Beef Pot Pies to enjoy the last of winter.......

The most talented Bee and Jai at Jugalbundi is running an event every month that is dedicated to Food Photography. The event is called "Click" and a theme is announced on the first of each month and all bloggers are invited to send their pictures.
This month the theme selected is "Crusts". Now, there are many people who eat only the soft inside of bread, the soft center or a tart or would not dream of eating the end slices of bread. I, on the other hand, always wait for everyone to slice, dish or eat and then I go in for the crusts.When eating a sandwich, I always save the crusts for last...Do you think I am a nut case? How about you? So, needless to say the theme for this month grabbed my attention.

I love individual pot pies. I think they are cute and it is easy to do portion planning. I made these Beef and Vegetable pies earlier this winter and they were delicious. This time I wanted to make a deep dark beef pie with brisket, cooked for hours in red wine, nothing added, just meat and then the delicious puff pastry crust. So I do not have much of a recipe except this:

4 kg boneless brisket - most of the fat removed
1 bottle Cabernet Sauvignon
4 cloves
salt and pepper
a few sprigs rosemary
1 tsp ground coriander
a little flour and oil for thickening
1 cup beef stock

Cut meat into cubes and brown in some olive oil. Put meat with all other ingredients in a big cast iron pot and cook in oven (180 C). I cooked this meat until it was so tender. I mixed about 1 Tbsp flour and some olive oil and used it to thicken the gravy. Cool the filling.
Cut circles from the puff pastry and make individual pies in little bowls like I did or make 3 family sized pies. Freeze and bake when needed. I do not put pastry at the bottom of my pie dish, but if you do, just bake for a while longer. Brush the uncooked pies with egg wash and bake at 200C until golden and puffy. I got about 8 individual pies from this "recipe".

So this is then my entry to this month's "Click" event. I hope you will all join me and enter your pictures too.