Cheese and Leek Pie
This pie uses my cream cheese pastry as its base. You can use bought shortcrust pastry if you’d rather. Depending on the size of the pie dish you use and how thin you roll the pastry, you may have a little leftover. Feel free to freeze it or make a small leftover hand pie or empanada if you’ve got something else that needs using up.
I had a half a cup of spicy beef mince hanging around so I rolled the last of the pastry into a round, brushed the edge with a little egg wash, placed the meat on one side and folded the pastry over like you would for an empanada or Cornish pasty. The edges were crimped together and folded so it was well sealed. Nothing goes to waste in this house!
ingredients
- 1 portion cream cheese pastry
- 1 large leek
- a little butter and neutral oil
- 200g cheese, grated – mix of Gruyère, Cheddar, Pecorino
- ground white pepper
- fine salt
- 1 egg yolk
- thyme/oregano/sesame seeds to top the pastry
method
Slice the leek into half centimetre thick rounds, discarding the root and the dark green dry ends. Soak these in a bowl of water, tossing them about and pushing out the rings so you dislodge every skerrick of sandy soil that the leeks are grown in. Lift the leek from its water and drain in a colander while you bring a sauté pan to a medium heat.
Add a knob of butter and a splash of oil, then tip the sliced clean leeks in. Gently sautée over a medium heat for 10-15 minutes until softened with little browning.
With as little flour as possible roll out the pastry to line the base and sides of a 20cm diameter pie dish, reserving approximately one third of the pastry for the top. Dock the pastry base (use a fork to poke holes into the base to allow air out while blind baking) then add pie weights (I use dried beans that are specifically designated for this purpose) and blind bake at 180 degrees Celsius. The pie base should take 12 minutes under the weights plus another 5 minutes without the weights. If the base has puffed up without the weights, press down the base with a cloth.
Spoon half the leeks into the pie and half the cheese. Sprinkle a little white pepper and salt across then add the other half of the leeks and cheese. You should end up with a mound of pie filling which will drop a little as it cooks.
Top with your pastry lid and wash with a little beaten egg yolk. Sprinkle some herb or sesame seed as a final flourish then place in the oven. Once it’s achieved a nice dark golden colour and the pastry is fully cooked (about 20 mins), move the pie to a cooling rack and let it cool down before slicing.
