Hot smoked salmon, leek and potato pie

By Ray McVinnie

This is as easy as pie, as they say. Use a flaky pastry that is made with butter as I find it tastes and performs better than pastry made with other fat.

Ingredients

600g Agria potatoes, peeled and cut into 4cm pieces
2 Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
1 Large leek, white part only, thinly sliced
½ Preserved lemon, peel only, finely diced, or you can use the zest of 1 lemon
400g Butter puff pastry
200g Salmon, hot-smoked, skinned and boned, broken into bite-sized pieces
1 egg, Beaten
150 ml Cream
2 Tbsp Lemon juice
2 Tbsp Chopped dill
3 Tbsp Creamed horseradish

Instructions

Heat the oven to 220C.
Boil the potatoes in plenty of salted water until tender. Remove from the heat, drain well and cool in a colander so they steam dry. Mash the potatoes coarsely.
Heat the oil in a frying pan over moderate heat and add the leek and preserved lemon peel or zest. Fry gently for 10 minutes or until the leek is soft. Remove from the heat, taste, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cool and reserve.
Roll the pastry out on a floured surface into a rectangle about 40cm by 25cm. Put the pastry on a baking paper lined oven tray. Put a layer of potatoes down one side of the rectangle of pastry. Place the leek mixture on top. Put the salmon on top of the leeks. Fold the other half of the pastry over the filling and crimp the edges together. Brush the top of the pastry with beaten egg. Cut 4 x 4cm long evenly spaced slits in the top of the pastry to let the steam out.
Bake for 25 minutes or until well cooked.
Put the cream into a bowl, add the lemon juice and reserve without stirring for 15 minutes. Stir slowly, it will be thick. Stir in the dill and the horseradish and reserve. Remove pie from the oven, cool a little then serve in thick slices with the horseradish cream.