Cheesy Leek Pie

 This vegetarian pie is the perfect Sunday lunch centrepiece

It's deliciously creamy and yet has a satisfying tangy flavour from the leeks.

We decided to make something a bit different to the usual Sunday roast this week. I had a hankering to make some pastry, and because we had a load of leeks that needed eating up I decided to make a quiche. Only had 2 eggs though! Disaster! :)

I remembered back to a delicious vegetable pie my Mum used to make, full of all sorts of veg surrounded by a creamy white sauce and crisp pastry. It was comfort food to the max. We'll go down that road I thought!

Now we're big fans of cheese in this house, so rather than white sauce I decided to make it cheesy (although to be fair, it's basically the same recipe, except you chuck a load of cheese in at the end). I was hoping the kids would enjoy it more that way, but sadly Master E was in one of his stubborn moods and refused point blank to try the pie. Miss L was a bit more adventurous, but still wasn't sold on the idea of the leeks.

Next time I create a pie, I'll just fill it with veg that the kids like (such as carrots, peas, sweetcorn etc), but as I explained, I had 4 large leeks that needed eating, so I went down the leek route hoping that they'd try something a bit different! C'est la vie!

For this recipe, the first thing you need to do is make your pastry. I used this recipe here from the BBC Food website. We doubled the recipe, but still didn't have a enough pastry......so we made double again (so 500g plain flour in total). That was plenty for a 23cm (9 inches) diameter pie and we managed to get 6 jam tarts out of it too!

Here's the recipe we used in the end:

• 500g plain flour

• large pinch salt

• 220g butter, cubed

• 150ml (1/4 pint) cold water

Method

• Measure out the flour and mix in the salt

• Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles bread crumbs.

• Add the water a little at a time and mix until you get a stiff dough that you can handle (you may not need all of the water). Form into a ball.

• Wrap the ball of pastry in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

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So now you have your pastry ready, it's time to blind bake it. Do this to make sure you get a nice crisp bottom to the pie. No soggy bottoms here!!

Roll out half your pastry until it's fairly thin, then line your pie dish. We used a 23 cm (9 inch) diameter pie dish.

I then put some grease-proof paper on top, followed by ceramic baking beans. If you don't have baking beans, don't worry, you can use rice instead. Putting something heavy on the pastry stops it from puffing up, and using the grease-proof paper means your beans or rice don't get stuck in the pastry.

TIP: When you trim the pastry leave a centimetre or two over the edge the edge of the dish. This is because the pastry shrinks while cooking. You can cut off any excess once it's cooked.

Next bake in a 200 deg C (180 fan, gas mark 6) oven for 25 minutes until the pastry is golden brown.

Remove your pastry from the oven and allow to cool. Trim round the side with a sharp knife.

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While your pastry is cooking, you can start to make the pie filling.