Ham and pea pie with rough puff pastry

There's often a home-cooked ham in the fridge here. Always the control freak, I like to be able to season and flavour my own ham for sandwiches, pasta dishes and what have you. A piece of smoked gammon simmered in some aromatics of your choosing for a few hours will always be better (and work out cheaper) than slices from the deli or supermarket, and is very little work - plop it into a pan, bring to a simmer, and leave for a few hours while you try on shoes or whatever else it is you fill your days with.

I'm still a big fan of the Coca Cola stock, beefed up with some aromatics, for hams - it's really worth a whirl if you've not tried it yet. Ginger beer is also alarmingly, counterintuitively good here. If you still can't stomach the idea, a ham is also delicious poached in water with a slug of wine, a few tablespoons of sugar, some onions, garlic and spices like cloves, fennel, star anise and bay. Experiment, and settle on what you like. In the recipe below, I'm assuming you already have a cooked ham at hand. For this sort of recipe, where rather than slicing the ham you will be shredding or cutting it into chunks, I really like a bacon collar. It's a less monolithic bit of meat than some of the slicing cuts, and has good marbling which helps push the flavour of the stock deep into the meat.

This recipe is all about the aromatics in the ham and in the bechamel sauce. Infusing the milk for your white sauce with shallot, bay, cloves, parsley, whole peppercorns and a stick of celery raises it from a rather boring binder and filler to something rather delicious and gorgeously scented. If you find this all rather a faff, bechamel freezes very well, so you can save time by making plenty and freezing it in boxes. (You can also freeze the infused milk before turning it into bechamel, bread sauce or other sauces - like the finished bechamel, it holds its flavour very successfully.)

Finally, the pastry. I've made a rough puff here to cover the pie (the amount of pastry below makes enough for two pies, and I haven't halved it because cooking with half an egg isn't very practical - again, this freezes well, or you can keep the extra pastry in the fridge for up to three days). It's very easy, deliciously flaky, and melts in the mouth. All the same, I won't hold it against you if you want to save some time and use some pre-prepared pastry instead.

Filling
1 litre milk
3 bay leaves
2 shallots
3 cloves garlic
12 cloves
1 stick celery
1 small bunch parsley
8 peppercorns
6 tablespoons flour
5 tablespoons salted butter
450g cooked ham (try a bacon collar if you can find one)
120g peas (fresh or frozen, depending on the time of year)

Crust
450g flour
120g butter
240g lard
1 egg, and 1 yolk to glaze
2 tablespoons sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
170ml water

Start by infusing the milk. Peel and halve the shallots, and stud them with the cloves. Put all the aromatics in a thick-bottomed pan with the milk, and bring very slowly to a simmer. Turn the heat off, put the lid on and leave to infuse in a warm place for three hours.

While the milk is infusing, put the pastry together. Beat the egg into a bowl with the sugar, lemon juice and water. Beat the mixture and chill in the fridge. Use your fingers to rub the cold butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs, and chop the lard (also straight from the fridge) into pieces about the size of the top joint of your little finger. Stir it into the flour/butter mixture. Add the egg mixture bit by bit, stirring the mixture with a knife until everything comes together. Put the pastry into a freezer bag and rest it the fridge for at least half an hour, until you are ready to put the pie together.

Strain the solid ingredients out of the milk and discard them. Make the bechamel sauce by melting the butter and flour together over a low heat in a clean pan, and cook, stirring, for five minutes. Add the milk a small amount at a time, stirring sauce constantly as you go. The sauce will thicken as you work. Keep adding milk bit by bit until it is all incorporated, and the sauce is thickened. Don't add salt to the sauce; there should be enough in the ham to season the whole dish.

When you are ready to put the pie together, preheat the oven to 230°C (445°F).

To assemble the pie, chop the ham into bite-sized pieces. Put a layer of ham in the bottom of a pie dish, cover with a layer of peas, and repeat until you have used all the ham and peas up. Pour over the bechamel sauce until your pie dish is filled. Depending on the size of your dish, you may have some left over, but I'm sure you'll find something to do with it.

Cut the ball of pastry in half and put the half you're not using in the fridge or freezer.

Roll the pastry you are using out in a large rectangle, and fold it into three, as if it was a piece of A4 paper you are going to put into an envelope. Give the pastry rectangle a quarter turn, roll it out into a large piece again, fold into three, roll out and repeat four or five times. You'll end up with a sheet of pastry about half a centimetre thick made up of many layers. Lay the pastry sheet on top of the pie dish, cut the excess off the edges and pinch the pastry into place on the dish. Cut a large cross in the middle to allow steam to escape and brush with a beaten egg yolk.

Bake at 230°C (445°F) for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 200°C (390°F). Cook for 25 minutes, until the pastry is golden and the pie steaming. Serve immediately.

Cottage pie

It's that stodge-craving time of year, and very few things fit the bill better than a handsome cottage pie. This one has an intense and rich filling, and it's blanketed with a generous layer of lovely, fattening mash. (In less apocalyptic weather, I'd use a bit less topping, but right at the moment I am mindfully using mashed potato as internal insulation from the biting cold.)

I've used veal mince here, from non-crated calves. It has a lighter flavour than beef, and it's less fatty, but you can substitute beef mince if you prefer it. The root vegetables add sweetness and earthy depth - this is a wonderfully wintery pie. To serve four, you'll need:

Filling
450g veal mince
1 large onion
1 large carrot
1 large parsnip
1 tablespoon smoked paprika (use unsmoked paprika if you can't find any)
2 bay leaves
1 thyme leaves, stripped from stalks
100ml vermouth
2 tablespoons tomato purée
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
200ml good beef stock
2-3 tablespoons olive oil

Mash
800g floury potatoes (I used King Edwards)
150ml whole milk
1 large knob butter
Generous grating of nutmeg

Chop the onion, carrot and parsnip into small dice. Take a large, heavy-based pan, and sweat them over a low heat in the olive oil until soft; the onions should be starting to take on some colour. Add the paprika, bay and thyme, and keep cooking, stirring all the time, for two minutes. Tip the meat into the pan and turn the heat up to medium. Stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan all the time, cook until the meat is browning nicely.

Pour the vermouth into the pan and let it bubble up. Add the Worcestershire sauce and tomato puree, then stir in the stock and a large pinch of salt (use all the fingers of your hand to pinch, not just finger and thumb). Bring the mixture up to a simmer and turn the heat down low again. Continue to simmer with the lid on for an hour, then remove the lid and continue to simmer for 20 minutes. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

At this point, you can put the pie filling in the fridge overnight if you have time. As with so many casseroled and simmered dishes, the flavour improves if allowed to settle and develop for 24 hours.

When you are ready to make up the pie, peel the potatoes and cook them as you usually would for mash. When mashing, add the butter, the milk and the nutmeg with a generous amount of salt. Put the filling in a pie dish and spread the mash on top. I like it spread in a sort of thatched roof arrangement, which is pure posing, but does look good. Make sure you mark your topping with a fork - this will ensure you get some nice crispy bits when the pie is cooked.

Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 30 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Fisherman's pie

They tell me it's brain food. I remain unconvinced - I am absolutely no better at doing sums than I was before I cooked this, but I am deliciously full and thinking hard about marine biology.

This is a lovely take on fisherman's pie, a thousand miles away from any variant you may have eaten in the school dining hall. Some of the fish is fresh, some smoked, and this gives it a deep, warm background without overdoing the smoky flavour. Sweet peas and prawns are balanced by a hit of lemon juice and nutmeg, and creamy mash makes a golden lid for the whole thing.

Although this is a fish dish, you'll find it keeps well overnight in the fridge. This amount made two filling suppers for two greedy people with a sharply dressed green salad. I used frozen haddock fillets here, but you can use any firm, flaky white fish, frozen or fresh.

To serve four, you'll need:

500g haddock fillets
200g smoked haddock
100g smoked salmon
100g peeled prawns, raw if possible
150g butter
50g plain flour
570ml milk
50g frozen peas
2 eggs
2 teaspoons capers in white wine vinegar
Juice of ½ lemon
A few gratings of nutmeg
1kg potatoes (choose a floury variety like King Edward)
3 tablespoons double cream
Cheddar cheese to sprinkle

Preheat the oven to 200° C (400° F).

Lay the haddock (defrosted if frozen) and smoked haddock in the baking dish you plan to make the pie in - it should have a capacity of between 1.5 and 2 litres. Pour over half the milk and dot with 25g of butter. Season with plenty of pepper and bake for 20 minutes. Pour the liquid from the baking dish into a measuring jug, top up with the remaining milk and reserve. Remove any skin or bones from the cooked fish and flake it into large pieces in the baking dish.

Hard-boil the eggs, and quarter them. Combine them in the baking dish with the flaked fish, drained capers, the frozen peas, the prawns (raw or cooked, but defrosted if frozen) and the smoked salmon. (I used Waitrose's flakes of hot-smoked salmon - if you can't find hot-smoked salmon use the regular variety and use scissors to cut it into bite-sized pieces.)

Peel the potatoes and set them to boil as usual for the mashed potato topping. While the potatoes are boiling, melt 75g of the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour and cook over a medium-low flame, stirring, for four minutes. Add the milk and fish cooking liquid a little at a time, stirring well after every addition until the sauce thickens. Continue until all the milk mixture is incorporated, and bring to a low simmer until the sauce thickens again. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and stir in the lemon juice and a grating of nutmeg. Pour the sauce over the ingredients in the baking dish.

Mash the potatoes well with the cream, 50g of the butter, another generous grating of nutmeg and plenty of salt and pepper. Spread or pipe the potatoes over the ingredients in the baking dish, and sprinkle with Cheddar cheese.

Bake for 40 minutes, until the cheesy top is a golden brown.