[Sca-cooks] meat pies

[Georgia Foster]

h
mn ... each Christmas I make meat pies, brown gravy, salad, desert and a bottle of fizzy drink, put all in a series of baskets and take it to various friends.  It started as an answer to a the question 'what to you get someone who does not want 'things'.  As most of the things I post, this one has a story.
 
Miss Beverly and Mr Janzen were an elderly couple who raised eight children, one of them was my brother-of-choice.  They put everything they had into that task.  As they got older, they had not planned for anything like a retirement, and so they lived with Ed's older sister and helped to raise a grand-daughter.  Ed's sister bought a house for the lot of them but still, the only personal space was their bedroom.  With limited space, it would have been pointless to give them trinkets.  Now ... Miss Beverly's primary responsibility in her daughter's house was to prepare meals.  One Christmas, while pondering what to do for her, I had this beautiful idea of making meat pies.  It was the BEST present she said she got that year ... finally ... someone who cooked for HER instead of the other way around!
 
So as not to be a spoon tease
 
Meat pies:
 
Filling - Brown five pounds of ground beef (I use 85/15).  drain off all the fat except enough to coat the bottom of the cooking pot.  Peel and chop five onions, a bundle/bunch of celery, and two whole buds of elephant garlic. Sweat the veggies using the fat reserved from draining the meat.  When the veggies are caramelized slightly, add the meat back in and bring it back up to temperature.  Add whatever herbs you see fit in whatever quantity you like best (kind of sounds like a period recipe).  I throw the whole herb garden in ... chives, parsley, cilantro, marjoram, oregano, sage, thyme all from my summer herbs, and rosemary (purchased in the 'fresh herbs' part of the produce aisle because I can't get to grow here).  let the lot simmer over low to medium heat for about 20-30 minutes, whatever it takes for one to make up the crust.
 
For crust I use a quadruple batch of biscuit dough from the Better Homes and Gardens cook book.  One could just as easily get commercially available biscuit mix, or use whatever pie crust would suit your fancy.  I suck at making pie crust, but the biscuit dough works well.
 
Gravy is constructed using beef stock that I make up by boiling beef bones with bay leaves, celery, onion, and garlic.  keep it in canning jars like commercially available beef broth without all the extra salt.    I thicken it with slightly browned flour, add a selection of the herbs used in the meat pie filling, and return it to the mason jar for transport.
 
Salad is a commercially available bag of.  I usually add a bottle of fancy salad dressing in a flavor the family likes.
 
Dessert varies depending on my mood and the length of time I have to spend on the project.  I have occasionally used the same biscuit mix, stirred into a vat of apples as if made up for apple pie, and then poured into a foil pan and baked.  I have make cherry pies in the same way that the meat pies were ... only smaller.  I have on occasion just included a bag of mixed berries and a tub of whipped topping.
 
The delivery has grown to six such baskets for six families.  I am told it is one of the things that they most look forward to each holiday season.  
 
Some times the basket makes it back to me and some times it doesn’t.  One advantage of the SCA is the baskets are generally kept in a dark place where they can propagate.  There is ALWAYS another basket.
 
 

 
cheers
 
Malkin
Otherhill
ArtemisiaJo (Georgia L.) Foster Never knock on Death's door.Ring the doorbell and run ... he hates that. I don't want to set the world on fire, I'm just trying to light a candle.