Spanish Tortilla with Asparagus

I've made tortillas before, but this is the first time I've put anything in besides potatoes and onions. In spite of the fact that recipes for tortilla often claim that other vegetables can be added, I never saw tortillas with anything but potato and onion when we were in Spain.  Still, asparagus makes a great addition!

If we had found a tortilla with asparagus in it in Spain, the asparagus would almost certainly have been white. As we walked through the spring countryside, we saw fields full of black plastic rows weighted down with old tires - that was where asparagus was being grown. The Spanish seem to only like it white, and rather overcooked to my taste. The asparagus in this tortilla should be cooked a little past crunchy - it should meld with the other ingredients - but it should still be bright green and perky though.

4 servings
45 minutes prep time

8 large eggs
675 grams (1 1/2 pounds) potatoes
1/4 cup sunflower or olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
450 grams (1 pound) asparagus
5 to 6 garlic scapes
OR 3 to 4 green onions
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk them lightly. Set them aside at room temperature as you prepare the rest of the dish.

Scrub the potatoes and trim them of any bad spots. Cut them into dice. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, and add the potatoes. Sprinkle them with the salt, and cook them, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes. Keep them covered for most of the time.

Meanwhile, put a small pot of water on to boil for the asparagus and preheat the oven to 350°F. Wash and trim the asparagus. Cut it into bite-sized pieces. Simmer it for 4 or 5 minutes, then drain well. If you like, keep the tips separate to sprinkle them over the top as a garnish.

Trim the garlic scapes or green onions, and chop them finely. Add them to the potatoes after they have cooked for about 15 minutes. Immediately add the well-drained asparagus as well, and mix them in well. Remove the pan from the heat, and pour the eggs evenly over the vegetables. Top with the asparagus tips if they have been saved for that purpose.

Bake the tortilla at 375°F for 10 to 12 minutes, until just set. Let cool for at least half an hour before serving warm, or at room temperature.

Pea Shoots with Oyster Mushrooms

I think I make a pea, mushroom and allium dish every spring. There are enough variations in both peas and mushrooms that they all seem a bit different.

This one could perhaps even have been done all through the winter, if you can find someone growing pea shoots as a micro-green. I have to say, though, that I would really prefer to make this with pea shoots picked at the dau-miu stage, which is to say less stem and more leaflet, but nobody seems to be growing them as such, at least not around here. C'mon, farmers! Get with the programme. In theory, I could pick them as such from my own garden, but I can never bring myself to diminish the pea harvest in that way!

4 servings
15 minutes prep time

1 teaspoon arrowroot or cornstarch
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons water
300 grams (10 ounces) oyster mushrooms
6 cups loosely packed pea shoots
3 to 4 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon mild vegetable oil

Mix the arrowroot, soy sauce, vinegar, and water in a small bowl and set it aside.

Trim the tough stems from the mushrooms and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Rinse and pick over the pea shoots, and drain them well. Peel and mince the garlic.

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. Cook the mushrooms until softened and slightly browned, then mix in the garlic. Mix in the pea shoots, turning them to get them cooking down evenly. When they are mostly wilted, stir up the sauce well then pour it over the vegetables. Mix it in well, and continue cooking and stirring until the pea shoots and mushrooms are done to your liking. 





Last year at this time I made Seedy Chicken Salad with Sweet Sesame Dressing. 

Asparagus Mushroom Salad with Mustard-Miso Mayonnaise Dressing

Another day, another asparagus salad. This one is fairly different from the last one. For one thing, it's much quicker and simpler, although it is also more of a side salad than a meal in itself.

I really liked the dressing. and it was super quick and easy to make. I was afraid it might be too salty when I tasted it, but once it was tossed into the vegetables it was just right.

4 to 6 servings
20 minutes prep time

Make the Dressing:
1 teaspoon dark miso
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/3 cup mayonnaise

In a small bowl, dissolve the miso in the vinegar, then mix in the mustard. Mix in the mayonnaise. Set aside.

Make the Salad:
450 grams (1 pound) fresh asparagus
225 grams (1/2 pound) button mushrooms
1 green onion
4 to 6 lettuce leaves

Put a pot of water on to boil. Wash and trim the asparagus, and cut it into small bite-sized pieces. Add them to the boiling water, and cook until tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Drain and rinse in cool water, then drain them very well and blot them dry.

Meanwhile, clean and slice the mushrooms. Trim and mince the onion. Wash the lettuce leaves and dry them well.

Arrange the lettuce in a serving bowl, or in individual serving dishes. Toss the asparagus, mushrooms and green onions with the dressing, and spoon them over the lettuce.

Asparagus, Bacon, & Avocado Pasta Salad with Tangy Avocado Dressing

We do love a good meal-in-a-salad, and this was a great one. Our garden is still churning out frightening amounts of lettuce, and the asparagus is still going strong. Avocados, I admit, are not local, but they go so very well with the other ingredients. On that note, I also have to say that I think lemon juice would have been better than the apple cider vinegar, but the vinegar was what we had. It was certainly just fine!

It's a good idea to cut both avocados at once, and choose the softer one for the salad dressing.

This is a much more vegetably salad than most pasta salads, although not quite so much as the photo makes it appear - I sprinkled the asparagus over the top before I tossed it into the salad, but for some reason all the lettuce seemed to end up on top too. It does tend to float, I guess, so dig deep into the bowl when you are serving it up.

4 to 6 servings
45 minutes prep time - 30 minutes of which may be done in advance

Advance Preparation:
250 grams (1/2 pound) stubby pasta
250 grams (1/2 pound) fresh asparagus
250 grams (1/2 pound) lean bacon


Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and boil the pasta until tender. Meanwhile, wash, trim, and chop the asparagus into bite-sized pieces. Add them to the pasta when it has about 5 minutes more to cook. Drain them both and rinse them in cold water to cool. Drain well.

Cut the bacon into bite-sized pieces, and cook them until crisp in a skillet over medium heat. Drain well.

The pasta, asparagus and bacon can be cooked up to a day ahead, and kept, covered, in the refrigerator until  you are ready to proceed.  

Make the Salad:
1 small head butterhead (aka Boston or Bibb) lettuce
1 large tomato
1 large ripe avocado

Wash the lettuce well, and chop it fairly finely. Wash the tomato and chop it finely. Cut the avocado in  half, and discard the pit. Cut each half through the flesh to the skin, with horizontal and vertical cuts, then use a large, fairly sharp-edged spoon to remove the resulting bite-sized pieces from the skin. Add the avocado pieces to the lettuce and tomato in a large salad bowl.

Mix in the prepared pasta, asparagus, and bacon. 

Make the Dressing:
1 large ripe avocado
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar OR the juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cut the avocado in half, discarding the pit. Scoop out the flesh and and mash it thoroughly. Mix it in a small bowl with the buttermilk, apple cider or lemon juice, the salt, and the pepper.

Toss the salad with the salad dressing just before serving.




Last year at this time I made Asparagus Pesto and Rhubarb Meringue Trifle. 

Usual Manic Spring Gardening Post with Extra Bonus Chaos

So, here we are at the time of year when almost all of the spring planting should be done, and we should be moving into the time of weeding, watering, and whacking.

From a distance, things don't look too bad. Most of the main garden beds are planted. Trellises are behind, with only two put up, but overall things look fairly neat and appear to be moving along.

The spinach is going to seed, but the garlic looks lovely. Soon there will be garlic scapes. Beyond them, the peas, which were planted before the great Dadastrophe, are starting to flower. These are 3 beds of short determinate peas to be pulled and frozen, and the beds replanted with beans sometime around the beginning of July. There are also 2 beds of tall, later peas (with the trellises) which will be in for all season, or as long as they last anyway.

The lettuce has recovered from being pruned by the rabbit first thing in the spring, and the rabbit doesn't seem to have been back for seconds. Maybe it got eaten, I say hopefully. At any rate we are now eating lots and lots of salads.

Tomatoes still look pretty dinky, but they are in, and have generally doubled in size in the last week.

We have a number of beds covered with hoop-houses partly because they contain heat loving plants like sweet potatoes, peanuts, melons, peppers, and eggplants, and partly because we direct seeded many of those things instead of starting them inside in pots and planting them out and got a new problem.

We set little half toilet paper tubes around each set of seeds, to keep them from being destroyed by cut worms. However, a few days after we planted them, when they were starting to germinate, a crow (we're pretty sure, given the diabolical cleverness exhibited and the lack of footprints) discovered the seeds  under a tube, then deduced that this meant there were treats under all the tubes, and methodically went through the garden, destroying about three-quarters of the tubes and eating probably about half the seeds. We had to go through and check and replant pretty much everything. Now we will keep them covered until they are too large to be of interest to the crows.

Carrots have been planted. We lifted up the row-cover and weeded today, and then replanted all the bare spots, which amounted to about half the bed. Ho hum. Carrots are amazingly fussy when small, and I think they missed getting watered on one day at a crucial point. The onions, behind them, are doing fairly well.

The spinach is mostly over, as it is rapidly running to seed. You can see the potato sprouts coming up under them - we planted both potatoes and spinach in the fall, and it is a great system. I'll yank the spinach in the next day or so and freeze it, and then the potatoes can come up unimpeded.

In spite of the cold winter all of our kiwi plants look somewhere between very good and still alive, and I'd rate 10 out of 12 of them as very good. Maybe they will actually do some growing this year!

Haskap blossoms are almost over already; I could only find a few hidden ones to photograph - berries should be ready to eat in a few weeks! We will have to remember to drape them with cloth when they start to ripen. The birds have figured out that they are tasty.

Strawberries are in full bloom, and judging by the number or blossoms it should be a bumper year for strawberries - even better than last year, when they were extremely plentiful but could have used a bit more heat to make them sweeter.

Now for the bad news. There are all kinds of spots that are barely started. This is just one of three long vegetable beds that are still full of weeds. It will probably take a day each to weed them, and really, they should have been planted last week. With plants started indoors in late April. Instead, we will have to direct seed.

Also, rain. As in, there isn't any. Forecast is calling for thunderstorms scattered showers today, but they have scaled back their promises predictions considerably, and I will believe it when I see it at any rate. Our shallow well will go dry very shortly, and we will have to switch to watering with metered water. Watering is very time consuming as well as expensive, and means we are not doing other things that we would like to be doing. At least the lawn won't need quite so much mowing.

Aaaand the raspberry beds; oops.  All the perennial fruit beds are in terrible shape. Sufficient weeding has just not happened this spring, and I don't see how it can happen, given how behind we are on getting the annual vegetable beds planted. Mr. Ferdzy covered up some of the wet beds today; we are either not going to plant them at all or we are just going to let what is in them (leeks and parsnips) go to seed.

We have given up the idea of planting any brassicas to speak of. When we realized we were so far behind and that this this summer will be so full of family obligations that we will lose the equivalent of almost 2 gardening days a week in addition to the month we have already lost, we decided that something had to go. This is the plan we have come up with. Brassicas have done so very poorly for us the last few years anyway. They are being replaced with some of the things that are not going to go into the wet beds; leeks, celery, and celeriac in particular.

I am trying to to be philosophical about all this, but I admit to feeling kind of depressed and cranky. Honestly, even with all the problems and extra work we are having I lead a pretty easy life compared to a lot of people so I also feel kind of guilty about feeling depressed and cranky. But there it is. This is not going to be the summer I expected, and things will have to be let go.

Spinach & Asparagus with Paneer

Well, we are about 3 weeks behind in getting things into the garden, so as usual for May there isn't much time to cook or post! Still, I have that big package of paneer in the fridge, and spinach and asparagus from the garden, and a ton of garlic left from last year to use up...so here it goes, and very good too. You could serve this with rice, or pasta, or even on toast.

4 servings
1 hour prep time

1 teaspoon cumin seed
2 teaspoons coriander seed

1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh ginger
4 to 5 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 bunch spinach (about 6 cups loosely packed)
250 grams ( 1/2 pound) asparagus
300 grams paneer
2 tablespoons mild vegtable oil
1 cup yogurt
1 teaspoon arrowroot or cornstarch

Toast the cumin seed, coriander seed, and black peppercorns in a dry skillet until fragrant. Turn them into a dish to cool, then grind them. Mix them with the salt and Aleppo pepper and set aside.

Peel and mince the ginger and garlic. Wash the spinach, and pick it over, discarding any yellowed leaves or tough stems. Rinse again and drain it very well. Chop it roughly. Wash and trim the asparagus, and cut it into bite-sized pieces. Cut the paneer into bite-sized slices.

Use a little of the oil to grease a large, heavy skillet. Heat it over medium-high heat, then cook the paneer pieces for a few minutes on each side, until well browned. Remove them and set them aside.

Add the remaining oil (about 1 1/2 tablespoons) to the pan, and cook the asparagus until it just turns colour to a brighter green. Add the ginger, garlic, and spices, and mix in well, cooking for another minute or two. Add the very well drained spinach, and cook until it is completely wilted, turning it and mixing it to cook it evenly.

Mix the arrowroot into the yogurt, then mix it into the pan of vegetables. Mix in the paneer slices, and continue simmering and stirring occasionally very gently until everything is well amalgamated and looks done to your liking - at the very least, the cheese should be thoroughly hot again.





Last year at this time I made Poached Eggs & Asparagus on Grilled Cheese Toasts. 

Pasta with Green Onions & Cheese

Usually when I make pasta, I aim to get the sauce ready in about the same time that it takes to get a pot of water boiling and the pasta cooked. It's our fast, emergency dinner, after all! However, for this one I would get everything, or almost everything chopped up first before I even turned on the water - there's a lot of chopping here.

I really liked the mint in this. I have a big patch of mint and always think I should use it more than I do. I used paneer, since we went to Costco this week and I bought a big, big block of the stuff - so there will be more. 

2 to 3 servings
45 minutes prep time

4 cups finely chopped green onions
2 cups finely chopped spinach
1 cup finely chopped fresh mint
1 cup finely chopped parsley
1 cup finely chopped green garlic
OR 3-4 cloves of garlic
250 grams (1/2 pound) dry pasta
300 grams (10 ounces) paneer, halloumi, or feta cheese
2 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
salt & freshly ground black pepper
1/8 to 1/2 teaspoon flaked Aleppo pepper

Wash, trim, and finely chop the green onions, spinach, mint, and parsley. Mince the green garlic, or peel and mince the garlic cloves. Put a large pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta. Cut the cheese into bite-sized cubes; if you use feta cheese rinse and drain it well first.

When the pasta goes into the pot, heat  a large skillet, over medium-high heat. It should be lightly oiled, but just enough to keep the cheese from sticking. Add the paneer or halloumi cubes, and cook, turning after a few minutes, until lightly browned all over.

Add the remaining oil then add the green onions and cook them, stirring, until wilted. Add the spinach and mint, and continue cooking and stirring until they too are wilted. Add the garlic greens or garlic, and mix in well. Season with the salt and pepper, and sprinkle with the Aleppo or similar not too hot chile pepper - Korean pepper would be about right too. Continue to cook and stir the greens for the remaining few minutes until the pasta is done.

Drain the pasta, and add it to the pan of greens. Or, if it won't fit into the skillet, return it to the pot in which it was cook, and mix the greens into it. If you are using feta as your cheese, add it now. Either way, mix them until well combined, and serve it up.

Sorrel & Spinach Soup with Poached Eggs

Well, I have to admit this uses too damned many pots for a simple bowl of soup, but still, it's a very nice soup.

I am always so dubious when I pick my sorrel - it looks kind of tough and weedy, and the slugs have been at it. When you cook it, it turns kind of brownish, so it's best to mix it with spinach and/or onions as I did here, to keep the colour looking appetising. How can this be good? And yet it is! It's so sprightly, fresh and lemony, and tastes like spring in a bowl! I am on a mission to get people eating more sorrel. It's such an easy early spring green, and perennial too. It should be more widely available. But if you can't find it to buy, then maybe grow some yourself.

4 to 6 servings
30 minutes prep time

2 large (450 grams; 1 pound) potatoes
4 cups packed fresh sorrel leaves
4 cups packed fresh spinach leaves
3 to 4 cups chopped green onions
4 to 6 spears of asparagus (optional)
4 to 6 small eggs
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 teaspoon salt
plenty of freshly ground black pepper
1 cup chicken broth or water
1 cup plain yogurt

Scrub the potatoes, and trim or peel them. Cut them into dice, and put them in a large pot with water to cover them generously.

Wash and pick over the sorrel and spinach. Soak them both in cold salted water if you think they may harbour insects. Drain them well and chop them roughly, keeping them separate. Clean and trim the green onions, and chop them roughly as well. Wash and trim the asparagus and cut each spear into 3 or 4 pieces, if you wish to garnish your soup with asparagus.

Bring the potatoes to a boil and boil them for 10 minutes. Break the eggs in gently with the potatoes to cook them to your liking - 3 to 4 minutes for a soft egg; 8 minutes for a hard egg, or somewhere in between. Throw the asparagus in to cook with the potatoes as well at the point where there are 2 to 4 minutes left of cooking, depending on how well-done you like your asparagus.

Meanwhile, heat the butter in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Add the green onions, and cook until wilted. Add the spinach and cook it until wilted. Mix well. Add the sorrel, and cook until it too is wilted.

Transfer the vegetables to a blender, and add the broth or water, and the yogurt. Blend until combined, but still retaining a little texture. Pour the soup back into the soup pot, and bring it back up to a simmer.

Lift the eggs and asparagus from the boiled potatoes, and set them aside. Drain the potatoes and add them to the soup; mash them in roughly if you like, or leave them in cubes. Serve up the soup, adding an egg and a few pieces of asparagus to the top of each bowl of soup.




Last year at this time I made Rhubarb Mousse Pie. 

Rhubarb - Orange Gelatine

It seems like the change from the dregs of the last year to the start of the next season happens in a twinkling. We are now picking rhubarb, asparagus, spinach, lettuce, green onions, chives, and sorrel from the garden. Or would be, if we had any time.

Dad has been a time-absorbing guest. He has a cowbell to summon aid, and it sounds at all hours of the night and day. Between his physical pain and his mental and emotional turmoil, we are all utterly exhausted. I'm typing this up as a Red Cross worker is here to help with his personal care. They come in for 20 minutes to half an hour twice a day, and they have seriously saved my sanity. On Tuesday morning he will go into the local nursing home and we look forward to being able to deal with other things in our lives - even his other disasters - and to visiting him as a pleasure again and not as a never-ending chore.

Meanwhile, this was a quick and easy dessert to make. The texture was more soft and pudding-like than jelly-like, but none the worse for that. Orange juice goes very well with rhubarb, sweetening and mellowing it.

6 servings
20 minutes prep time; 2 hours (at least) set time

4 cups diced raw rhubarb
1 cup orange juice
3/4 cup sugar
another 1/2 cup orange juice
4 teaspoons granulated gelatine

Wash and trim the rhubarb, and cut it into short pieces. Put it in a large pot with 1 cup orange juice and the sugar. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the rhubarb disintegrates. Stir regularly.

Meanwhile, put the remaining orange juice into a quart bowl or mold. Sprinkle the gelatine evenly over it.

When the rhubarb is sufficiently cooked, remove the pan from the heat. Slowly stir the contents of the pot into the soaked gelatine in the bowl or jelly mold. Stir well to ensure the gelatine is completely dissolved.

Let the mixture cool slightly, then place it in the fridge until it is completely set; at least 2 hours, although overnight is best. Serve from the bowl, or unmold the gelatine by dipping the mold briefly into warm water to the brim (but don't get the jelly wet!) then flipping it onto a plate.




Last year at this time I made Carrot Soup with Dill & Chives, and The Strata of Montecristo.

Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

I hope you can still find some local carrots. I have a bin full, because we dug our overwintered ones up just before everything went crazy.

These worked out really well. I often find things made with ground turkey can get awfully dry, but the toasted barley flour added a little depth to the flavour and kept them moist too. Serve them with mashed potatoes, pasta, or rice; we had ours with polenta and I really liked that a lot. 

6 servings
45 minutes prep time

1/2 cup barley flour
500 grams (1 pound) ground turkey
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon rubbed oregano
1 teaspoon sweet Hungarian paprika
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh chives or green onion
2 cups finely grated carrots
3 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
2 cups grated carrots (again!)
1 large onion
OPTIONAL 1/2 green or red pepper, OR a handful of mushrooms 
4 cups tomato sauce

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat, and put in the barley flour to toast. Stir it constantly until it is a light tan or buff colour. It will take a few minutes before anything starts to happen, and then it will toast quite quickly. As soon as it is a good even colour, dump it into a large mixing bowl right away to cool.

Add the ground turkey, break in the eggs, add the salt, oregano, paprika, chopped chives and finely grated carrots. Mix it all well, by hand or with a large wooden spoon, until thoroughly blended.

Form the mixture into 24 or 36 meatballs, putting them out on a large plate or a sheet of parchment paper as  you form them.

Grate the remaining carrots, and peel and chop the onion. Trim and chop the green or red pepper, or mushrooms, if you are using them. 

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the meatballs until they are evenly browned, turning them to achieve that. Remove them back to the plate or paper as they are browned. 

Heat the remaining oil in the skillet. Add the remaining grated carrots, and the chopped onion. Add the peppers or mushrooms if using. Cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are softened and slightly cooked down. Add the tomato sauce, then return the browned meatballs to the sauce. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the meatballs are cooked through - about 15 to 20 minutes. Serve with polenta, rice, or pasta.

Oyster Mushrooms in Oyster Sauce

Here's a quick and simple little thing that came out of my experiments with the Steak and Mushroom Pie. This would make a great topping to steaks or chops, chicken or fish, tofu, rice or pasta. It's as fast and easy as can be, and once the mushrooms and garlic are prepared it will be cooked in under 5 minutes, so don't start cooking it until everything else is just about ready to go to the table.

Unlike this dish, life is pretty complicated around here at the moment. I'm fine; now it's Dad's partner who is having health problems. He's in the hospital with pneumonia and Guillain-Barré syndrome, so I was down at Dad's house for a week. Changes are coming to their lifestyle, ready or not - and unfortunately, they are mostly not ready. I begin a new career of herding cats, or at least Dad. Trevor is not going anywhere for a while. Unfortunately, I am a bad cat-herder, and Dad fell down stairs when I was supposed to be watching him. Nothing broken, but he is in a lot of pain. In short, posting is going to be intermittant around here again for a while.

2 servings
15 minutes prep time

200 grams (1/2 pound) oyster mushrooms
3 to 4 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon oyster sauce

Clean (but they should be quite clean) the mushrooms, and trim off the stems where they become tough and woody. Cut the mushrooms into bite-sized pieces if they are large. Peel and mince the garlic.

Just before you are ready to serve the rest of the meal, heat the butter in medium-sized skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and stir them about and cook them for a minute or two. Add the garlic, and continue cooking and stirring for about 1 minutes. Add the oyster sauce, mix it in well, and continue cooking until the mushrooms look done to your liking. That will likely be just a minute or two more. That's it; serve them up!

Steak & Mushroom Pie

When I made Steak & Kidney Pie a couple weeks back, I thought I had better have a back-up, just in case somebody didn't eat kidneys. Somebody like Mr. Ferdzy, in fact. Sigh. So, I made a classic steak and mushroom pie to go with it. 

When I went to buy the mushrooms, my eyes were caught by some lovely oyster mushrooms. I have never really used them all that much for some reason, but I bought them, and liked them, and now I am on a tear! There's going to be more oyster mushroom recipes, is what I'm saying.

Even though oyster mushrooms really don't taste like oysters (I guess someone thought they looked a bit like them), oysters were a pretty traditional addition to steak pies back in the days when oysters were cheap and plentiful. Consequently, when it came time to add some seasonings to the pie, I thought oyster sauce would do very well, which it did!

6 servings
1 hour 45 minutes - 45 minutes prep time

Make the Filling:
700 grams (1 1/2 pounds) round steak
450 grams (1 pound) oyster mushrooms
2 large shallots
3 to 4 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
1 tablespoon flour
2 teaspoons savory
 freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 to 1 1/2 cups beef broth
1/4 cup tomato paste or thick tomato sauce
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons oyster sauce

Cut the steak into bite-sized pieces, trimming off any bits of fat or gristle, and discarding any bone. Clean the mushrooms, and trim off the stems where they become tough and woody. If any are too large to be eaten in one piece, cut them up accordingly. Peel and chop the shallots, and peel and mince the garlic.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Brown the steak pieces on both sides, then add the mushrooms and continue cooking and mixing, until the mushrooms are softened and slightly browned as well. Add the shallots, and cook to soften them, then add the garlic.

Once the garlic has been in for a minute or two, add the flour, savory, and pepper. When they are sufficiently mixed in that no white can be seen from the flour, add 1 cup of the beef broth, the tomato paste, the vinegar, and the oyster sauce.

Simmer the mixture for about 30 minutes, stirring regularly. Add a little more broth if the mixture becomes too thick. Taste and add a little more salt or pepper, if you think it requires it.

Place the stewed beef mixture in a 10" pie plate, and spread it out evenly.

The stew can be made a day ahead, and the crust added and baked the next day if you like. In that case, keep it covered and refrigerated, and let it sit out for half an hour to warm a little before the crust goes on and it is baked.

To bake, preheat the oven to 350°F.


Make the Crust: 
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup mild vegetable oil
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

The butter should be very soft. Mix it with the oil and buttermilk. The butter can be in fairly large lumps.

Mix the baking powder and salt into the flour.

Mix the flour into the wet ingredients. Stir until everything is amalgamated. There should no longer be large lumps of butter, but small lumps or streaks are not only fine, but good.

Put the dough out on a piece of parchment or waxed paper a little larger than the pie plate, and roll out the dough until it will cover the pie plate.

When you are ready to cover the pie, lift the paper to the edge of the pie, and turn it over so the dough sits on top of it. Peel off the paper and discard it. Poke holes in the dough with a fork to allow steam to escape.

Bake the pie at 350°F for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how warm (or not) it was when it went into the oven. The crust should be nicely browned and the filling hot and bubbling.