English food gets a bad rap in general. Alright, I’ll never understand baked beans and tomatoes for breakfast but most everything else is very tasty. For years English food has been a punchline and I’ve never understood why. I guess if I lived there I could grow tired of it but as an occasional culinary destination English food is alright in my bloody book.

Do you know what the national dish of England is? Chicken Tikka Masala. This goes back to Britain’s long time rule of India (or “In-jah!” as the locals say) another item to attribute from Britain’s rule of India is the IPA for all of our beer aficionados or Alots. IPA stands for India Pale Ale as I’m sure most of you know, and the varietal was created to allow the beer to survive the long trip from England to India, and also because British sailors liked to get drunk as fuck. The extra hops in the IPA protected the beer against the invasion of outside yeasts. The beer also needed to have some heft to it because of the sloshing around in the barrels while the ships were at sea. I made today’s dish last Sunday and to keep with the general theme of England I had Indian food on Saturday. Not chicken tikka but some spicy chicken vindaloo, garlic naan and some chicken pakoras. I fucking love that stuff.

In my old town of San Pedro, CA located on the L.A. harbor across the harbor from Long Beach, right down the street from where I lived there is an authentic English Pub called The Whale and Ale and this place is fucking awesome. The food is spectacular, there’s a full bar and Andrew, the owner, is one of the nicest English gentlemen I have ever met. Every year for quite awhile we would go there on Christmas Eve for dinner, drinks and revelry. The first couple of years there were only a few tables taken and it was just a comfortable relaxing time. After a few years, word got out and now you need to make a reservation weeks in advance for Christmas Eve. It was on my first Christmas Eve visit that Andrew introduced me to Lagavulin 16.

A single malt Scotch aged 16 years. For those of us who have enjoyed this lovely beverage, and from the comments from the blog there are many Scotch fans here, you know this one is a proper fucking beauty. It’s probably the smokiest single malt that I’ve ever had. Andrew always pours a heavy snifter and during consumption you can trace the journey of the Scotch through your system by it’s heat and by it’s depth of smokiness. I swear you can feel the smoke coming out of your pores for the next hour or two. Delicious.

For dinner we would have crab cakes (I don’t give a fuck if they’re English or not because they are fucking crab cakes and they fucking rule) sausage rolls with Coleman’s mustard:

and for a main dish Beef Wellington!

If you don’t enjoy a medium rare filet mignon, wrapped in puff pastry and served with a mushroom gravy then I’m not sure I can exist in your world.

The point being, I really enjoy English cuisine. A few more examples of English food brings us to today’s menu items:

Steak and Mushroom Pie served with Mushy Peas. 

Oh fuck yes. I’m going to be honest with all of you now, every recipe for every Sunday Gravy post is from a tried and true recipe that I’ve usually made multiple times. This was my first ever effort making this dish. In another moment of honesty I am proud of every recipe I’ve given you and I stand by all of them. Is there a time when I make something and it isn’t quite perfect? Of course. Maybe I’ll slightly overcook something or maybe one of my grilling recipe items needs to be tossed back on the grill for a couple of minutes but many of them are dead, fucking perfect exactly as written.

This is one of those. Motherfucker, this was incredible. What I’m saying is: Make this goddamn dish! As soon as you can!

Steak and Mushroom Pie! Original recipe courtesy of FoodNetwork.com and Emeril Lagasse with only a few very minor variations.

Quick note: this can be made in just a couple of hours but I let the meat/gravy element sit in the refrigerator overnight to allow the flavors to marry thus making this prep a two-dayer.

6 ounces of bacon cut into 1/2″ pieces or “lardons” (I can never use that word without picturing a pig with a boner, I may have mental issues)

1 1/2 to 2 lbs of top sirloin, bottom round steak or chuck roast. I used bottom round, trimmed of fat and cubed.

1 tablespoon of Emeril’s Essence*

1 large brown onion chopped

5-6 cloves of garlic minced

8 ounces of mushrooms cleaned and sliced – recipe calls for button, I used brown mushrooms. Cook’s choice.

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of black pepper

3 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce

1 12 oz bottle of Guinness Extra Stout. Recipe calls for just a dark beer but I had Guinness on hand being a ruddy Irishman and the fact that it was almost St. Paddy’s Day.

2 cups of beef stock. Store bought is OK here.

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon of chopped parsley, some more for a garnish.

1 tablespoon of thyme. Dried is fine. Fresh would be better.

A homemade pastry top (recipe to follow)

1 large beaten egg for brushing on the pastry top.

• * A note on the essence. The linked recipe makes 2/3rds of a cup of essence. Yes, I pretty much always have this on hand because it’s a great all-purpose seasoning mix – try it on fried potatoes or grilled shrimp – and it will last in the kitchen cabinet for months. I’ve used a few Emeril recipes and they are all excellent but whenever he uses essence in a recipe, he will give the recipe that makes 2/3 cup of spices. Down in the comments section which I always read for tips and suggestions, there are always three to four Nobel fucking Prize winners who say “This dish was terrible!!! IT HAD WAY TOO MUCH SALT AND WAS TOO SPICY!! HOW CAN ANYBODY EAT THIS?!!:???” Do you know what these future Darwin Award winners did? They put the entire 2/3 cup of essence into their food instead of using the 1 fucking tablespoon that the recipe called for. This is always a hilarious (an ‘ilarious?) moment to encounter. Don’t be those people and always read the recipe several times all the way through before starting to cook.

Here we go!

Get a large dutch oven and cook some damn bacon. Cook until crispy, then using a slotted spoon remove the bacon bits and refrigerate for later use. Take the cubed and trimmed beef, toss it in the essence to coat and start browning the beef in the bacon fat. I told you this would be awesome! Work in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan.

Brown on all sides for about 5 minutes and then remove the meat from the pan and place in a large bowl. Repeat until all the beef has been browned.

Now go ahead and toss your onions into that bacony, meaty, juicy pan and cook them for about 5-7 minutes or until soft and slightly translucent. Add in the garlic and cook for just a few seconds until you can smell the garlic then add in your mushrooms. You are going to be salivating like Pavlov’s dog right about now what with the onion, garlic, mushroom aroma. Look at that shit right there!

You’re going to keep cooking this amazing thing for about 4-5 minutes until the mushrooms start to wilt some. Next add in the salt, pepper, 3 tablespoons of flour and the Worchestershire then cook for about 2-3 minutes more. Now the beer and the beef stock join the pool party! Add them into the pot and if there are any remaining crispy bits from the meat browning, scrape them up to join everything else. The pot should looks something like this.

Bring this to a boil and add in the bay leaves, parsley and thyme along with the browned meat. Reduce the heat and cook on a slow simmer for 65-75 minutes.

After simmering, remove the bay leaves from the pan and discard them. Let everything else cool and we are going to refrigerate this in the cooled dutch oven overnight. Remember the “flavor marriage” thing? That’s what we are doing.

Now wash your damn dishes, have some drinks, go to the late night open thread and post music videos and we will continue this shit tomorrow after you are properly rested!

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Hey! Welcome back! Did you sleep OK? No? Goddamit you’re hungover again aren’t you? Shit, I can’t take you anywhere.

Take the refrigerated dutch oven out of the fridge and let it get up to near room temperature while we make the pastry top that is going over our wonderful pie.

Pie asshole, remember we’re doing steak and mushroom pie? Jesus.

Pastry Top:

3/4 cup of flour plus some more to dust the surface where the dough is rolled out.

1/8 teaspoon of salt

5 tablespoons of cold unsalted butter cut into chunks

2 tablespoons of cold water

In a medium bowl sift together the flour and salt, add in the cubed butter and using your hands mix until you get some coarse crumbs. Add in the water just a bit at a time until you have smooth dough. DON”T  overwork the dough or it will fall apart when you try to roll it out. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling. If you have wax paper that makes the rolling process easier. Sprinkle some flour on the wax paper covered rolling surface and a little on your rolling pin and roll until the dough is flat, maybe 1/4 inch in thickness. If you used wax paper you can use it to transfer the dough to top the pie when ready.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

You thought I forgot about those tasty little bacon bits that you put in the fridge when we first started making this didn’t you? Tell me you didn’t eat the bacon bits when you were drinking last night. Good. Add those bacon bits to the meat gravy mixture and give it a stir. Now we’re going to take the meat gravy and put it into a ceramic casserole dish or a glass pie pan. What I highly suggest here is use a slotted spoon to scoop up the meat, mushrooms, veggies and bacon and spoon those into the baking dish first then add in as much of the liquid from the pan as needed. This is important because when I made this there were leftover juices that I didn’t add to the pie, it would have been too loose when cooked. Control the liquid level to your taste. You don’t want it too soupy.

Slap that pastry shell on top, cut a small slit or two into the pie top to allow it to vent while cooking. Take the egg and beat it a little. Now brush the beaten egg over the pastry shell and put this damn thing into the preheated oven . Yes. Finally. Cook for about 35 minutes until the pastry top is a nice rich golden brown then remove from the oven to let cool. Cool at least 5 minutes so you don’t bite into molten goddamn lava and threaten me with a fucking lawsuit.

Can we talk for a minute? Just you and me? I kind of fucked up the rolling out of the pastry shell because I didn’t use wax paper. See the main image at the top? Yeah the dough was broken into pieces and I just arranged the pieces on top of the pie before baking, that’s why there isn’t a glorious picture of the whole uncut golden brown pie. See? I can be honest with you. And you know what? It didn’t make a damn bit of difference at all. This shit was still amazing! Fuck appearances and plating. This was fuckin’ tasty.

There’s another dirty secret. I never plate for the gathering if they aren’t single and female. Never have never will. I did all the cooking and when it’s done I say “We’re ready!” and I let everyone plate for themselves. I don’t have a fucking assistant, fix your own goddamn plate. Final dirty secret: when I am cooking for the Sunday Gravy posts? I plate my own meal first! I’ve got to get the best of the best so I can use it for the “money shot” that becomes the primary banner image. Then I start eating first while everyone else is serving up in the kitchen. This is also advantageous because if you finish your plate first that means you are first to the leftovers. I ain’t no dummy!

Side dish time!

Mushy Peas!

Mushy peas are a common British side dish and can usually be found at fish and chips shops. I thought they would be a nice traditional addition to our English-centric meal.

I hadn’t really messed around with them too much in the past but I do make a kick ass split pea soup and this ain’t all that hard to do. Guess what though? It requires the peas soaking overnight in the refrigerator! Looks like your refrigerated meat gravy is going to have some company in the fridge. Just take out everything except for the two dishes and your beer and you will have plenty of room in there.

1 16 oz bag of dried split peas

1 tablespoon of baking soda

salt to taste

2 tablespoons unsalted butter.

Rinse and sort through your peas. This is a very important step to ensure you aren’t serving rocks to your guests. Every time I’ve ever sorted though a bag of pinto beans I’ve found some type of rock. Keep this in mind.

Add the peas to a pot and cover with enough water to ensure the peas are covered by about 4 times the volume of the peas. Add in the baking soda, cover the peas and refrigerate overnight. Next day put the peas on the stove top, then add in about 1 teaspoon of salt. With the lid of the pot slightly askew bring the peas to a boil before reducing the heat to a low simmer. Here’s the fun thing; during the cooking process there will be “pea foam.” Not to be confused with “pee foam” but I couldn’t help laughing when I removed the pea foam with a slotted spoon, which IS what you will do with the pea foam. After about 30 minutes the peas will become mushy. Don’t get them too mushy, you just want to be sure they aren’t too hard. Remove the peas from the heat, add a little more salt if needed and stir in the 2 tablespoons of butter. They should be smooth-ish (?) in consistency.

At long last! Get a spoon and scoop out some of that steak and mushroom pie, you probably won’t be able to cut it into a pie wedge. Sprinkle a little of the reserved chopped parsley over the pie and add a big scoop of peas along side. I toasted up some bread as an accompaniment. Pour yourself a big old pint of IPA. Nod along as you realize the current American craft beer movement produces a FAR superior IPA than it’s English counterparts (USA! USA! USA!) and dive into this quintessential English pub grub.

Now put the “Fruit on the Aunt Mabel” and toss back a few “King Lears!”

The end result of this is a ridiculously delicious, tasty and savory pie. The home made crust for the top makes it. You could buy a store bought crust but if you went this far just make your own. The peas add a nice velvety side. The beer works perfectly with the dish and you will be damn glad you took the effort to make this. Honestly I increased the ingredients by about 50% from the original recipe and the three of us who ate just leveled that pie. Nothing but some peas made it to a Tupperware container.  It really was that good.

Thanks for reading as always. Be adventurous, try new cuisines and amaze your friends and family with your internet provided knowledge.

Until next time!.

Cheers, mates!