I have to say that this is not one of
my mother's, in fact it's not a family recipe at all! It's basically the
filling of a pudding without the suet pastry.
Take a pound of steak and kidney.
Roughly chop an onion and two cloves of garlic. Layer them in a stone
crock dish. Traditionally, you would roll the diced steak and kidney
in seasoned flour, then layer them in the crock, and then pour in
enough boiling water to almost cover the mixture. That makes a tasty
enough meal. However, I'd rather add half a pint of gravy, made by
adding half a pint of boiling water to a dessertspoon of gravy
granules, a beef Oxo cube crumbled and a tablespoon of tomato puree,
then stir thoroughly and add Henderson's Relish (or Worcester Sauce
if you have the misfortune not to come from Sheffield). The liquid
should come almost up to the top of the meat mix. Cover and cook in a
very slow oven (about Gas 1 or 2) for at least 3 hours. If you wish,
you could cook it in a slow cooker for over 6 hours. Half an hour
before serving, you may like to add a few halved or quartered
mushrooms.
If you want to have pastry with it, a
nice suet pastry could make a pie crust. It doesn't need to be
steamed, roll it out thin and use it as you would short pastry. Add
the filling after it has been cooked, moisten with the gravy, top
with suet pastry and eggwash. Cook in a medium hot oven (about Gas 7)
for 45 minutes.
To make a Steak and Ale pie, instead of
the gravy mix, just pour half a pint of a well-flavoured beer into
the mix, and add a bayleaf to counter the bitterness of the hops
which becomes more pronounced on cooking. Guinness works well or you
could use a good bitter such as Black Sheep.
It's traditional to serve it with
mashed potatoes and carrots, but a baked potato also goes down really
well with it. Chips are overkill, in my opinion. But you've got to
have something to mop up all that yummy gravy!
