Dozen Egg and Ham Pie

If your chickens have gone into overdrive as mine have with the onset of Spring - this is the ideal pie to make ! Normally my husband (Steve) takes surplus eggs to his work with him and these are very quicky snapped up by his customers. However, he has forgotten the last couple of days and it is also a bank holiday weekend...

The chickens are laying us about 7 > 8 eggs per day. I've still got about two dozen sitting in the kitchen and that's before I collect todays ! This takes about an hour to make and an hour to cook - so set aside plenty of time. You could easily knock 20 minutes of prep off if you buy shop bought pastry.

I saw a recipe for a bacon and egg pie in last months Delicious Magazine and decided to change it about a bit. Btw, the clue is in the name - so don't go making this if you haven't got masses of eggs ! Ideal for picnics or a cold supper / lunch with a simply dressed salad. Serves around 10.

You need an 8" spring form tin for this pie

For the pastry :

350g plain flour

180g salted butter (cold and cubed)

little extra salt.

Either use a food processer to blitz the above to crumbs, or rub the fat into the flour with your fingertips until crumbs form. Add just enough cold water to be able to bring it to a dough. Alternatively, cheat and use a 500g of store bought - but it WON'T be the same !

Put 200g of the pastry aside and roll the rest out large enough to line an 8" tin with a little overhang.

If you have a silicone pastry / fondant rolling mat, rub in a tiny bit of Trex / vegetable shortening or similar if it is the first use aand simply roll. If you are just rolling on a normal worktop, you will need some extra flour. Here is a really rubbish video I did a week or so ago showing rolling sweet pastry which is far more fragile and delicate

PIE FILLING

12 eggs - the fresher the better !

400 > 500g of bacon or gammon offcuts, thinly sliced

2 bunches of spring onions, chopped

2 tablespoons freshly chopped chives

2 tablespoons freshly chopped oregano

200ml double cream

1 teaspoon chilli powder (can be ommitted)

I used 460g of gammon offcuts from Tony Perkins - our local butcher. All his pork / gammon comes from the prizewinning Metfield herd. Gammon offcuts are amazing good value - the pack I had was 96p ! (about $1.55)

Slice these thinly and then fry until the edges are starting to turn golden and crispy. There was so little fat, I had to add a touch of olive oil to stop them sticking to my non-stick pan.

Once these are done, set aside and fry off the spring onions for about a minute along with the herbs.

Mix the spring onions and fried bacon / gammon pieces together. Put 2/3 of these into the pastry case.

Mix 200ml of double cream with two eggs and the white of one plus the chilli powder if using. There is hardly any chilli in this, it's for background heat only really without the grittiness of ground black pepper. Alternatively, you could use finely ground white pepper.... Put the remaining yolk aside. Pour about half of this over the bacon / gammon and spring onion mix.

Break NINE eggs on top of the bottom layer and then pour the remaining cream / egg mix on top.

Roll out pastry reserved for the top. Brush a little water round the pastry at the top of the case and lay the lid inside, pressing the two pieces together to seal. Trim round the top with a sharp knife.

Roll the top seam down and use a fork / spoon handle or similar to pinch it in .

Use the remaining egg yolk beaten with about 1tsp of water to glaze the pie.

Cook in a fan oven at about 170deg for 70mins. Remove and allow to cool before serving.

Sarah-Jane Nash - http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ - silicone bakeware mould specialists - April 11