Mushroom and Ale Pie

The kitchen windows fog over. The ale hits the hot pan and the whole room fills with something malty and savoury and deeply promising. This is a pie for the kind of evening when the light goes early and you want the oven on for the warmth as much as the cooking.

I don't make a full pastry case for this. Not on a Tuesday. A sheet of shop-bought puff pastry draped over the top of a dish of dark, sticky mushroom filling is all the crust it needs. The pastry puffs and turns gold. The filling underneath is thick and rich, the mushrooms having given up their water and taken on the ale until they taste deeper than you'd think a vegetable could. There are few better feelings than putting this in front of someone on a cold night and watching their shoulders drop half an inch.

The mushrooms are everything. Use a mix: chestnut for their firmness, big flat ones or portobellos torn into rough pieces for their meatiness. Don't slice them too thin. You want them to hold their shape, to give the pie something to bite into. The ale wants to be dark and malty, the sort you'd happily drink a glass of while you cook. If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it.

I wrote it down in the notebook last November: mushrooms, ale, pastry, rain. Right food, right evening.