Meat Pies

When eating a gluten free diet, it is very easy to become bored with food.

Typically, folks who end up gluten free have gone through months, or years, of dietary and digestive discomfort before they discover they have celiac disease, or another condition that requires they be gluten free.

The damage that ingesting gluten can cause to the digestion means that, even when gluten free, it is possible that your digestion STILL remains sensitive.  This is the case of my wife, who, despite being gluten free for decades now, still has many different food issues.

When you learn what foods you CAN eat, it is easy to 'get into a rut' and eat the same thing, over and over, prepared in the same way.

You might not be able to vary WHAT you can eat, but you can vary the ways in which you do eat it.  Here is a variation that we make relatively little use of the in the USA:  make meat pies.  Here, we tend to think of 'pie' as a sweet treat, like an apple or cherry pie.  In other countries, meat pies are often served as meals.

Here is an example that I made yesterday out of leftovers.

The ingredients:

1.  Round steak:  I had cooked a round steak that was VERY tough, too tough to eat as a steak.  So, I chopped about 1.25 pounds of steak up, put it in the food processor, and chopped it to shreds.
2.  Rutabega/turnip:  Chop a turnip/rutabega, about the size of a baseball, into small chunks.
3.  Frozen peas:  About 10 ounces (by weight)
4.  4 stalks celery, including the leaves
5.  1/2 teaspoon herb seasoning of your choice (I used an Italian Herb blend)

Place these in a saucepan, cover with water, and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Take a pie plate or other oven safe dish, and grease it well with the cooking fat of your choice.  I used safflower oil.  Scooping the now mostly cooked ingredients from the saucepan, place them in the pie plate with  enough water to make it 'moist' but not drowning.

Now, make a gluten free biscuit topping.  You will need the following dry ingredients.  I have measured them out by weight, but volume conversions are found elsewhere on this blog.

4.5 ounces rice flour (scant 3/4 cup)
1 ounce cornstarch (3 tablespoons)
1 ounce tapioca starch (3 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon gelatin (optional)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons oil
4 ounces (1/2 cup) water

Mix the dry ingredients together, then add the oil, mixing it into the dry ingredients.  Finally, add the water.  This will make a very 'soft' dough (too soft to roll out).  Using your fingers, or a spoon, place the biscuit topping on the pie top.

Set the pie plate on a cookie sheet, in a 350 F oven.  Bake for 30-40 minutes.  In the last 10 minutes, if the biscuit topping is not yet browned, you might want to raise the temperate to 375F, to get a golden brown top layer.

Remove from oven, using oven mitts, and let rest for 5 minutes.

This is the same ingredients we eat frequently, but it tastes totally different done this way.