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Jamie Oliver’s Vegetarian Pithivier Pie

Jamie Oliver's beautiful pithivier pie is the perfect vegetarian centrepiece to serve this Christmas and is packed with celeriac and mushroom and served with a creamy blue cheese sauce.

From the book

Ingredients

1 whole celeriac (1kg)
olive oil
2 large leeks
1 knob of unsalted butter
2 cloves of garlic
400g mixed mushrooms
75g plain flour
2 tsp English mustard
800ml semi-skimmed milk
1 bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley (30g
120g blue cheese
2 x 320g sheets of all-butter puff pastry (cold)
1 large egg

Essential kit

You will need: a 20cm bowl (8cm deep).

Method

Cook time: 4 hours 30 minutes plus overnight chilling.

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/gas 6. Scrub the celeriac, rub with 1 tablespoon of oil and wrap in tin foil. Roast for 1 hour 30 minutes, then finely slice and season with sea salt and black pepper. Meanwhile, halve, wash and finely slice the leeks, then place in a large casserole pan on a medium heat with the butter. Peel, finely slice and add the garlic and mushrooms, then cook for 15 minutes. Stir in the flour and mustard, followed slowly by the milk, then simmer for 5 minutes, or until thickened, stirring regularly, and remove from the heat. Pick, finely chop and stir in the parsley, crumble in the cheese, then season to perfection.

Line a 20cm bowl (8cm deep) with clingfilm. Arrange slices of celeriac in and around the bowl until covered. Reserving half the sauce, layer up the rest with the remaining celeriac in the bowl, finishing with celeriac. Pull over the clingfilm, weigh it down with something heavy, and chill overnight with the remaining sauce.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. On greaseproof paper, roll both sheets of pastry out to around 30cm x 35cm. Unwrap the filling parcel and place in the middle of one sheet. Beat the egg and brush around the edge of the pastry and all over the celeriac, then carefully lay the second piece of pastry on top, smoothing around the shape of the filling. Trim the edges to 2.5cm, crimp to seal, then eggwash all over. Very lightly score the pastry (like in the picture), making a small hole in the top. Bake at the bottom of the oven for 2 hours, or until beautifully golden, brushing with more eggwash once or twice, then serve with the warmed-up creamy sauce. Delicious with dressed seasonal steamed greens.

ENERGY 442kcal FAT 27.4g SAT FAT 16.2g PROTEIN 12.8g CARBS 36.2g SUGARS 7.6g SALT 1g FIBRE 6.2g

Reviews

2.8 out of 5 stars

4 Ratings

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5 Comments

    default user avatar Helen L

    Too much liquid even at 600ml, was very sloppy even after resting overnight and wouldn’t hold shape enough to allow time to seal the pastry edge. Make your own judgement re liquid and check thickness as you go if you want a thick sauce (filling). Mine came out like soup with a lid. Also could do with more punch to the flavour (stronger cheese? more garlic?) – and the whole filling/sauce double act was a bit odd to me! Still, I will use the ‘sauce’ for something else another time.

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    default user avatar Helen L

    Loved the sound of this but it didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. The sauce/filling was very liquidy, and I wouldn’t recommend using all 800ml. I’d put about 600 in when I decided to stop (and yes I did check my flour quantities and other details). I recommend adding bit by bit until the consistency is fairly thick. It was a little more set after chilling overnight, but began to slope downwards as I was assembling it, making it tricky to seal the edges. In short I couldn’t, and even if I had, would the filling still have found its way out anyway? What I ended up with was a pretty flat pie lid with on a tray of sauce/filling. I watched the video a bunch of times and there’s a part where Jamie’s ‘filling’ is nice and thick (when he adds it to the celeriac layered pie dish), but then later the same ‘filling’ looks like sauce again, much runnier – and I’m really not sure what I missed… All the same it was still pretty nice to eat and the celeriac sheets were delish, though the sauce-filling flavour lacked some punch. I was also a bit confused by the idea of serving a pie with sauce that is actually its filling. Since this pie was already sauce, I didn’t bother with this part.

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    default user avatar Helen L

    The sauce/filling was very sloppy – I’d recommend adding milk to desired result rather than relying on the 800ml instruction. I actually only added 600ml and the whole thing was very sloppy even after chilling. When I assembled it the pastry wasn’t able to hold shape and the whole thing sloped slowly downwards making it tricky to seal, and then leaked out as it cooked. The flavours were nice but not as much punch as I’d have liked. I’m also not a fan of pouring filling over a pie and calling it sauce (is this a trend I missed maybe?!). But Jamie’s enthusiasm for this recipe pulled me through and I’d try this again with my own filling or tweaks to this one another time for sure.

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    default user avatar Jim Kelly

    Just wondering if anyone has tried this and whether it is easy to prep in advance and then freeze?

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    default user avatar The Happy Foodie Team

    Hi Jim,

    Thank you for your comment. You should be fine to make this ahead and freeze. We would advise freezing once the pithivier is assembled but before baking.

    The Happy Foodie Team

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