The shortcrust pastry

Dice the butter and rub this into the flour with your finger tips. Alternatively, you can use a food processer to blitz the butter through the flour. If you choose this method, blitz it in short bursts so you don’t over work the gluten in the flour. Once the flour resembles bread crumbs add the eggs and mix until just combined. Wrap it in cling wrap and allow it to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour. Remove the pastry from the fridge an hour before use. Roll out and use as per the recipe.

The filling

Dice the meat into 2cm cubes and marinate for 24 hours with the wine, port, celery, carrot, leek, onion, garlic, diced tomato and herbs. Drain the meat and vegetable mixture, reserving the liquid to be used later. Separate the meat from the vegetables.

Pat the meat dry and toss with flour, salt and pepper. In a heavy based pan, heat the butter and oil until foaming, brown off the beef in small batches and place into a deep baking dish.

Next, brown the reserved vegetables and add the tomato paste to the same pot. Cook this for two minutes then pour the vegetables over the top of the meat. Deglaze the pan with the reserved wine and port, and reduce this by half. Add it to the beef mixture together with the stock.

Season and cover with baking paper and two layers of foil. Bake in the oven at 160C for 3 1/2 hours. Cool and refrigerate overnight.

Assembly

Preheat the oven to 210C. Use the puff pastry as per the packet instructions. Cut this into rounds to fit over the top of the 14cm pie dishes.

Roll out the shortcrust pastry to a thickness of 3-4mm. Cut this into rounds to fit over the top of the pie dish with a 2cm border of extra pastry. This is so you can seal the pie.

Brush the pie tins with a mixture of vegetable oil and butter (three parts oil, one part butter) that has been slightly warmed. Line the base with the shortcrust pastry.

Fill the base to the brim with the filling. Place the puff pastry lid on top. Fold the lip of the shortcrust pastry over the top of the puff pastry. Flute or crimp this to seal.

Brush the top of the pie with egg yolk.

Bake the pies for 10-15 minutes, or until you can lift it out of the pie tin without the pastry sticking. Serve it with potato mash and a green bean salad.

Dave Falson is the chef at the Common Man restaurant in Melbourne