Clutton says: “This is a tall, standing-proud pie made with hot water pastry, which is not only delicious but so easy to work with. Forget everything you know about keeping things cool to work with pastry – the onus here is on working with this pastry while it is still hot. Or at least warm.

“Classic hot water pastry, like Paul Hartland of Mrs King’s Pork Pies makes for his pork pies, contains lard. This is in part for the connection between the meat and the fat of the same animal, but also for the remarkable flavour and texture the lard gives. The recipe here has measurements for using butter or lard. The measurements are different as butter contains more water. The meat-free filling is deeply flavoursome, given a double-umami lift from fresh wild mushrooms and dried porcini. It can be made a day ahead of baking the pie and chilled until needed.”

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

• 25g dried porcini
• 250ml boiling water
• 1 small celeriac (about 650g)
• 800g potatoes
• 2 onions
• 60g butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil or rapeseed oil
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 80g mixed mushrooms of your choosing
• 1 apple
• 250g creme fraiche
• 80g gruyère

For the pastry:

• 350g plain flour, plus extra for dusting 250g strong white flour
• 2 teaspoons fine salt
• 220g butter (or 200g lard)
• 1 egg 

You will need a deep 22cm springform cake tin.

Method

Sit the dried porcini in a heatproof bowl and cover with the boiling water. Set aside.

Cut off the gnarly top and bottom of your celeriac. Peel, halve and cut it into slices about 1cm thick. Put the celeriac slices in a saucepan of boiling salted water and cook for 15–20 minutes until just tender. Peel the potatoes, cut into slices about 1.5cm thick and simmer in a separate pan of boiling salted water until tender. Drain the vegetables when ready and set aside, seasoning them while they’re still warm.

Peel and finely chop the onions. Heat the butter and oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat, then add the onions and cook until just softening. Chop the rosemary leaves and add those too. When the onions are soft, add the mushrooms, roughly chopping them if large. Lift the now-rehydrated porcini out of the water (keep the water), roughly chop them, and add to the pan too. Cook for 5 minutes, then pour in the porcini soaking water. Mix and remove from the heat. 

Peel, quarter and core the apple, dice, then add to the pan of mushrooms. Now cut the cooked celeriac and potato slices into roughly 1cm cubes (you don’t need to be too precise about it), add to the onion/mushroom pan, stir in the creme fraiche and season generously with salt and freshly ground pepper. Your filling is now almost ready – carry straight on or keep it in the fridge for up to a day, making sure you return the filling to room temperature before building your pie.

To build your pie:

Grate the gruyère and keep back for adding to the filling.

Preheat the oven to 170C fan/190C/375F/gas mark 5 with a large baking tray inside to get hot. Use just a little of the butter (or lard) to grease the base and sides of your tin.

To make the pastry, sift the flours and salt into a large mixing bowl, making a well in the middle. Cut the butter (or lard) into pieces into a saucepan and add 180ml water (or 200ml if using lard). Place over a medium heat and as soon as it is bubbling fast, pour the fat / water mix into the flour bowl. Stir together using a wooden spoon to form a dough and then use your hands. It won’t need much kneading.

Separate off two-thirds of the dough. Roll it out on a lightly-floured worktop to a thickness of about 4mm and cut out a circle that covers the base of the tin. Lift the dough over and into the base. If it can go a little way up the sides of the tin then all to the good. Use more dough to roll pieces for the sides of the pie. This pastry is incredibly amenable to patching up and pressing pieces together. When you have the base and sides done, spoon in about a third of the filling mix, then scatter over half the grated gruyère. Repeat with another third of filling, the rest of the cheese, and finally the last of the celeriac/potato mix.

Take most of the remaining pastry and roll out to form a lid. Lift it onto the pie and bring the side pastry up and over the edges and press together, so you are building your pie to sit inside and below the top of the tin. Crimp as prettily as you can or want to. 

The last of the pastry can be used to make decorations. I like to make stars or leaves and cut them out with biscuit cutters before pressing them on top. 

Push the handle of a wooden spoon through the centre of the pie’s lid to make a steam hole. Beat the egg with a little water and brush over the pastry. Then put your beautiful pie into the oven, sitting it on the hot baking tray. Bake for 45 minutes, then lift the pie out and gently release and remove the springform ring. Return the pie to the oven for 15–20 minutes so that the pastry sides can brown a little too. It is ready when the pastry is beautifully golden on top.

Let the pie sit out of the oven for 5–10 minutes before slicing. It is a pie best eaten while still warm. Some sort of greens alongside are a very good idea. 

Clutton says: “This broth manages to be hearty and healthy, comforting and delicious all at the same time. It’s also a perfect example of why having dried beans on standby is so useful. Only a relatively small amount of them is used here, so I’d always cook extra to freeze or whizz into a dip….

“The broth is finished with a drizzle of herb oil of the kind often seen on market stalls and that, again, is a good store cupboard standby. Serve with chunks of crusty bread for dunking. You can make the dish meat-free if you opt to not include pancetta.”

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 125g dried cannellini or borlotti beans
• 1 leek
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 70g diced smoked or unsmoked pancetta (optional)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 sprig of thyme
• 100ml amontillado sherry
• 2 floury potatoes (about 400g in total)
• 500ml chicken or vegetable stock (bought or see pages 82 and 147)
• 100g winter greens (kale, cavolo nero or savoy cabbage)
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated parmesan
• 2 tablespoons herb oil

Method

Cook the beans:

First rehydrate them by soaking them in lots of water. Adding 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to the water will help them soften.

Drain the beans and rinse.

Simmer them in about 1.5 litres of water, and again you can add a little bicarbonate of soda to reduce the cooking time. You could also add herbs or a chopped onion to the pot to enhance the flavour. Go steady with the salt – it helps to shorten the cooking time, but can also toughen the skin and result in the beans having a bit of a floury texture.

It will take 45–60 minutes for the beans to tenderise, depending on type and age. (Note that if you have a pressure cooker, the beans will be tender in a fraction of the time.)

Once tender, the beans are ready to drain. Set aside.

For the broth:

Trim the leek, remembering the ends can be kept and used for stock. Slice it in half lengthways and then into semi-circles the approximate width of a pound coin. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a low heat, add the leek and cook gently until softening. If using the diced pancetta add it now and allow to cook for a further 5 minutes until just browning. Add the bay leaf and thyme, then pour in the sherry. Bubble for a minute on a higher heat, then turn the heat back down. 

Peel or scrub the potatoes, as you prefer. Cut them into whatever size you would like them to be in your finished broth, and add to the pan. Pour in the stock and 700ml water (or use a total volume of 1.2 litres of vegetable stock). Season well and simmer for 10–15 minutes until the potatoes are tender. While the broth is cooking, shred the greens of your choosing. Find and discard the bay leaf and thyme sprig. Stir in the drained beans, shredded greens, and parmesan. Give it another 3 minutes over the heat for the greens to wilt, then check the seasoning and serve. Finish with a drizzle of herb oil. 

(This broth is hardly hard work, but you could, of course, take the even less effortful route and swap the dried beans for a jar of pre-cooked cannellini or butter beans.)

Dried and pre-cooked beans can be used interchangeably in recipes. As a rough guide, their dried weight doubles once cooked, so 250g dried beans gives you approximately 500g cooked beans.

Clutton says: “Camembert is really just one of many soft cheeses that would work well for this. I try not to get too caught up on marching to the Market with a specific cheese in mind, but prefer to talk to the stallholders about what they have and what might suit what I want to do with it. For this, I’d be just as happy with a vacherin Mont d’Or or Époisses. Whatever cheese you choose nestles within a whole loaf and is then baked for tearing and sharing, its flavours layered up with garlic, mushrooms, honey and wine.”

Serves 3–4 as a main or 6 as part of a feast

Ingredients

• 1 round baking cheese such as camembert (about 250–300g)
• 1 round sourdough or cob loaf
• 1 garlic clove
• 30g butter
• 25g small girolle mushrooms
• ½ teaspoon herbes de Provence
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 50ml white wine or vermouth

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C fan/190C/375F/gas mark 5.

Cut the top rind off the cheese. Then cut the top off the loaf and pull out enough of the crumb inside that the cheese can sit comfortably in the loaf.

Peel the garlic and cut into slivers. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a low–medium heat. Cook the mushrooms until just softening, then add the garlic slivers and stir in the herbes de Provence. Take off the heat and stir in the honey and the wine. Mix well and season lightly.

Sit the loaf on a large piece of foil on a baking tray. Spoon the mushroom mix over the top of the cheese, then spoon the rest of the juices over, allowing some to go over the outside of the bread too. Push at the garlic pieces so they sink into the cheese a little. Wrap loosely in the foil and bake for 20 minutes. Increase the oven temperature to 190C fan/210C/410F/gas mark 6, open the parcel up just enough to reveal the cheese, and return to the oven for another 5 minutes to finish off.

Cut or tear the loaf into wedges and serve immediately while the cheese is still meltingly hot.