A buttery tender pie crust filled with smoked ham, potatoes, leeks, shallots and peas. This pie is a real celebration of Spring! If making a pie crust from scratch makes you think twice about making this recipe, please keep reading on and have a little faith in Jackson Pollock. While I used his pastry dough recipe, which I can see now why it was deemed “award winning”, I am going to add a couple of notes to his instructions because there is a certain order of chilling you need to do to ensure the butter doesn’t melt right out of the dough.
For the meat, I used a mix of smoked bacon and ham ends from Darke Pines. Pro tip - if your butcher shop makes their deli meats in house, ask if they have any ham ends available. Chances are high they will have some ends on hand and you will be their favorite customer of the day by helping them make use of every last bit of their labor. Feel free to substitute other cuts of meat, like leftover roasts or pulled chicken. As long as the meat you are using is fully cooked and cooled, you’re good to use it in this recipe.
Most pie doughs require at least one hour of resting in the fridge, but Chef Pollock has solved that issue for everyone. You can have a completed pie on the table in about three hours from start to finish - and that includes mixing and rolling out the dough, cooking and cooling the filling and baking the pie. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the crust was tender, flaky and had baked all the way through the bottom. This is a gem of a dough recipe and if you make it one time - you’ll want to keep it on file for future baking projects. It’s perfect for first time pie bakers as well!
This sort of pie is a great weekend project - make it on Sunday and enjoy the leftovers for for lunch or dinner on Monday.
The only thing I did “wrong”? I immediately cut into the pie right when it came out of the oven. This made the sauce ooze out of the pie which wasn’t really a big deal - we just scooped the sauce out with a spoon. I could have prevented this by letting the pie rest for about 30 minutes before cutting into it - but who has that sort of patience at 8pm on a Sunday night? I started my baking project around 5pm after work - don’t be like me and get your pie in the oven earlier in the day.
Alright let’s get to the baking.
Equipment you will need: a food processor, a 10” pie pan or cast iron skillet, small stockpot for the potatoes and a separate pan or pot to cook down the pie filling. A rolling pin. Pastry brush. Saran wrap!