The Accidental Vegetarian - Rosa's Hearty Chestnut Pie

Today, I developed a recipe I want to cook for Christmas. It's a vegetarian main, which tastes nicely hearty, meaty, even a little game-y. And it's plenty naughty, with a big glass of red wine and a good amount of butter.

Ingredients
For the base mixture
3 banana shallots (or 6 English shallots), peeled and sliced into rings
10g of butter (for frying the shallots)

200g cooked and peeled chestnuts, roughly chopped

200g chestnut mushrooms, quartered
1 medium-sized carrot, quartered and sliced into quarter inch pieces
2 sprigs of rosemary, stalks removed, chopped finely
20cl Bourgogne pinot noir
freshly ground pepper and sea salt

For the mushroom sauce
25g of butter (for the roux)
25g flour
500ml of mushroom stock (or 1 mushroom stock cube dissolved in 500ml hot water)

For the lid
a tiny knob of butter for greasing
20cm by 20cm piece of puff pastry
1 egg yolk

Cooking the base mixture
Fry the shallots in the butter on a high heat for approximately ten minutes, until soft and browned.

The shallots before they're browned	The shallots after browning

Remove the shallots from the pan and set aside. Add the mushrooms, chestnuts, carrots and rosemary to the still hot pan, with just enough butter to prevent it from sticking. Fry at a medium high heat until well browned, about 10 minutes.

The chestnuts	Mushrooms, chestnuts, carrots and rosemary after browning

Once the mixture is nicely browned, and the carrots have softened, add all of the wine, and let this reduce until it is a thick syrup. This takes about 10 minutes.

Adding the wine	The wine is reduced to a syrup

This is your base mixture for the pie. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside. 

The mushroom sauce

Now you are going to make the sauce. For this, you'll have to make a roux from 25 grams of butter and 25 grams of flour, as follows: melt the butter in a pan at a low to medium heat, then add the flour and stir continuously until it forms a dough-like ball.. Then, slowly add your mushroom stock, stirring continuously to prevent lumps, until the stock and the roux have combined into a smooth, silky sauce. Season to taste; be careful with the salt, because stock is already quite salty.

Stir butter and flour until a ball forms	Add stock and stir continously

You will now have a sauce you can add to the base mixture. Fold the sauce into the base mixture until well mixed, then add to a pie dish (I've used a 20cm round ceramic dish with high sides).

Added the sauce	The sauce will colour because of the red pigment in the syrup

The lid
All you need to do now is add a lid to the pie, and bake it. Preheat your oven to 200°C and start on the lid. Grease the sides of the dish your mixture doesn't touch. Then, cut out a 20cm circle, pinching in the sides to make it fit over the base mixture and sauce, and put it on top. Beat the egg yolk, and brush the lid with the yolk. Make a few holes to make sure the air can escape. Then, add the pie to the oven and bake for 45 minutes. If the lid gets a little too dark, cover with foil to protect it.

The lid	The lid brushed with egg yolk

The pie was finished so quickly, I didn't have time to take a picture of the finished product! :)