• Recipe by Leila Saffarian

    Mini creamy peppered steak and mushroom pies

    Serves: 12 mini pies
    Cooking Time: 1 hour

    Ingredients

    • Filling
    • 30ml (2 tbsp) olive oil
    • 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
    • 500g rump steak, diced
    • 250g button mushrooms, thinly sliced
    • 250ml (1 cup) good-quality creamy peppercorn sauce
    • Maldon sea salt, to taste
    • 2 x 500g packets ready-made puff pastry, defrosted
    • 1 egg, beaten
    • microherbs, to garnish
    • sweet and sour tomato chutney, to serve

    Instructions

    1

    For the filling, heat the olive oil in a non-stick frying pan over high heat. Add the garlic and steak and fry, 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and fry until softened, 5 minutes. Add the peppercorn sauce and season to taste. Remove from pan and set aside to cool. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

    2

    Grease a muffin tin. On a clean, floured work surface, roll the dough out to 3cm thickness. Using a round pastry cutter, cut out 24 large circles (big enough to fill the muffin wells) from the pastry. Press a pastry round into the base and up the sides of each muffin well, followed by 30ml – 45ml (2 – 3 tbsp) steak mixture. Brush a second pastry round with egg and cover the pastry cup, pinching the edges together to seal. Cut a slit in the middle of each pastry top for the steam to escape. Repeat with the remaining pastry rounds and filling. Brush the pies with beaten egg and bake in the oven until the pastry is puffed and golden, 20 – 25 minutes.

    3

    Remove from oven and allow to cool in the pan. Garnish with microherbs and serve with a side of sweet and sour tomato chutney.