Kitchen Project #158: Pithivier
Savoury Puff Pastry Pies, here we go!
Hello,
Welcome to today’s edition of Kitchen Projects, the recipe development newsletter. Thank you so much for being there.
Today, we are jumping into the world of savoury puff pastry pies together in the form of the pithivier. Discs of buttery puff pastry wrapped around savoury fillings? Yes please.
You’ll get a glorious vegetarian filling - spiced potato, chickpea and greens - and how-to below, but over on KP+, I’m sharing a recipe for a gorgeous sausage, leek, fennel and potato number. These recipes will definitely see you through winter. Click here for the recipe.
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Love,
Nicola
A pie by another name should taste as sweet… right?
I don’t want to fall out with you guys, but I need to get this off my chest: I am not a meat pie person.
I know this is somewhat traitorous. Speaking as a British person, I understand that pies are one of the only arguments for our much-maligned cuisine, but I’ve just never been on board. And it’s not just the deep-filled kind; I've yet to meet a pork pie I love, nor do I go out of my way to eat a sausage roll. Pasties? No thanks! It’s just not my thing.
But here’s where my betrayal gets even more complicated: A cultural rebrand quickly challenges my dislike for ‘meat pies’. Give me a slender slice of Pâté en croûte (is it just a fancy French pork pie?), a char siu sou (my favourite at dim sum - sweet char siu wrapped in flaky pastry) or a Pâté Chaud (the Vietnamese savoury puff pastry) and I’m all in. And what about a savoury pithivier? Sold.
I’m unsure about the psychology of all this, but I am happy to throw that aside and continue our journey into the world of delightful puff pastry things this week. We’re diving into the world of savoury pithiviers with not one but two golden discs of joy: The first is a hearty greens, chickpea and potato pie, and the second, on KP+, is a juicy sausage, leek, fennel, and potato pie. These are both my dream winter eating and baking projects, so let’s dive in.
The history of the Pithivier
A pithivier is a round pie which encloses a filling between two discs of puff pastry. Sound similar to the galette des rois I always go on about? You’d be correct. Though the exact origins of both are unclear, it seems the conceptual pithivier existed before the cultural ritual of the galette des rois. And while the ‘GDR’ is only enjoyed around epiphany, a pithivier can be served any time of the year.
Like the quiche Lorraine, the Paris-Brest, and the Gâteau Basque, the pithivier takes its name from its geographical origins. The town of Pithiviers, located in the Centre-Val de Loire region of central France, was once inhabited by the Carnutes, a Gallic tribe. Trade connections with the Roman Empire brought almonds to the area, leading to the creation of the first iteration of the pithivier: the pithivier fondant. This rich almond cake, decorated with white icing and candied fruit, remains a local speciality. Over time, this version evolved into the more recognisable Pithiviers feuilleté, or flaky pithivier, in the 17th century. Though puff pastry was first officially documented by the Bishop of Amiens in 1311 and has a long history even before then, it really took off three centuries later, around the time it was codified in 1651 by Royal Chef François Pierre de la Varenne.
As the pithivier was developed, so was the ‘Pâté en Croûte’. Composed of meat pate enclosed in rich pastry - usually ‘hot water crust’ or ‘shortcrust’, the Pâté en Croûte comes from decidedly mediaeval cuisine. A mainstay of the mediaeval table, the pastry was originally inedible, used as a preservation and cooking tool (similar to the cornish pasty crust functioning as a handle, not to be eaten!) rather than a source of nutrition, or God forbid enjoyment. As tastes, skills and techniques changed, the pastry became golden, delicious, edible and intricate. In 2009, the world Pâté en Croûte championships were established and now, chefs across the world compete to take the title. Since its inception, it has only ever been won by French and Japanese chefs!
At some point, the fates of the pithivier and Pâté en Croûte merged, and the savoury pithivier was born. It’s possible that the first savoury pithivier was the regional speciality ‘pâté des alouettes de Pithiviers’, a lark pie. Yes, a lark, a bird as small as a sparrow and weighing just 50g, feathers and all. Though the lark pie is barely documented in English, it has deep lore in the region (see the book: ‘The tumultuous history of Pithiviers lark pâté’), and it's unclear how seriously this pie was taken, why the locality insisted on using the smallest possible bird for centuries to make these savoury pithiviers, or if it was just a punchline. In any case, it paved the way for the savoury pies we love today.
Nowadays, pithiviers might be found on fancy restaurant menus boasting stained glass window cut-throughs of vegetables and meat. Though Chef Calum Franklin, formerly of Holborn Dining Rooms and it’s famous Pie Room in London, doesn’t mention the word pithivier in his book ‘The Pie Room’ (perhaps he isn’t a British food traitor like me) but his creations are what I think of when I think of intricate savoury pies, or pithiviers.
The pastry
To keep things simple, I’m going to continue using my classic puff pastry as the base for the pithivier today. Though you could make it with a flaky shortcrust, rough puff, or any number of savoury pastries, I like the drama and flaky edges as it puffs up and it’s the most fun to eat. If I can’t convince you to make your own (though, please do!), using high quality shop bought is always allowed. The best variety available in the UK is this brand as it contains all butter and has no preservatives. It’s more expensive than the other brands, but it is worth it.
To get the visible and dramatic layers, it’s important to note that while lamination is important, the cutting or stamping out of the pastry might make the biggest difference. Using a blunt pastry cutter may squash its way through the layers, which has a sealing effect. Instead of cleanly cutting through the pastry and butter, it compresses them together, limiting the expansion of the layers. Instead, consider using a super-sharp knife or even a scalpel - if you have one! - to slice through the pastry cleanly.
The filling
This week’s recipe started with the non-vegetarian version. Having been cursed with an ongoing sinus infection (now clearing!) and an annoying loss of taste and smell for weeks, I had been dreaming of all my favourite savoury things together: leeks, fennel, potatoes, and juicy, seasoned sausage meat or pork running through it. You know, winter things!
When designing any filling for a pie, you need to consider how to cook each ingredient and to what degree. Outside of fruit pies, it’s rare that you can just throw a bunch of raw ingredients into a dish, slap on a pastry top, and leave the cooking to happen entirely in the oven. The main issues you’ll encounter are moisture, flavour, and the length of cooking time.
For moisture and flavour, water loss (e.g., searing meat or sautéing onions) intensifies flavours through browning reactions and ensures a ‘controlled explosion.’ As water is released, it can evaporate rather than become trapped inside the pastry case, which could make the filling soggy or even cause the pastry to burst.
In the case of the length of cooking time, a pre-cook will ensure your ingredients are tender. Sure, 45-50 minutes in a hot oven sounds like plenty of time to get potatoes and vegetables tender, but in the format of a deep pie, where the heat takes time to penetrate, you have much more control by perfecting the filling first.
Sausage, Potato, leek & fennel filling
For the leeks and fennel, I started by simmering the leeks in butter until melting before adding the very thinly sliced fennel. Thinly sliced is the key here otherwise it never cooks down to an aromatic mush. With the help of bay leaves, white wine and stock, you end up with a spreadable paste that tastes about 1000x better than it looks.
The potato layer was relatively simple to design, too. Though dauphinoise-style pies are well-documented and gorgeous in their own right, I wasn’t after something creamy. For me, the pastry brings the buttery, rich element, so I wasn’t after creamy potatoes. Enter: ‘Pommes Boulangére’. Boulangére potatoes, named for their origin of being cooked slowly in cooling bread ovens at the bakery, are a type of layered potato that is cooked with stock rather than dairy. For this recipe, you have two options - if you have a 7-inch round dish, the perfect size for our 8-inch pithivier, you can cook the potatoes in here, chill overnight, and then simply turn it over onto your pastry. If not, you can cook in an 8-inch square dish, cut out the 7-inch round, and place it on gently, in pieces if needed. Both work well, though you do have to hold your nerve a bit!
If cooking a tray of potatoes, cooling them, and then re-cooking them is a prep nightmare, there is a third option: double the batch and make a large tray, say 9x13. Use half for dinner and chill the leftovers for your pie. That way, part of your gratification will be less delayed!
The sausage part was the most challenging bit. I decided to use Cumberland sausagemeat, removing it from the casings, rather than pork mince. I chose to do this because it is already pre-seasoned (nutmeg, pepper, sage and salt for the win), and good quality was easily accessible - by all means, if you don’t have a good butcher nearby, use good quality pork mince and season yourself. But placed raw into my pithivier, it shrank during the bake and became overly firm and dense. Remember that 50-minute cooking time? It’s about 30 minutes longer than sausages are happy to be cooked for.
I mixed up a few mini pithiviers to get the best result. For the sausage layer, I compared browning the sausage meat in clumps, browning the sausage meat as a single patty, adding sauteed onions to the meat and, taking inspiration from juicy pork dumplings and meatballs, adding water and eggs to the mix:
There was a clear winner - the sausagemeat with added onions, water and egg was incredibly soft and flavourful. Another reason to thank dumplings! Click here for the recipe.
The Vegetarian filling
The vegetarian filling was a bit easier to design with a simple and delicious mixture of potatoes, chickpeas and greens. Compared to meat, vegetables tend to behave themselves and don’t change shape during baking, which is helpful for recipe development (though I haven’t found a way to keep greens bright in a 50-minute bake… no matter). Once again, the potatoes need a pre-cook, but this time, they are boiled and cooled before being cut into smaller pieces. Then, we make a fragrant oil with coriander seeds, cumin and chilli and toss it with the potatoes and chickpeas. The greens are chopped finely - a food processor, if you have one, makes quick work of this task - and cooked briefly, then dressed in lemon juice and herbs. Feta, though optional, brings a welcome tang.
The Assembly
This is the fun bit, I promise. Having made a lot of galettes, pithiviers and whatever-you-want-to-call-thems, this week, you’ve got two options to help get you to structural stability:
Free-form: Depending on your fillings, you can freeform your pie building. Similar to the galette des rois, you can pipe or place your fillings, if solid, and layer them up. You will be fully responsible for the structure!
Build-in-a-bowl: Ok, a pie dish. For the vegetarian filling, which is a bit more piecey, lining a shallow pie dish (7 or 8inches) with clingfilm then the pastry. You layer and pile your fillings into this, with the support of the dish, add the base, seal and flip. Very easy, and, honestly, non-stressful. For more dramatic domed pithiviers, you can use deep mixing bowls, but we’ll get to that another time.
Both recipes include GIFs which will help you see these techniques in action.
Finishing
While decorative pastry, like shapes or latticing, are gorgeous, that is a subject for another day. For today’s pithiviers, I’m using the classic double egg wash (yolks only!), then score. Applying egg wash correctly is a bit of an art - you want it to be thin and even, but several coats with a period of drying in the middle. If you wash too much egg, your pastry will be very soft after baking.
To score, you can use a toothpick or a very sharp knife. Remember not to go too deeply into the pastry, or the pattern will open up during baking. Go wild with the design! I love the weird concentric circle UFO look—I used my cake turntable to help!
Alright, let’s make it!
Recipe: Potato, Chickpea and Greens Pithivier
Makes 1 x 8 inch pie, serves 6
Equipment: 1 x 7 or 8inch pie dish (i have this one)
Ingredients
Potato layer:
400g Maris Piper potatoes (floury!)
2 tbsp Olive oil
2 tsp Coriander seed
1.5 tsp Ground Cumin
½ tsp Chilli flakes, or to taste
150g Good quality chickpeas. I use these giant ones
Black pepper
½ tsp Flaky salt
Greens layer:
4 spring onions, about 65g
1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove
250g greens, I used half spinach and half cavolo nero
20g lemon juice
½ tsp Flaky sea salt (or a tsp Yondu if you have it.)
20g soft herbs, i used a mix of parsley and dill
Pastry and assembly
1 x batch of Puff Pastry (you won’t need it all, but better to have more than you need!) or around 400g of shop-bought puff pastry
100g Feta, optional
2 x egg yolks + 1 tsp water for egg wash
Method
For the potatoes, bring a saucepan of water to boil and generously season with fine salt. Peel and halve or quarter, depending on your potatoes, to get 4-5cm chunks. Boil for 12-14 minutes or until tender. You don’t want them to break apart, but you should be able to pierce them the whole way through with a sharp knife easily. Drain and leave to cool. Once cool, cut into 1cm pieces.
Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. When shimmering, add the coriander seeds, ground cumin, and chilli flakes and fry until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the diced potatoes and drained chickpeas and fry for 2-3 minutes until the potatoes and chickpeas have absorbed the oil and spices and taken on a bit of colour. Add the salt and pepper, then taste for seasoning. Adjust as needed. Set aside to cool. This can be done 3 days in advance.
For the greens, finely chop the spring onion. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan until shimmering, then throw in the spring onion and a smashed whole garlic clove. Fry on medium heat for 2 minutes or until the spring onions have taken on a little colour. Blitz the greens in a food processor until very finely chopped, or do by hand, then add into the hot spring onion oil. Cook for 1-2 minutes until wilted and the flavourful oil coats the greens. Turn off the heat. Blitz or finely chop the herbs, then stir through the cooling greens. Squeeze in the lemon juice and season with salt or yondu. Taste and adjust to your liking. Set aside.
To assemble, roll out your puff pastry until it is 2mm thick, approximately 40-50cm long and 25cm wide. Place it on a tray, wrap it well, and chill for 30 minutes—1 hour. You can also do this a day in advance.
Divide the pastry roughly into ⅓ and ⅔. The larger piece will line your dish, and the smaller piece will be the base. Use a measuring tape to check the larger piece will fit in the base and up the sides of your chosen dish before cutting.
Line your chosen dish with clingfilm, then drape the larger piece into it. Press it into the base and up the edges. Now, layer your fillings—start with the greens, followed by the potato chickpea mix, and finally, crumble the feta, if using, on top. Brush the edge of the pastry with water.
Take the second, smaller piece of pastry and drape it over the top, pressing around the edges to seal. Place a piece of clean baking paper on top, roughly the size of your baking tray, then place a baking tray on top. Reach around and, holding the tin in place, flip everything over at once.
Remove the tin and cling film - you should have a beautifully filled pithivier! Use your hands to press down around the fillings to check it is well formed.
Rest in the freezer for 10 minutes. Choose a round cake tin which is slightly larger than the hump of fillings - a 1-inch border is best. Then, trim the excess pastry using a sharp knife and the tin to guide you. If desired, use the back of a knife or toothpick to make indentations around the pastry and create a scalloped edge for your pithivier.
Egg wash the pithivier, then rest for 10-15 minutes in the fridge or freezer until tacky, then egg wash the top again.
Score the galette with a toothpick or light, sharp knife. Don’t score the pastry - score the chilled egg wash for the best look. You can use a cake turntable, if you have one, to help with the scoring. Stab a few vent holes in the pastry with a toothpick to allow steam to escape. Rest for 10 minutes in the fridge before baking to chill and relax. You can also leave it in this pre-baked state in the fridge overnight, though the wet filling will start to play havoc with the pastry.
To bake the galette, pre-heat oven to 200c fan. Bake for 20 mins until puffed, then turn the oven down to 180c fan and bake for another 20 minutes. If it isn’t dark enough for you, keep baking for another 10-20 minutes. Leave to cool slightly, but eat whilst warm. Store at room temperature in an airtight container for 3 days. Refresh in a 180°C/160°C fan oven for 5–10 minutes.
For the sausage, leek and potato pithivier, click here.
I think this might be the EXACT thing I needed to see on a day like today 😁
"traitorous" - are you hooked as well? 😅