HAM & COMTÉ PITHIVIER
a recipe for the bank holiday! A childhood sarnie, wrapped up in posh pastry.
Hi folks,
If you’re in the UK, happy bank holiday weekend!
Welcome back to How I Cook+. This week’s recipe is a corker…
A big fat posh pie, known as a pithivier. I’ve made a heap of these over the years, and for the most part they’ve been big and round and a pain in the ass to make... This one’s a little different, mostly because it’s very easy, but also because it’s a big flat rectangle.
Food has a slightly tastier edge when it jogs a memory, and this pie whips me back to fishing a squished, clingfilm bound sandwich out of my backpack at school. Ham and cheese sarnies are drenched in lunch break nostalgia. Before you ask, no, I wasn’t being made pithiviers for my packed lunch (imagine!!!), but wafer thin cut ham featured regularly alongside the delightfully soggy cheese, cucumber and marmite. With that in mind, this is a slightly more down-to-earth pithivier, it’s closer to a Greggs bean and cheese than it is the grand foie gras pithiviers of French haute cuisine, and all the better for it.
As well as a puff pastry low-down, I’ve also got some Easter cooking ideas for you, a beautiful Maori record and we welcome the return of the best TV show since The Sopranos.
Thanks for reading!
B x
WHAT’S BEEN GOING ON THIS WEEK?
The first book proofs are in! It’s very cool to see the book coming to life. The whole thing starts its life in your head, then moves on to exist as hundreds of boring word documents and then, all of a sudden, it has a personality of its own. A look, a feel, a vibe. An amazing team of very creative people get together and breathe life into the pages. It’s a very smart casual book. I love it, I know you’re all going to love it too. If you haven’t already, pre-order a copy now!
Are you interested in learning about the process of making a cookbook? It takes a pretty long time, I first started working on the idea in 2023 and with a release date of 2025, that’s two years from start to publication. It also takes a village. There are many minds whirring away behind the scenes of every cookbook. Photographers, designers, copy editors, editors, project managers oh, and me. I’m thinking about writing a little breakdown of how it works, from pitch all the way through to print. It’s a fascinating world! What do you reckon? Sound good?
IT’S EASTER!
If you celebrate, it’s a big weekend for cooking. Lots of folks will be cooking for a crowd this weekend so here’s a few seasonal, Spring-y menu ideas from the archive…
There’s also plenty more over on the recipe index!
THE INSPIRATION: WILDAIR & HAM & CHEESE SANDWICHES…
There’s a restaurant in NYC that I’ve never been to called Wildair.
Ok… stick with me.
Whilst I haven’t been to Wildair IRL, via the brain-melting lens of instagram, I am very familiar with the food they cook and in particular, a baked good. What really catches my eye is their pithiviers. When I first saw a slice of golden, flaky pastry, covered in a bright, ferrari-red mayonnaise, I was sure I wasn’t looking at a pithivier or a steak bake stuffed with kimchi. Either way, I knew I wanted to eat it. They’re turning out some seriously good looking flavours across the pond. Kimchi ricotta, ham and cheese, broccoli rabe and chilli jam. Woof.
So, seeing as I can’t just pop over to NYC on a whim, I decided to whip up my own version of the crispy pastry squares, and put my own little spin on it.
I’m a total sucker for a ham and cheese sandwich. They kept the engine running at school and scratch a special itch whenever I make one these days. I’ve grown up a bit now, so I wanted to dress up the classic a tiny bit. As you can probably gather from my recipe writing, I’m not a huge fan of “whacky” or “new” food combinations. The classics are there for a reason and building a recipe on a tried and tested foundation (like ham and cheese!) gives you the confidence and space to make the tiny little tweaks that’ll help you hit home runs in the kitchen. Today’s little tweaks come in the form of lyonnaise onions, fresh horseradish and a crunchy, fragrant spice topper.
Let’s get into it.
WHAT IS A PITHIVIER?
So what exactly is a pithivier? A pithivier is a pie, but not all pies are pithiviers. They’re really defined by the pastry that’s used to make them. It’s got to be puff, and it’s got to be all puff. No shortcrust bottom and a puff lid, we’re taking 360° all puff. An all puff pie is light, shatteringly crispy, a textural masterpiece and a hard to bake perfectly. There are certainly some obstacles to overcome when it comes to the cook but via a combination of a thoughtful filling and a hot oven, you’ll be grand. More on that shortly.
“What about the shape? They’re supposed to be round… Right?”
Wildair laughs in the face of your round pie! If a pithivier is just a pie made with puff pastry, who cares what shape it is. 99% of all pithiviers I’ve ever seen a little hump-like mounds, and if they have the signature little chimney in the top, they look remarkably like a boob.
If you go boob-mode with your pithivier, you can stuff it with all sorts, but I guarantee ham and cheese would be very weird. Imagine, a big, clumsy ball of ham, caramelised onions and comté - it’s just wrong! We want layer after layer of crisp pastry, thinly sliced ham, oozy cheese, gooey onions and fragrant spices. This time, a big flat pie just makes sense.
PUFF PASTRY
Shop bought is really the way to go here. My mate (and very talented baker) Matt commented on the video for this recipe immediately. “Hand laminated pastry I hope?!”. No, Matt, of course not.
Handmade puff pastry is a tricky, labour intensive thing to make and for just a few quid, you can buy really good quality pastry down the shops. Sometimes its about picking your battles, and if you want this to take up all of the bank holiday weekend, then please make your own pastry! I want it done in an hour, so I’ll be buying mine! If you can, try and get hold of an all-butter puff. The flavour is light years ahead of the vegan stuff, and seeing as we’re stuffing it with ham and cheese, you don’t have to worry about staying plant-based.
There are a few easy steps you can take to ensure top to bottom crisp pastry. The first, is make sure your pastry is cold and the oven is hot! I bake this at 190°C and have an oven thermometer in there so I can be absolutely sure where everything is sitting. When you make your pie, keep everything cold so when it hits the oven, the water in the pastry springs into life and you get a really good puff.
It would be a real shame if the bottom of our pie was soggy, wouldn’t it? Indeed it would, so preheat your baking tray! This is a great little hack that will not only help kickstart the puffing process but it’ll ensure you have a crispy, golden base. I preheat a heavy baking sheet upside down in the oven and slide the pithivier straight on top. If you’ve got a pizza or baking stone you can use that, too.
LYONNAISE ONIONS
A lyonnaise onion is definitely in my top 3 onions of all time (also featured are pickled and fried). They’re essentially onions, cut thin and slowly caramelised in butter. The key word is slow. You want to really take your time with these. If you’re onions are done in less than 15 minutes you’ve probably rushed them! Don’t be shy with the butter and add a little bundle of thyme to perfume everything. A classic French preparation deserves a cartouche. If you’ve not used one before, it’s basically a little paper lid that allows a measured amount of moisture to leave the pan. A lid traps all of the steam in, a cartouche lets a little out, but still keeps enough in there to encourage even cooking. It’s about as basic a kitchen ‘tool’ as you’ll get, but they’re endlessly useful.
How thin should you cut your onions? You should always consider the size of your cut when cooking onions, and as we’re not after bite or texture with these guys, we’re going super thin. We want them to almost melt into a paste, bring sweetness and a rich, jammy texture to the pie. If you want to feel the onions a bit more, cut them into 0.5cm slices.
I finish my onions with a good dose of dark vinegar to add a savoury twang. I had a fancy fig leaf vinegar knocking around so I tossed a bit of that into the pan, but a good sherry vinegar will absolutely do the trick.
HAM & CHEESE
Let’s talk ham. First question - smoked or unsmoked? Smoked! Obviously!
We’re after high-impact flavour, baby. Smoked ham brings another dimension to your pithivier and you want it cut thin. Wafer thin. Thinly sliced ham, when stacked up and ruffled, gives great texture to your pie. If you look at the cross section, the layers of ham aren’t dissimilar to the way the puff pastry splits into lots of thin, crispy tiers. It’s all connected… Buy yourself a stack of good quality slices of ham and you’re golden.
For the cheese we want a good melter. Seeing as everything is getting quite French, I’ve opted for a nicely aged comté. It’s nutty, sharp and melts like a dream. You could use cheddar, gouda or emmental.
EXTRA GARNISH
We’ve got the three amigos ready to go, good cheese, wafer thin ham and a dollop of jammy, sweet and sour Lyonnaise onions. What are our final little tweaks? Well, baking seeds and spices on top a pie is a great way to add a little extra texture and fragrance. I’ve gone for a blend of fennel, chilli and sesame here but you could go for whatever you like! Nigella seeds rip on a baked good and an “everything bagel” seasoning rarely misses.
I also grate some fresh horseradish into the pie for some spice. I know this isn’t the easiest ingredient to get your hands on, so a spoon of prepared horseradish spread across the ham would also be a delight. They happened to have a few sticks at my local greengrocer, so I went fresh.
SALAD ON THE SIDE?
To transform this into a lovely lunch plate, dress a little watercress and shallots, with a mustardy vinaigrette and serve on the side. A dollop of dijon would be lovely, too. Not only does this make a pretty spot on lunch warm from the oven, it’s also great wrapped up and taken on the move. Flash it through the oven again to bring back to life or if you’re oven-less, it’s still very delicious cold.
HAM & COMTÉ PITHIVIER
INGREDIENTS
4 White or Brown Onions
40g Unsalted Butter
10g Fresh Thyme, tied into a bundle