Honey, Mustard & Gammon Pie

Preparation time: 1 hour 15 mins

Cooking time: 50 mins

Ingredients

For the filling:

2 gammon steaks, cut into chunks

1 tbsp oil

2 leeks, chopped

100g frozen peas (optional)

3 medium-sized shallots, diced

2 large tbsp unsalted butter (x1 to cook the leeks and x1 for the white sauce)

85g plain flour

450ml milk

1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

1 tbsp Gustare Honey (We'd recommend Mild Grey Iron Bark)

4 bay leaves

Small bunch of chopped parsley

For the pastry:

375g plain flour

Pinch of salt

165g cold butter, cubed

8-9 tbsp cold water

1 beaten egg

Equipment

Shallow pie dish (23cm)

Method

1. First things first, the pastry. Put your flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and add the cold butter cubes.
2. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until you have a mixture which resembles breadcrumbs. It's important to ensure you have no large lumps of butter remaining in the mixture, and you can check for large butter lumps by knocking the mixing bowl on the work surface a few times and you'll notice the larger lumps move to the top. You will need to work fairly quickly with this process as you don’t want the mixture to become too greasy.
3. Using a knife, stir in just enough of the cold water to bind the pastry dough together.
4. Once bound, form a ball with the dough and wrap in cling film. Chill the pastry ball in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.
5. Whilst you’re waiting for your pastry to chill, you can move onto the filling. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees (gas mark 6).
6. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, once hot, add your gammon chunks and diced shallots. Cook over a medium heat until the gammon and shallots start to brown and then transfer them into another bowl, then pop aside until later.
7. In the same frying pan that you used to cook your gammon and shallots, add 1 tbsp of butter and your chopped leeks. Over a low heat, cook the leeks in the butter until soft. Then transfer the leeks to the same dish as your shallots and gammon.
8. Again, in the same frying pan, gently melt another tbsp of butter over a low heat paying attention not to overheat the butter. Once melted, add the plain flour and continuously stir until the butter and flour are combined.
9. Whilst continuously stirring, add the milk a little bit at a time until a smooth, thickened white sauce is. If too thick (i.e. it won't run off your spoon and it’s clumped together), simply add a little more milk. If very runny and it resembles water other than a sauce, continue to stir over the heat and your sauce should eventually thicken.
10. When at an appropriate thickness, stir in the whole grain mustard, chopped parsley, bay leaves and Gustare Honey. Taste the sauce, and if you’d like more mustard or honey simply add a little more.
11. Add the gammon chunks, shallots and leeks into the white sauce and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the frozen peas (if using) and then turn off the heat and leave to stand for 30 minutes, allowing your bay leaves time to infuse into the pie filling. During this time, you can prep your pie dish.
12. Remove the pastry from the fridge and divide into two balls – once slightly larger than the other. Take the largest ball and roll out to a thickness of about 3mm. Use this to line your pastry dish (23cm – shallow dish), pushing the pastry into the corners of the dish.
13. Take your other pastry ball and roll out to the same thickness – this is for the top of the pie. Make sure you roll out the pastry so it's larger than the top of the pastry dish as you want to make sure it covers all of the pie. Put aside.
14. Once your filling is ready, remove the bay leaves and pour the filling into the pastry-lined dish and level the mixture out.
15. Take your rolled-out pastry top and place on top of the filled pastry dish. Trim the excess pastry and crimp the edges, effectively attaching the bottom and top layers of pastry so the filling doesn't leak out. You can use your fingers or a fork for this.
16. Brush the pie with a beaten egg and poke 2 steam holes in the top with a sharp knife.
17. Put the pie in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes until crisp and golden.
18. Leave to stand for 10-15 minutes and then serve and enjoy!