More pie. Chicken and pork this time

I was reading Monty and Sarah Don's book Fork to fork last week and they had a recipe for a raised pie made with hot water pastry.  It was more or less Christmas fare, but I thought I might try a variation on it for our cold collation Sunday lunch yesterday.

Ham, chicken then sage

The quantities of fat and flour looked to me as though they would make a pie large enough to feed an entire battalion, so I cut them down a bit.  Plus I decided to try half and half butter and lard.  So I put 200g of butter and 200g of lard in my mixing bowl and added a mug of boiling water and whisked until the fat had melted into the water.  I then added enough plain flour to make a very soft and fluffy dough.  Instead of rolling it out, I buttered my springed cake dish and then spread the pastry out around the dish by hand, pressing and firming and pressing and firming (I left a bit aside for the lid!)

Followed by sausage meat

I took the fillets from a small chicken and sliced the meat very thinly.  And I minced some pork shoulder steaks and made it into sausage meet with grated bramley apple, a healthy quantity of breadcrumbs and some apple juice.

Another layer of chicken

Then I layered my pie, starting with slices of ham, then some chicken meat, some sage leaves, sausage meat, more chicken, more sausage and finally a layer of ham.  I meant to add an extra layer of sage leaves - but forgot ;-(

And another of sausage

After covering the pie with its lid I covered it with several layers of baking parchment and baked it at 170d for 2 hours. Then I removed the parchment and left it in until the lid had browned to a golden colour.

A final layer of ham

We had it sat on the patio under the gazebo, and after the seafood soup for a Sunday lunch cold collation with a garden salad (from the garden :-) ), a pea and broad bean salad (also from the garden) and buttered new potatoes. We finished up with home made raspberry ripple ice cream and  gooseberries stewed in elderflower cordial and honey.

The pie, after being baked for 2.5 hours

There wasn't a whole lot left after lunch!