Cook from a Cookbook - Steak Pie and Cornbread

A double dose of cookbook challenge for you today, as this weekend I have used not one, but two different cookbooks!

I'll start with the slightly cheeky one. I've had this Jamie Oliver book ever since the TV show first aired, because the recipes he featured on the show each week were all fantastic. 

I am ashamed to admit we've only ever cooked one of them, and it's the one I'm sharing today. Cheeky, because it's not a new-to-us recipe; this was the third or fourth time we've done it. But I don't think it's featured on the blog before.

Big pile of beef... packet of pastry.. can of Guinness....
what could it be?

It is, quite frankly, the most amazing pie we have ever cooked/eaten. Steak, Guinness and Cheese pie. You don't need the book to cook it, the recipe is available for free on Jamie Oliver's website here.

The cheese makes all the difference. You stir half of it into the beef stew before you pour it into the pie dish. The rest gets sprinkled on top to create a cheesey layer underneath the pastry lid.

I would recommend doing at least half again the amount of cheese.
You can never have too much cheese.

Mmmmmm pie.

As ever, it looks fab in the pie dish. Getting it to look fab on the plate is a different story. You end up with a pastry shape, and a plate covered in cheesey beef stew!

Very tasty indeed. Although do not make the same mistake that we did. Start cooking it EARLY. We didn't have dinner till 9pm, because I didn't start making the pie until half past five.

One of the reasons I was delayed in starting on the pie was to try out a brand new recipe. New book, new recipe, food I'd never eaten before in my life.

I got this cookbook from the book club guy that comes to my office. When I saw it there, I thought "that looks awesome", and did some investigating online. Amazon told me the book wasn't available until next January, and it would cost me £18.75. I got it this week from the book club for £8. What a bargain. It's an amazing book. When I've done a few more of the recipes in it, I'll do a proper review because it's worth one.

The recipe we chose to test out this time though was cornbread. As I say, I've never had it before, but Jamie has been going on about making it for a while now, so when I saw there was a recipe for it in my new book I had to give it a try.

You have no idea how difficult it was to find that bag of cornmeal
in our local Tesco.

Nice and simple, it mixes up really quickly (well, it does once you've finished mopping up the broken egg from the floor after you let it roll off the work surface while setting up your ingredients photo).

It's wonderfully gloopy, and wonderfully yellow.

It smelled delicious as it was baking, and looks fantastic once it's done.

Is it cake, or is it bread? Sure looks like cake...

...but you don't eat cake warm, in slices and spread with butter!

Oh lordy, it was delicious. I can't wait to make this again, and to experiment with sugar levels to make it sweeter.