may be asking, "What the hell is a leek?"  There's a photo below.  Related to the onion, it's much milder and in Europe is often used in soups and stews.

Slowly add the milk, stirring constantly,  then add the potatoes and tarragon, salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for about ten minutes.

Melt some butter in a small saucepan.  Paint the inside of a deep pie dish, line it with two sheets of phyllo dough, buttering in between sheets.  Phyllo tears easily, so if you end up with a patchwork, that’s fine.

Fill the dish with the chicken mixture, then cover with sheets of phyllo, painting with melted butter between each sheet, then paint over the last sheet.  Butter any scraps of phyllo left over and put them randomly over the dish in a haphazard manner.  (see photos)

Slide the chicken pie into the oven and cook for about 45 minutes, but don’t let the crust burn.

Satisfied your Guinness thirst?  Then bring out that bottle of Irish whiskey ya been hidin’ for just such a moment!  Let’s celebrate a great pie from a great land!   ♫ This land is Ireland, this land is your land… ♫

Guinness Beef Pie

And you thought Guinness, the heavenly gift from Ireland, was just for drinking, shampooing, brushing your teeth, and gargling.  As the Irish say, fook no.  You gotta keep some spare cans in your kitchen.  Tuck a couple of cans away where your thirsty wife won’t find ‘em. I’m about to give you just one reason why.  Guinness Beef Pie.

But, first I have to let you in on a secret.  Yes, I know I’ve blogged about going to the Guinness Brewery at St. James Gate, Dublin, and told you most of what you need to know about this Irish legend.

http://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2013/08/a-little-bit-of-ireland-lot-of-guinness.html

But, in my haste, I left out the part about crowd-pleasing cooking.   I’m going to rectify that omission, right after I give you a hint about using Guinness for either cooking, or drinking:  buy Guinness in a can.  It’s marked ‘draft’ and that’s not just an expression.  Normally, if I can’t get real draft, I go for a bottle, but in the case of Guinness, I make a rare exception.  The Guinness cans contain an agitation ball and when the can is opened and poured, the brew is aerated automatically, giving you very, very close to a true draft taste.  Ok, now that you’re enlightened, let’s move on to the long anticipated, lip smacking recipe.

Guinness Beef Pie

2 ½ pounds (approx.) beef chuck roast, most fat removed and the beef cut into spoon-sized cubes.

2 tablespoons oil

4 ribs celery, diced  (I use the leaves as well)

2 cloves garlic, diced

3 carrots, peeled and diced

1 onion, diced

1-2 teaspoons powdered cinnamon

1 can Guinness (14.9 Fl. oz., Draft)

2 heaping tablespoons undiluted beef broth (not granulated or normal strength.  I always use Bovril)

3 tablespoons butter, mashed together with 3 tablespoons of flour for thickener

1 sheet of packaged, frozen puff pastry crust, thawed

1 egg yolk

salt and pepper to taste

Salt and pepper the beef.  Put the oil in a large pot, or Dutch oven and turn heat to medium high.  When the oil is hot, add the beef chunks and stir to barely brown.  Don’t worry that the meat is only partially cooked.  It’ll get a lengthy cooking very soon.  Don’t pour off the extra liquid from the cooked meat.

When the beef is barely browned, add all the vegetables/garlic and stir.  Add the can of Guinness and the undiluted beef broth.  Add the cinnamon.  When the mixture comes to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer. Partially cover and let the mixture cook until the meat is tender, about an hour.

When the meat is tender, add the flour/butter mixture and stir.  Cook another 5 minutes or so until the gravy thickens, and also to cook away any raw flour flavor.

Meanwhile, let the sheet of puff pastry thaw.

Heat the oven to 350ºF, or 180º C.

Pour the pie

mixture in a casserole dish, cover decoratively with the sheet of puff pastry and paint the puff pastry with a beaten egg yolk.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the pastry is light, golden brown.

You’ve deprived yourself long enough.  Pop the top on another Guinness and let’s discuss your favorite Irish writers.  On the other hand, we can concentrate on drinking and eating and just say ‘fook it.’

In Dublin's Fair City

Ireland's Old Parliament, Now The Bank of Ireland

Sweet Molly!

In Dublins fair city, where the girls are so pretty,

I once met a girl called sweet Molly Malone,

As she wheeled her wheelbarrow, through the streets broad and narrow,

Cryng cockles and mussels` Alive alive o

Hey, don’t just go breezing off to a pub the moment you hit town.  Stop by and pay your respects to Molly, or as she is known by the locals, “The tart with the cart.”  She hangs out on Grafton Street.  Her statue, with its eternally rotund features is not as old as you’d think.  1988.  At the same time, city fathers proclaimed 13 June Molly Malone Day.  What does that mean, exactly?  Far as I know, there was no Molly Malone, or at least not just one.  Lots of fishmongers, many of them women.  And, the song, written by James Yorkston, a Scotsman, wasn’t published until the early 1880s, in Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England.  See, those sneaky Irish are at it again.  A Scot mentions Dublin in a song published in America and England and the Irish claim it as their own and make it Dublin’s ‘unofficial anthem.’

But, a country that brews Guinness and distills Jameson can be forgiven any number of transgressions.  Amen! And we’ll all drink to that!  The secret is safe. I won’t tell a soul.

Entry to the old Jameson Distillery 

View of Dublin from the top floor of Guinness Brewery

Besides gazing longingly at Molly’s assets, what else is there to do?

How much time do you have?  I’ve already written about Guinness Stout and Jameson Whiskey.  Between tours and drinking, those two alone will use up the best part of a day.

http://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2013/08/a-little-bit-of-ireland-lot-of-guinness.html

http://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2013/09/jameson-whiskey-its-irish-really.html

Yep, you can see castles and churches.  Figure those out for yourself.  But, the first thing I’d do is grab a hop-on-hop-off bus and take a whirlwind tour of the city, which will take you right past Molly Malone.  Don’t worry; the bus supplies earphones and commentary. Dublin ain’t New York.  Won’t take any time at all to spot a bus and buy your ticket right outside the train station.  A complete circle of the ville takes about an hour.  Gives you a great overview of Ireland’s largest city, with a population of over half a million souls.  Hop-on-hop off is not just an expression.  When you find something interesting and decide to hop off, another bus will come along ten minutes later.  A ticket lasts all day.

Another thing to consider that combines two of my favorite interests:  a literary pub tour.  The hours for the tour change with the seasons, so you’re on your own for scheduling.  However, if you’re not familiar with Irish writers, I’ll carelessly drop a few names:  James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Brendan Behan, George Bernard Shaw, to mention only a few.  This is not to say they lived their entire lives in Dublin, but there is a connection to the city. But as James Joyce famously remarked, “Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.”  A pub tour is a good compromise between literature and sobriety.  A good many writers felt the same.  My favorite quote about Dublin comes from J.P.  Donleavy, author of The Ginger Man, and other novels:  “When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.”

Always time for a pub and a Stout!

And of course a pub lunch

I’ve given Joyce’s Ullyses a good shot, both sober and otherwise.  No dice.  Couldn’t gulp down the prose under any conditions.  The pundits call it the greatest novel.  I found it a disconnected ramble.  But, if you want a taste of Joyce, Dubliners is a wonderful collection of sketches of Dublin life.  Many of the sentences in that short book are cogent.

A bit about the Irish Republic’s government:  parliamentary system, much like other European parliaments. The original parliament building was closed with the Act of Union (with England) in 1800.  Since then, the old parliament building has been The Bank of Ireland.  It sits right next to Trinity College.  Ireland is a part of the European Union and the currency is the Euro.

Best of all, Dublin is a city for strolling, soaking in the atmosphere and chatting with people you didn’t know five minutes ago.  The first thing you notice is the charm of Dublin’s historic shabbiness.  That’s just another way of saying “a comfortable pair of well-worn shoes.”  Easy to fit in here.  Do a bit of shopping.  Stop in a pub.  Make a hundred friends.  Sketch out the plot for your first novel.  You can always marvel at the crusty vellum (calfskin) text of The Book of Kells (800 A.D.) at Trinity College later, or read about the long hard road to Irish independence and visit those sites where Irish statehood was written in blood and tears.  See Dublin Castle and The Garden of Remembrance.  Don't neglect those. But, first, let’s rub elbows down tha pub, have a pint of your favorite, and breathe some air in Dublin’s fair city.

Butler's also offers tours of the factory

From the Book of Kells

A Little bit of Ireland, A Lot of Guinness

If you don't acquire this taste, you'll never forgive yourself.

Dublin.  Only one thing you need to remember:  Guinness.  Oh sure, there’s a castle, a cathedral, a history that dates back to the murdering, marauding, plundering, pillaging Vikings.  There are the uprisings against British rule that led to independence.  Sorry, no time for all that, once I get beer on my mind.  Speaking of historic dates, only one of those you need to remember:  1759. 

Barley

Guinness and 1759.  They dovetail.  It was 1759 when Arthur Guinness purchased a run-down brewery at St James Gate and took out a 9,000 year lease, at 45 £ per year.  That’s what I call confidence.

All began over some burned barley.  Ever seen barley?  Ever tasted barley?  Know what the hell barley is???  Let’s set the record straight.  First off, you undereducated inebriate, barley is a grain and to see it growing, you wouldn’t know whether you were looking at barley or wheat.  Secondly, you swilling swine, you only need four ingredients to brew beer and barley is one of them.  The other three are hops, yeast, and water.  Guinness adds a bit of a twist, using both malted and un-malted barley.  What does malted mean?  It means the barley was drenched with water and allowed to sprout before being dried. 

A factoid:  Guinness uses 100,000 tons of Irish barley every year.

How about the water?  Legend has it that Guinness is brewed with water from the River Liffey, which flows right through the center of Dublin.  Legend has it wrong.  The eight million liters of water that flow through the Guinness Brewery each day comes from the Wicklow Mountains, right above the city. Wicklow water has a low mineral content, which is another thing in its favor.

Factoid:  Water, in brewing terms, is called liquor.

Then there are the other two ingredients:  Yeast and hops.  Unlike barley, hops grows in fifteen foot strands of greenery.  Harvested by cutting off great ropes of the stuff, it’s then fed through a machine that separates the little cabbage-like balls that will add spice and bitterness to the brew.

Yeast adds the magic.  The little yeast beasts multiply and feed off the sugar of the barley and hops to produce alcohol.  The Egyptians, of pyramid fame, first used yeast and no beer (or whiskey, for that matter) would be complete without it.  Different types of beers generally use specific strains of yeast, although frequent readers of my blog will know that the Belgians are content to use whatever yeast happens to drift in.

See how quickly you can graduate to being a well-informed drunk?  Education is everything.  Well, you also need confidence and foresight.  Those two got me stumped.  I can only do so much.

But, forget about me for the moment and get back to Guinness.  Arthur heard about a man who had over-roasted his barley.  But, instead of throwing it away, the man went ahead with the brewing.  That led to a solidly dark beer, sold inexpensively to porters working at the Dublin docks, hence the name for dark beer:  Porter.   Arthur did the brew one better and called his creation Stout Porter.  At St James Gate, they brew about three million pints ever day.  The porter part was later dropped and now in over a hundred and fifty countries people happily raise a glass of Guinness Stout.  It’s not for nothing that the saying goes:  There’s a little bit of the Irish in all of us.

The self-guided tour is a wonder in itself.  The old part of the brewery, with equipment dating back to the turn of the 19^th Century, is rearranged, with huge photos and videos, running waterfalls, numerous descriptions of the brewing process and something I found particularly fascinating, a video of barrel makers at work.  Sadly, Guinness is no longer stored and taken to market in wooden barrels, but for centuries, men chopped and shaped oak, all by hand, and almost without measuring.  At the height of wooden barrel usage, 300 artisans turned out a thousand barrels a day.  A few decades ago, Guinness graduated to steel kegs.  Easier to produce and store and much easier to ship.

So, you’ve had your tour and are ready for the tasting.  Best place to do that is the 7^th floor, offering not only a delicious pint, but also a panoramic view of the brewery’s 50 acres, and the entire city of Dublin.

50 acres of brewery....And Beyond!

 

Ok, I admit that Guinness, as black as ink and spiced with the bitterness of hops, is an acquired taste.  Matter of fact, it took me almost 30 seconds to acquire it, about half the time it takes to pull a pint.  The dark brew washes into the bottom of the glass and bubbles rush to the top, so tiny it’s almost like watching a dark kaleidoscope.  The barkeep adds a bit more.  You wait.  Then there’s the top-off and you’re ready to become a devotee of one of the tastiest and most storied brews on earth.  The Guinness team likes to say, besides everything else there’s a fifth ingredient in their brew, a little bit of


Arthur, who dreamed big in 1759 and
bequeathed his dream to all of us.

So here’s to you Arthur, and here’s to your creation.  Cheers! Or, as the Scots say, Slainte Mhor!

7th Floor Tasting Room

Pulling a Pint

...patience now...