Visitors for Sunday Lunch

Ordinarily when we have visitors for Sunday Lunch I roast something. But when the visitors are coming from Nottingham on the bus roasting can be a bit risky. Buses are notoriously unreliable and roasts are not entirely forgiving if they are left in the oven too long. So I decided to make a steak and ale pie, for pies don't take very long to cook once they are assembled.

So I browned some strips of stewing beef and put them in the slow cooker on Saturday evening along with some caramelised onions and chopped tomatoes. I brought to the boil a pint of Ruddles County ale and some gravy I had left over from Friday evening and then added that and set the slow cooker and left it to its own devices.

On Sunday morning I made a batch of short crust pastry and put that in the fridge. Then I ambled out into the garden and collected some sweet corn, some carrots and some rainbow chard or silverbeet. The Builder peeled lots of potatoes to which I added some chopped pumpkin.

The bus, you will not be surprised to hear, was late and so, therefore were the visitors. I put the pie into a moderate oven for 30 minutes and set the potatoes and pumpkin to boil a little after. The vegetables went on a little after that, with the chard leaves thrown in like spinach towards the end of the cooking time.  I mashed the potatoes and pumpkin and we had pie, mash and veg with a little extra gravy that I had made up.  It was extremely tasty.

I had been a bit puzzled about what to do for afters, but thought that steamed puddings are extremely forgiving if left in longer than necessary, as long as you keep the water topped up.  So I made a basic steamed pudding mix and added the zest of a lemon and the juice of half a lemon. I put some stewed plums in the bottom of the pudding basin, added the pudding mix on top and set it to steam happily.  We had it with some home made vanilla ice cream that I had in the fridge. I was going to make a cinnamon custard but we have, for the first time in over a year - Run Out Of Eggs!!!!!!!!!  But the ice cream did quite nicely. And next time I'll put more plums in the pudding basin.

So that was Sunday lunch.  There is enough of the steak and ale stew left for tonight and maybe even tomorrow. And there's quite a bit of mashed potato and pumpkin left too. Cottage pie it is, then