BLUEBERRY-GLAZED PORK PIES

The weather finally feels like it's beginning to turn, so in an attempt to cling on to the last flavours of summer for just a little bit longer here's a recipe that straddles the outgoing and incoming seasons with the last of this year's homegrown blueberries.
 
My favourite pork pies are always ones that have some sort of fruity chum, like pickle mixed through the sausage meat, or Waitrose's lovely fig chutney-topped ones. I can now add the pies described below to my list.
 
I’m lucky to have the most awesome butcher, Crombies, at the end of my street. Their sausages are seriously in a different league to supermarket-bought ones, and not just in the quality of the sausages but also in the wonderful variety of flavours. They really do have one to suit every mood. So when I saw this recipe in the Great British Food magazine I knew Crombie's pork and caremlised onion bangers would do the job perfectly.
 
One of the things I love about these pork pies, other than their tastiness, is how perfectly imperfect they look!  Somewhere Paul Hollywood is twitching and doesn't know why ... 
 
The joy of readymade pastry makes this recipe a total doddle and something you can rustle up on a lazy weekend morning for lunch. I was a wee bit worried that the blueberries might be  tart but they sweetened up perfectly when combined with the redcurrant jelly and were a wonderful counterpoint to the savouriness of the sausagemeat.
 
And making your own pork pies means you can experiment to your heart's content. Try different sausage flavours, and adopt a sister-in-law who makes her own delicious homemade bramble vinegar and sub that for the red wine vinegar to kick the blueberry glaze up a notch!
 
We ate half our batch for lunch, and popped the rest in the fridge to snack on. They didn't  last the weekend ...

 
Makes 12. Preparation time 20 minutes. Cooking time 35 minutes.

STUFF YOU’LL NEED ...
65g dried sage and onion stuffing mix
500g readymade chilled shortcrust pastry
flour for rolling, or waxy baking parchment (really!)
3 spring onions, snipped into slices
400g good quality pork and herb sausages, poked out of their skins
freshly ground black pepper
1 egg, beaten to glaze
175g blueberries
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp redcurrant jelly
1 tsp cornflour mixed with 1 tbsp water
butter for greasing the muffin tin

OTHER STUFF YOU’LL NEED ...
rolling pin
11.5 cm biscuit cutter or small coffee cup saucer
12 section muffin tin
mixing bowl
pastry brush
small saucepan
CSI-style vinyl gloves if you don't like getting your hands mucky
 
STUFF TO DO FIRST ...
Put the oven on and preheat to 180 ºC/350 ºC/Gas Mark 4.  Lightly butter the muffin tin, including the areas around each of the muffin cups. Wash the spring onions.

BAKE!
Start by making up the stuffing mix as per your packet instructions – I used Paxo, which needed 185ml water and a knob of butter stirred in before leaving to stand for 2–5 minutes and then microwaving for 2 minutes on 800W. Set to one side.
 
Roll out your pastry, either on a floured surface or be sneaky like Hubby and snub flour completely by rolling your pastry out between two sheets of waxy baking parchment! Properly genius!! You’re aiming to get the pastry quite thin yet sturdy enough to hold the filling without breaking when they’re cooked and you’re gently wrestling them out of the muffin tin. (Can you tell I learnt this the hard way?)
 
Cut out 12 circles using the biscuit cutter/saucer, re-rolling the pastry until you have enough. Then gently press the pastry circles into the muffin tin (using the ball end of the rolling pin to lightly poke them in works a treat) so that the pastry stands a little above the top of the tin in a wavy edge. Set to one side.
 
Snip the spring onions into your mixing bowl and then snap on the CSI vinyl gloves and get the sausages. Using scissors or a sharp knife, cut a slit up the length of the sausage skin and then poke all the sausagemeat out into the bowl with the spring onions.  Give it a good few grinds of fresh black pepper (since the sausages were seasoned before they were cased you shouldn’t need to add any salt) and then get your hands in there and mix it all up. Tip the stuffing in and mix that all in too.
 
Divide your sausagemeat mixture between each of the pastry cases, using the back of a spoon to even them out.
 
Brush the top edges of the pastry cases with a little beaten egg, then pop into the oven and bake for 25–30 minutes until that top edge of the pastry is golden and the filling is cooked through.  Leave them to cool for 15 minutes, then carefully free them from the muffin tin (I found a butter knife really helpful) and place them on a cooling rack.
 
While the pies are cooling down, put the vinegar and redcurrant jelly into a small saucepan. Stir on a medium heat for 2–3 minutes until the jelly has melted and then add the berries.  Mix the cornflour and water to get a smooth paste and then stir into the berries and cook until the juices have thickened a little and the berries are starting to soften – don’t cook the berries for too long or they’ll pop. Leave to cool before spooning over the pies (if you’ve overdone the cornflour then spoon while its hot because once it cools it will be impossible to work with – again, I found this out the hard way).
 
The cornflour may take the sheen off the blueberry topping mix in which case brush a very VERY little bit of olive oil over the berries to give them a glaze. Scoff!