Continuing last month’s jaffle theme, here our resident home butcher STEVE BAIN cuts up meat for a stew-type filling.
The hero ingredients of the this dish are themed along the lines of a gamekeeper’s pie. In a gamekeeper's pie, there are typically two meats, the constant being fatty pork (from any of the fatty cuts like those from the belly area) and typically the second meat is “anything that is in season”.
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A variation on the theme is the gamekeeper's stew, or game stew, where multiple meats are used at the same time in the recipe. There is also the concept of a ‘poacher’s pie’ (the non-vegetarian pun version). Typically the poacher’s pie uses bacon rashers and either meat(s) from smaller game animals or diced mixed game.
The philosophy is roughly the same across all these dishes — use pork or bacon for a little fat in the dish and add whatever meat, or mixture of meat that is in season or on-hand. In Australia, venison, beef, goat or lamb, even kangaroo are options in addition to the pork.
We make it a pie by packaging the ‘stew’ into a pastry shell that is baked in a jaffle iron.
The plan for the meat is to chop up a few varieties, mix them together and use this batch as the hero in a stew which becomes the pie’s filling.
Step 1: Chop up the pork rashers (one per person) into large-ish pieces. I typically make the pork pieces the largest in the recipe.
Step 2
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Step 2: Sear (and melt some fat from) all of the pork pieces in a metal frying pan over a hot to very hot fire (if you burn any of the pork pieces too badly, you can remove them from the pan. Because they are larger, the pork pieces are easily identified and removed).
Step 3
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Step 3: Either goat or lamb neck chops make a great addition to a gamekeeper’s stew. Cut out the vertebrae bone from the neck chop, this leaves you with a horseshoe-shaped curve of meat.
Step 4
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Step 4: Then chop the lamb or goat up into the smallest pieces in the stew/filling.
Step 5
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Step 5: Dice the beef into cubes or strips. Any of the tender cuts of beef will work fine in this recipe (although I suggest ribeye and strips are best kept for eating as steaks). You can use less expensive cuts, such as shin beef, if you slow cook or pressure cook the filling.
Step 6
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Step 6: Tip the pork out of the hot frying pan into another frying pan that you can keep near the fire to keep the pork warm while you fry the rest of the meat. Ensure that you leave plenty of ‘pork jus’ in the hot pan. The reason for removing the pork from the searing pan is so that the very hot pan does not get overcrowded when searing the other meats.
Step 7
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Step 7: To the hot pan, add all of the other meats and place the lot on the fire to sear. From time to time a piece of ash from the fire may end up in the pan. Fish it out if you can, but if you can’t it isn’t a problem.
Step 8
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Step 8: Once the meats have started browning, tip the pork from the warming pan back into the hot pan and continue cooking to colour most of the meat pieces.
Now the meat is ready for the proper cook. Over to Lynn.
