Using leftovers for a classic comfort food
The Prudent Carnivore, Part I
Meat Pies
By Shannon Hayes, author of The Farmer and the Grill, and The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook
“Grassfed meats are too expensive!”
“How are poor people supposed to buy your food?”
“$42 for a pork roast? Forget it.”
Sound familiar? Grassfed and pastured meat farmers are forever defending our entitlement to a living wage in exchange for our labors. And there are a lot of issues out there making it a monumental battle for us: factory farms can produce meat cheaper and faster by taking advantage of farm bill subsidies, antibiotics, hormones, confinement and massive economies of scale; in exchange, they demand that our planet absorb the ecological costs, and that the livestock and our families suffer the health ramifications.
In all fairness, however, Americans’ pocketbooks are hurting. The average family shells out $8,000 per year per car (with those costs rising daily), we’re in debt, and our healthcare costs are astronomical. The food, at least, should be cheap, right?
Heck, no. Like many grassfarmers out there, I am raising my family on a very modest income. If we want to fix our economic woes, then we need to resolve our healthcare crisis, we need environmentally responsible transportation options, we need living wages, and we need to cut up the credit cards. When it comes to our food, we don’t need to make it cheaper – that’s already caused too much trouble. We need to learn to use it properly.
In 2003, anthropologist Timothy Jones completed a several year study examining food flows and food losses in the United States, and revealed that 40% of the food grown in this country is lost or thrown away. Jones estimated that this waste cost our economy $100 billion dollars annually, and that households contribute nearly $43 billion dollars to this figure. (1) On average, 14% of our household garbage was perfectly good food, in its original packaging, not out-of-date.
We are not making prudent use of our food. To enjoy more sustainable cuisine, to ensure that our farmers are fairly compensated for their work, Americans need to stop asking farmers to work for less, and instead re-familiarize themselves with the kitchen, and with the principles of thrifty cooking. Some wonderful culinary traditions resurface in this vein, and in the coming months, we’ll begin exploring them here. For today, this leads me to the subject of MEAT PIES. Read on to learn (and taste) more…
1. BioCycle May 2005, Vol. 46, No. 5, p. 6
MEAT PIES
It’s May, and I know I should be sending around recipes for summer salads. But I have a request from Tricia Park at Creekside Meadows Farm to tell you about my latest obsession: Meat Pies. For us farmers, they are as pragmatic in the height of summer as they are in the depths of winter.
Meat pies were regarded as high cuisine back in the Elizabethan era. Chefs in royal households made elaborate concoctions to dazzle their patrons (the nursery rhyme about four and twenty blackbirds springs to mind). The addition of crusts or mashed potatoes, however, helped to feed several mouths on relatively little meat; thus they were popular peasant fare as well. Meat pies appear in cultures around the world — Argentineans feast on empanadas, the Italians have torta pasqualina, the Greeks make spanakopita.. but the most well-known, however, are pork pies from England. The famous pork pies from the English town of Melton Mowbray were even honored by an old poem by Richard La Gallienne:
Strange pie that is almost a passion!
O passion immoral for pie!
Unknown are the ways that they fashion
Unknown and unseen of the eye.
The pie that is marbled and mottled,
The pie that digests with a sigh:
For all is not Bass that is bottled,
And all is not pork that is pie.
In our family, meat pies garner favor because they can be prepared with minimal fuss, they use up all kinds of food scraps (leftover gravy, pan drippings, myriad veggies, and of course…leftover meat), and they are made rich by good hearty meat stock, which contains a wealth of nutrients. I make extra dough and store it in the freezer so that I can whip up a pie whenever I’ve collected ample snippets. Once baked, they store well in the refrigerator, last our young family for at least two meals, and re-warm beautifully in a 200 degree oven (or, better yet, in a solar oven if you have one).
Most pie recipes typically call for ground pork, lamb or beef. Since the emphasis of this series is on prudent consumption, the recipe below actually calls for diced up leftovers – the remains of a Sunday pork roast, bits of chicken from last night’s dinner, or tidbits from a leg of lamb are all delicious. In my opinion, the secret is in the crust. While ordinary pie crusts work fine (and are even more economical to prepare), the recipe below produces a super buttery-flaky-cheesy crust that is unforgettable. To keep things easy, the recipe only calls for a top crust.
Note: If you want to try more meat pie recipes, be sure to check out The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook, as I’ve included several different ones in there!
Shanny’s Favorite Meat Pie
Note: for those of you averse to using flour, you can top the pie with potatoes smashed with liberal amounts of butter, then sprinkled with parmesan cheese.
Parmesan-cheddar pie crust (see recipe, below)
6 tablespoons butter or lard
2 cups diced vegetables (onions, green peppers, carrots, peas, corn, or green beans…even lima beans will all work). Leftover vegetables are fine.
1/2 cup pan drippings and/or leftover gravy — use more if you’ve got it, up to a cup. If you don’t, simply double the amount of butter.
2 tablespoons flour or arrowroot
2 cups meat stock
¼ teaspoon mace
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary, or 3/4 teaspoons fresh
salt and pepper, to taste
2 cups diced leftover meat
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoons water
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Heat 2 tablespoons butter or lard in a skillet over a medium flame. Sauté the fresh vegetables. Once they’re crisp-tender, feel free to add in any leftover vegetables as well, and cook until they are warmed through. Remove them from the pan and set aside. Add the butter and pan drippings or leftover gravy. Heat, stirring constantly, until the butter has melted and is no longer foaming. Sprinkle the flour or arrowroot on top and whisk thoroughly until a paste forms. Slowly pour in the meat stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the flame intensity and simmer until the sauce is thick, about 7 minutes. Mix in the mace, rosemary, salt and pepper. Stir in the diced cooked meat and the vegetables, then pour into a deep-sided pie dish or 9X9 baking pan. Roll out the pie crust on a floured surface until it is 1/4 inch thick, then carefully lay it over the top of the meat and vegetables. Don’t fret if the crust crumbles. Just work it back together and slide it on top. Crimp the edges, then poke a few holes on the surface. Whisk the egg yolk with the water, then brush it over the crust of the pie. Bake 20-25 minutes, or until the crust is lightly browned.
Parmesan Cheddar Pie Crust
I often double this recipe, then store the extra crust in the freezer for another use.
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
¼ pound (one stick) butter
¾ cup cheddar cheese, grated
½ cup parmesan cheese, grated
¼ cup ground walnuts
Combine the flour, salt and baking powder. Dice the butter, then use a pastry cutter or fork to blend it into the flour mixture. Using your hands, thoroughly mix in the cheese and nuts until the mixture forms a solid ball. Chill until ready to use, but allow it to soften at room temperature before rolling it out.
Note: This dough will be quite crumbly when you roll it out. Don’t panic. Nothing has gone wrong. Just push it back together and keep working it.