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Slow Cooker Christmas Dinner Pie Filling

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However much I try, I generally cook a little too much food. I used to get annoyed about waste but these days I embrace the leftovers and nine times out of ten I create a new dish out of them.

On the weekend I made a mock Christmas dinner, which you can read about here. There was a little leftover meat and veg so I decided to make a Christmas leftovers pie. It’s seriously easy to do. You can of course make a sauce from scratch to accompany it or you could be totally lazy like me ( it is Christmas after all ) and use a tin of chicken and mushroom soup and a cube of jelly stock.

Now it’s hard to give an exact recipe for this as everybody’s leftovers will differ but here is what I used.

You will need:

Leftover cooked turkey, dark or white meat ( I cubed mine)
Peas
Chantenay Carrots ( chopped)
Leftover pigs in blankets ( chopped)
Leftover mash
Leftover stuffing – broken into small pieces
1 tin of chicken & mushroom soup
1 chicken stock cube ( I used a knorr jelly pot )
Cracked black pepper

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Turn your slow cooker on low and add all your ingredients apart from the stuffing. Mix well and leave on low for 4-6 hours. Now add your chopped stuffing and leave with the lid off for a further 30 mins or so to thicken.

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Remove, pour into your pie dish, top with pastry and place in a hot oven until the pastry is cooked. I made mine into two pies one using homemade shortcrust pastry for this and the second using storebought puff pastry and both worked really well.

The reason I use the slow cooker for this is because I can pop it all in,turn it onto low and go out for the day and all I have to do on my return is place into a pie dish and top with pastry ( store bought is fine ) and place in a hot oven to brown or puff the pastry up. It also tastes so much better when the flavours have been given a chance to mingle with the sauce. Serve with some leafy greens, maybe some cranberry sauce and it’s just incredible. All the flavours of your dinner in a comforting pie.

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This is even better the following day….

Cheese, Potato & Mustard Pie

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I’m going through a bit of a pie phase at the moment. Mainly because I’ve recently rediscovered just how easy it is to make shortcrust pastry after a lazy year of using store bought which quite frankly is just not the same.

This is a lazy using up leftovers pie and it’s a rather thrifty one too. You could use up any leftover mash or boiled potatoes – I used half of a tin of new potatoes I had leftover from making another meal and I warmed them before running through my potato ricer. I used a chunk of cheese leftover in the fridge which was a little past it’s best but still perfectly edible and 1/2 an onion. For a twist I dolloped some wholegrain mustard throughout the pie but next time I would definitely mix it with the cheesy, oniony mash for a more well distributed flavour. As it was we had little bursts of mustard – which was lovely but I think mixed in would taste even better.

Cheese, Potato & Mustard Pie

You will need:

For the pastry:

225g plain flour
100g butter ( or a combo of butter and lard )
2tbsp of cold water
Pinch of salt

For the filling:

Some leftover potatoes mashed
About 50g of Cheddar ( or any other suitable leftover cheese) grated
1/2 an onion diced
1.5tbsp of wholegrain mustard

To glaze:

1 egg, beaten.

First make up your pastry:

Mix flour and salt in a large bowl and then rub in the butter. Add your cold water a little at arise and mix with a knife until you have a stiff dough. You may not need all the water or you may need slightly more. Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for about 30 mins. Remove from fridge and allow to come back to room temperature before rolling out.

* it’s worth noting I have also made the pastry in my food mixer and didn’t notice a massive difference – just a slightly heavier texture so ideal if you are in a hurry.

Whilst you are chilling/resting your pastry, prepare your filling. Mash your potatoes, grate your cheese and lightly sauté your diced onions and combine in a bowl.

Preheat oven to gas mark 5.

Split your dough into two and roll out one half quite thinly so that it covers your pie dish and the sides. ( I used a smallish pie dish which was enough to feed 4 people) You could blind bake at this point although I don’t with this type of pie. Fill your pie with your cheesy mixture and then dollop some mustard throughout the pie or you could mix the mustard into the cheesy mix first. Roll out your remaining dough and cover your filling, pressing around the edges to seal and then prick the centre of your pie with a fork to let the steam escape.

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Brush with beaten egg and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden.

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*The above photo also has a mincemeat and brown sugar apple pie in it which I will share later this week. It was incredible.

Try to leave it cool slightly before eating to avoid burning your mouth. It’s lovely served with crispy bacon, egg and beans.

Meal planning week #1

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Last month I bought a week planner blackboards and I have started making good use out of it.

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This is the second week I have meal planned and it makes life a little easier and definitely means less waste! I am not regimented about it and if I feel like a change then of course I will change it but I like the structure and knowing what I’m cooking later that day.

In case you can’t read my chalk scrawl this is what this week looked like:

Sunday : Spaghetti and meatballs
Monday : Beef stew (slowcooker style)
Tuesday : Griddled spiced chicken on a bed of cabbage and mashed sweet potato/potato with a mushroom cream sauce
Wednesday: Gnocchi and meatball tomato bake
Thursday: Beef stroganoff Pheasant au vin with cabbage,peas and boiled potatoes
Friday: Sausage and Bean stew
Saturday: Thai takeaway treat 😉

As you can see this week has already had one adjustment, Andrews Dad gave us half a pheasant and well I was eager to experiment with it – I’d never tried pheasant before and it was a pleasant (see what I did there) surprise. The sauce that I made to accompany it which is loosely based on the River Cottage Cock pheasant au vin recipe was delicious and rich.

I think I’m pretty good at using up leftovers and not overspending (most of the time) but I was still finding myself wasting a lot of vegetables and on occasions meat. It makes me angry at myself so this is a new way to try to stop that.

I am also finding that now most days Izzy will eat what we eat. This makes life so much easier.
I adapted a few of our dishes to suit her, in particular the meatballs in tomato sauce which we had with gnocchi on Wednesday I instead covered with mash from Tuesday and baked for her ..wow she loved it even pointing and wanting more.

As much as I love cooking sometimes it’s nice to take a break and order in, we are lucky to have the most wonderful Thai takeaway just minutes from our house so I’m excited to eat that tomorrow. Massamam curry is a big favourite in our house.