Chicken, Pork & Blue Cheese Pie

Ingredients:                                                                          Serves 10

For the pork pie filling:

500g sausage meat

250g diced pork shoulder

250g Diced chicken thigh

1 Heaped Tsp chopped sage

2 Bramley apples, peeled, cored, diced

15g Dried apricots chopped

½ tsp each ground mace, freshly grated nutmeg and ground allspice, coarse ground black pepper

250g Stilton crumbled

For the jellied Stock:

Bones from the meat used to make the filling or chicken carcass

1 pig’s trotter

1 large carrot stuck with 3 cloves

1 quartered, unpeeled onion

Herb bundle: thyme, bay leaf, sage and rosemary, 6 peppercorns

2 litres water

For the pastry:

450g/1lb plain flour

1 tsp salt

275g/10oz chilled butter, cut into pieces

3 free-range eggs, plus 1 free-range egg yolk

2-3 tbsp cold water

Method:

For the jelly, put all of the jelly ingredients into a large pan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer gently for three hours. 

Strain through a very fine sieve into a clean pan and boil vigorously until reduced to 600ml/1 pint. Season to taste, then leave to cool.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

For the pie filling, combine all the ingredients thoroughly except the sausage meat. Ensuring all the seasonings are evenly distributed. Then turn the sausage meat through the mix.

To make the pastry, sift the flour and salt into a food processor or mixing bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Beat 2 of the whole eggs with the egg yolk and water and gradually stir into the dry ingredients to make a soft dough. Knead briefly until smooth then cut off one third of the mixture and set it aside for the lid.

Roll out the larger piece and use to line the base and sides of a 20cm/8in clip-sided cake tin, leaving the excess pastry overhanging the edges.

To assemble the pie, spoon the pork filling into the pastry-lined tin and slightly round the top of the mixture to give the finished pie a nice shape.

Beat the remaining egg in a bowl. Brush the edge of the pastry with beaten egg. Roll out the remaining pastry and use to cover the top of the pie. Re-roll any pastry trimmings and cut out diamond-shaped leaves to decorate the lids. Then glaze the top of the pie with the rest of the egg. 

Cut a small stem hole into the centre of the lid with a small ovenproof pastry cutter, remove the plug of pastry and leave the cutter in place to retain the hole during baking.

Bake the pie in the oven for 10 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 160C/350F/Gas34 and continue to cook for a further 1 ¾  hours, (or to a core temperature of 71°C). Loosely cover the pie with a triple-thickness sheet of greaseproof paper once it is nicely browned if required to complete cooking.

Finally, remove the pie from the oven and leave to cool for 2 hours. Then warm through the jelly and pour into the pie through the hole in the top. Remove cutter used to make the hole in the top. Leave to go cold overnight.