Winter Comfort Food

Posted by Kathryn @ 11:33 AM

As some of you may know, Pittsburgh gets rather cold in the winter. It definitely feels like soup or stew weather most of the time, so when I was watching Jamie Oliver's most recent series and he did a Guinness Steak and Cheese pie, my head almost spun. It combined three of the great food loves of my life- pie, cheese, and Guinness. I simply had to make the recipe.

Of course then I struggled to find an actual copy of the recipe. Usually www.foodnetwork.com has the recipes, but apparently Jamie has not officially released this particular dish, so I found a backup source.

The recipe is lacking in some specifics. I used about a pound of mushrooms and a11/2 pounds of brisket in my stew. I also threw in extra flour because several reviews remarked that it gets a bit runny. Next time though I would just not add any additional stock or water on top of the beer. Since there are just two of us at home I also decided to make 1 smaller pie and freeze the extra filling for future pies. For a 1/3 of the stew you need 1 sheet of pepperidge farm puff pastry. I know I know, Dufour is far superior, but not as readily available, so this attempt was with the Pepperidge farm. It was divine. Everyone should try it. I just can't say enough for this recipe.