History of The Meat pie – 4 recipes for Moroccan meat pie

A meat pie is a savoury pie with a filling of meat and other savoury ingredients. Principally popular in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, meat pies differ from a pasty in the sense that a pasty is typically a more portable, on-the-go item, as opposed to a more conventional pie. The beginnings of the meat pie can be traced back to the Neolithic Period, around 9500 BC. The ancient Egyptians’ diet featured basic pie made from oat, wheat, rye, and barley, and filled with honey and baked over hot coals.

These pies were eventually adopted by the Greeks, and it is there that a flour-water paste substance closely resembling pie pastry was created and was first filled with meat. In Greece, these pies were usually fried or cooked under coals. The Romans, tasting the delicacy from the Greeks, incorporated it into their own diet with little changes. According to the records kept by the wealthy, Romans used a variety of meats, oysters, mussels, lampreys, and fish as filling and a mixture of flour, oil, and water to keep it in. This ‘pastry’ cover was not meant to be eaten and was thrown away.

In combination with the spread of Roman roads, the invading crusaders encounter the dish and brought the recipes to Medieval Europe. In Northern Europe, cooks created the pastry using fats like lard and butter to make stiff dough to hold an upright pie. These medieval pastry dishes were called “coffins/coffyns”, which means a basket or box. According to Janet Clarkson in Pie: A Global History, the “coffins” were:

savory meat pie with the crusts or pastry being tall, straight-sided with sealed-on floors and lids. Open-crust pastry (not tops or lids) were known as “traps.” These pies held assorted meats and sauce components and were baked more like a modern casserole with no pan (the crust itself was the pan, its pastry tough and inedible). These crust were often made several inches thick to withstand many hours of baking.

Some historians suggest the tough, almost inedible, crust was given to the servants while the lords and ladies of the house ate the contents.

This pastry became a staple dish in medieval times, and was eventually called “pyes” or “pies”. The origin of this name comes from the type of meat commonly used as filling. Beef, lamb, and duck were employed, but a majority of the time it was the magpie pigeon that was the main ingredient. Magpies in medieval England were originally named pie. Some historians think that the popular usage of ‘pie’ birds led to the pastry dish being named pie as well, while etymologists suggest that pies were named after these birds “from a supposed resemblance between the miscellaneous contents of pies and the assortment of objects collected by thieving magpies.” The first use of the word “pie” as food is referenced in 1303 by the Oxford English Dictionary; also stating that the term became popular and widely utilized by 1362.

The French and Italians specialized in redefining the pastry of the pie, making it flakier and tastier by new methods of adding butter, rolling, and folding the dough. In 1440, the Paris pastry guild was recognized and started to expand their product—and so something like the modern day crust began to be used.

Missionaries and explorers spread the meat-based pie dish across the globe. The English Pilgrims of the North American colonies brought the recipes across the ocean with them. The crust of the pie was useful to preserve food during the long winter months in America (just as the pie was used in antiquity). But the pie was not considered popular there until the 1800s, and today meat pies have lost their popularity to be replaced with sweet pies.

Today, there are different types and variations of meat-pies enjoyed all across the world. We will be bringing you a series of meat pie recipes, but for this article we are giving you the recipe for Moroccan meat pies.

MOROCCAN BEEF PIE 1

Preparation time: 45 minutes + 30 minutes refrigeration Total cooking time: 1 hour 20 minutes

1 tablespoon oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 onion, cut into thin wedges
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons paprika
pinch saffron threads
500 g round steak, cut into 2 cm cubes
1 ½ cups (375 ml) beef stock
1 small cinnamon stick
100 g pitted prunes, halved
2 carrots, sliced
1 teaspoon grated orange rind
2 cups (250 g) plain flour
125 g butter, chilled and cut into cubes
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 preserved lemon, rinsed, pith and flesh removed, finely chopped (optional)
200 g thick plain yoghurt

1 Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the garlic and onion and cook for 3 minutes, or until softened. Add the cumin, ginger, paprika and saffron and stir for 1 minute, or until fragrant. Add the meat and toss until coated in the spices. Add the stock, cinnamon stick, prunes and carrot. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Increase the heat to medium, add the orange rind and cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes, or until the liquid has reduced and thickened slightly. Remove the cinnamon stick and cool completely.

2 To make the pastry, sift the flour into a large bowl. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre and add the egg and 1-2 tablespoons water and mix with a flat-bladed knife, using a cutting action, until the mixture comes together in beads.

3 Gently gather the dough together and lift out onto a lightly floured work surface. Press together into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

4 Preheat the oven to moderately hot 200°C (400°F/ Gas 6). Grease four 9 cm pie tins. Divide the dough into four pieces. Roll each piece of dough out between two sheets of baking paper to a 20 cm circle. Press the pastry into the tins, leaving the excess overhanging.

5 Divide the filling among the tins. Fold over the excess pastry, pleating as you go. Place on a baking tray and bake for 20—25 minutes, or until the pastry is golden. Combine the preserved lemon and yoghurt and serve with the pies.

NUTRITION PER SERVE
Protein 40 g; Fat 40 g; Carbohydrate 64 g; Dietary Fibre 6.5 g; Cholesterol 205 mg; 3183 k] (760 cal)

Moroccan meat and vegetable pie 2

You might be familiar with the use of phyllo dough in the ever-so-popular Middle Eastern treat baklava, but did you know that it is just as scrumptious in savory dishes as well?

Many Middle Eastern, Balkan and North African dishes share the use of this thin pastry called phyllo (in the Middle East), bourek (in some Balkan countries) or warqa (in North Africa). Warqa, which literally means leaf, is thinner and easier to handle than phyllo dough but, unfortunately, not widely available in the American market. Phyllo dough is easily found in the freezer department of any of your local grocery stores and yields a softer and more melt-in-your mouth result than the North African warqa. While I’ve never tried this recipe withbourek dough, I would not recommend to, as bourek’s thickness lends itself more to frying than baking.

The dish may look exotic, but with ingredients familiar in American cuisine like ground meat, spinach, mushrooms and noodles you will soon find it very easy to cook and very comforting to devour. In addition to being delicious you will use only one pan from start to finish, which is always a plus in my agenda, because it means fewer dishes to clean.

To make Moroccan meat and vegetable pie, all of the ingredients are quickly cooked separately before being layered inside a buttered phyllo nest. Of course you can always cook the layers ahead of time, keeping the assembling time for when you are ready to serve as it bakes quite rapidly.
The pie is crunchy on the outside with a juicy, earthy and spicy filling. I assure you it is magnificent and probably unlike anything you’ve ever had!

Moroccan meat and vegetable pie 3

For the crust:
• 1 lb. package of frozen phyllo dough, defrosted overnight in the refrigerator
• 1/2 stick of butter, melted
For the meat layer:
• 1 lb. ground meat
• 1 Tbsp. canola oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. ground allspice
• 2 Tbsp. chopped parsley
For the mushrooms layer:
• 8 oz. white mushrooms, sliced
• 1 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1 garlic clove, minced
For the spinach mix:
• 1 bunch of fresh spinach, or 14 oz. frozen spinach, defrosted and the excess water squeezed out
For the noodles layer:
• 1 cup of Asian rice noodles

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the meat and the rest of the “meat layer” ingredients stirring and mashing with a fork to avoid any clumped meat. Season with salt and pepper and transfer to a plate to cool down. Meanwhile, in the same pan, heat the oil and cook the mushrooms with the garlic until the mushrooms are tender and all water from the mushrooms has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside to cool down.

If using fresh spinach, steam them until just wilted and still retain their fresh green color. Season with salt, black pepper and set aside. If using the frozen spinach, just cook in the same pan for five minutes with a bit of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and set aside. Cover the rice noodles with warm water and let stand for 10 minutes or until tender. Drain very well from the water, mix the meat filling and set aside.

To assemble the pie, cut the phyllo dough vertically and cover it with a damp napkin to prevent it from drying out. Wipe down the same pan you cooked in and layer the bottom with six sheets of phyllo dough generously brushed with butter, overhanging the sides of the pan.

Start assembly with a layer of the meat noodles mixture, followed by mushrooms, spinach and meat noodles mixture again. Cover with the overhanging sheets of phyllo and add three other sheets of phyllo, each also brushed with butter and tuck them in the sides of the pan like you would make your bed. Brush the top with the more melted butter.

Bake in a preheated 375F degree oven until golden, about 30 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes and invert onto a plate. Serve hot.

Moroccan Meat Pie 4

ingredients

2 onions, chopped
3 tbsp oil
500 g minced lamb or beef
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tsp ground cinnamon
a pinch of cayenne (optional)
a bunch of parsely, finely chopped
a bunch of coriander, finely chopped
6 medium size eggs, beaten
500 g puff pastry
plain flour
oil for deep frying

method
1. Make the filling. Fry the onions in oil until golden. Add the meat, salt, pepper, 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon and cayenne, if you like, and fry, stirring occasionally, until the meat becomes dry.

2. Then add the parsley and coriander and stir in the eggs. Keep stirring and cook for a minute or so until the eggs set.

3. Cut the pastry into 8 pieces. Make little balls and roll out, as thin as you can without breaking, on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin.

4. Place 2 heaped 1 tsps of filling on one side near the centre of each sheet and fold into a packet. Pinch the edges together so as to close the little pies firmly.

5. Deep fry in not too hot oil until well browned, turning over once.

6. Drain in absorbent paper and serve very hot, sprinkled with the remaining cinnamon.

7. For a variation on this recipe, do not fry the pies. Place them on a baking tray, brush the top with egg and bake in a preheated oven, 190°C (375°F) gas mark 5. for 30 minutes, or until they are brown. Serve hot, sprinkled with the remaining cinnamon.

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