Interweb Cookery: Rachel Allen's Beef, Ale and Tarragon Pie

The video link is here, with the printed recipe below.

• Beef, ale and tarragon pie at Good Food Channel

This video is very well produced and fun to watch, but there's a few other reasons to watch this clip: an unusually colored dutch oven, a fascinating recipe for pastry that involves melted butter and boiling water, and a very well-appointed kitchen.

I didn't have much success with the unusual hot water pastry recipe, I'm sorry to say. It may have something to do with the casual way I converted all the British weight measures to volume. I found the conversion calculator that comes with the recipe to be a bit inaccurate, so I used Chocolate & Zucchini's version to figure the conversions but I was in a hurry and did all the calculations in my head. Has anyone else had any experience with this kind of pastry?

As for the kitchen, while it's very charming, I'm a little overwhelmed by the fact that she has two ovens and a cooktop plus a rather large, Aga-like cooker which also has several ovens and cooking surfaces. Perhaps it's all for the show, but there's also an attempt to make the kitchen feel homey and well-used, so I'm a little confused. And, to be honest, perhaps a little jealous!

But the star of the show (besides Rachel) is the lavender colored dutch oven. Fantastic--so fun and playful! I've never seen that color from Le Creuset. Does anyone know who makes it?

Rachel Allen's new cookbook Home Cooking will be available later this fall in the UK.

(Image: UKTV)

the weird cooker thing behind her is a bit weird for a home kitchen, but otherwise I don't think her two ovens and a range are particularly odd. I grew up with a classic 2 oven/2 broiler, 4 burner plus griddle O'keefe and Merritt. Most kitchens I've been in except smaller apartment kitchens usually have two ovens as well.

posted by roseslaw on September 23rd 2009 at 3:58pm
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In Ireland (where Rachel is from) having an Aga-style cooker (usually Waterford-Stanley in Ireland, and known as a "range") plus a gas/electric hob and oven or double oven is the typical setup in a top end country style kitchen. The range is mainly a lifestyle thing nowadays as obviously the oven and hob can more than handle most cooking - it's the traditional heart of the county home and would once have been used for cooking, heating the house, heating hot water via a back bolier, and for drying clothes. In my experience it would often be placed away from the rest of the kitchen with a few small armchairs around it, so to me Rachel's set up looks a bit unusal, or at least a waste of a very expensive feature. Nowadays it might not be used for cooking, but will always be lit in winter months. It is an over the top set up but seen as essential if you have the money!

posted by lors on September 30th 2009 at 4:51am
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