breakfast pie, round 2

I made the breakfast pie again, doing some things a bit differently this time, such as making a less-ugly top crust and adding some leftover pancetta to the mix (I was low on chorizo, so I thought, Why not?). No quail eggs this time, and that proved to be just fine.

As you see below, I mixed the meat and 'shrooms up with the bean purée instead of pouring the purée over the mix like last time. This turned out to be a good call because I had decided to include whole beans with the purée, which may have impeded the purée's ability to flow downward and coat all of the pie's filling last time. Also visible: the buttered baking dish, the cherry tomatoes, and the pie dough:

A closer look at the filling:

The herbed dough being rolled out (ball of dough = top crust):

Placing the dough into the baking dish:

Tucking in the 'maters:

A cockeyed view of the pie and its filling:

A new and improved top crust for the pie:

I'd forgotten to take a shot of the pie after I'd brushed it with an egg wash and cut a vent into the top, so I took this belated shot while the pie was in the oven:

The pie came out pretty well, but a bit burned toward the back. This pie was stuffed to a fuller extent than the previous one, so the pie's top was closer to the oven's topside burners. I should have watched more carefully for this sort of problem:

Not one to hide from my mistakes, I'm taking a closer look at the burn here. It's not totally blackened, and the crust turned out to be perfectly edible:

Another successful removal of the pie after cooling:

Alas, a somewhat blurry cross-section:

And we end on a clearer-looking slice of pie:

I think I'm all breakfast-pie'd out at this point. As a novelty, it's a good thing to eat maybe once or twice within a 48-hour period, but I don't think I could eat this more frequently than that. I'd have an easier time eating the beef pie I'd made earlier, or the chicken pot pie I'd made even before that, back when I was familiarizing myself with pie dough.

I want to do some apple and pumpkin pies because, after all, 'tis the season. But I have one more savory pie I'd like to attempt: the much-beloved Scotch pie that all true Scotsmen eat during halftime at a football match (by which I mean a soccer game). Scotch pies are traditionally made with a hot-water-and-lard dough, but I'm going to stick to my current idiot-proof dough, which seems to be working out great for me. I might try to make a batch of Scotch pies in which half are done the "right" way (lamb/mutton + salt/pepper + nutmeg or mace), and half are done the Kevinistic way (ground lamb + Middle Eastern spices + olive oil/butter). I have a feeling I'm going to like my way better. One complaint I've heard and read about Scotch pies is that they're a bit dry; the interior is solid meat, after all, with barely anything added to it, and the pies are designed to have a shallow "crater" on top to allow for the pouring-on of baked beans, mashed potatoes, or something else to provide some moisture to the dining experience. I'd rather add my spiced Middle Eastern oil-plus-butter to the lamb mince to give the meat some juiciness and a spicy kick before we even bake the pie. My preference, anyway. (Should I add turmeric to the pie crust to give the pie that Jamaican beef patty look...? At some point, an angry Scot is going to yell that whatever Frankensteinian abomination I'm making is decidedly not a Scotch pie. I'll just have to yell back that the Scots lost their right to criticize anyone when they willingly dropped their independence to continue sucking on the teats of the UK and the EU. What happened to your fighting spirit, guys?