My Best Pork Pie with Fennel and Bacon

Ingredients

400g Cumberland sausage meat

200g gammon, minced (gammon joint, minced in the food processor)

1 tbsp Fennel seeds

4 leaves Fresh sage (dried- 1 tsp)

Short Crust Pastry

700g plain flour

350g margarine

1/2 tsp salt

120ml ice cold water (approx)

1 egg beaten

Chutney

200g Cooking apples

100g Blackberries

2 red onions, chopped

2 Star Anise

100ml Cider

100g Soft Brown Sugar

50ml White Wine Vinegar

Here’s how

If you are making the pastry yourself this is how to do it,

Pour the flour into a mixing bowl with the margarine and rub together with your hand to form a crumble type mixture.

Add the salt, egg and water before mixing to a pastry dough.

Transfer the pastry onto a clean lightly floured work surface and knead for 2-3 minutes.

Place the pastry into the fridge to rest for 30 minutes before rolling out.

For the filling, place the sausage meat, gammon, fennel seeds and sage into a mixing bowl and combine together using your hands.

Roll the pastry out to approximately 1/2cm thick and cut out 24 10cm rounds of pastry.

Place each disk of pastry into an individual pie tin.

Weigh out 12 60g portions and roll into balls before placing in the centre of each pastry disk.

Brush the edges with beaten egg and top with the remaining pastry disks.

Lift the pies out and crimp the edges before cutting with a smaller round pastry cutter.

Crimp the pies once again and return to the baking tin.

Poke a hole in the top of the pie to release the steam during the baking process.

Brush with the remaining egg and bake in a pre heated oven 160c for 25-30 minutes

To make the chutney

Place the onions, apple, blackberries, star anise and cider into a frying pan and heat.

Pour in the sugar and add the vinegar.

Turn the heat up and simmer until it reduces by half in volume.

Remove from the heat and store in a clean jam jar in the fridge.

Serve the pork pies with the delicious chutney, this is served great warm or cold!

Go to www.cookserveenjoy.com for all my equipment that I use in my kitchen