hello this is chef john from food wishes comma with face pie that's right if
you're gonna make a meat pie out of someone the least you could do would be
decorate the top with their faces a tribute and that's exactly what i did
here with the free-range drifter i harvested a few weeks ago and of course
I'm kidding there were no actual humans used in the
making of this face pie allegedly but anyway I've probably already said too
much so let's just go ahead and get started
with this horrific Halloween recipe and to get started what you're gonna need is
one batch of pastry crust and that is straight from our tortilla recipe which
I will provide a link for and what I did first was trace a circle around my pie
dish so I would have a little bit of an outline to help me design my face and
once that was said I started cutting off pieces of dough so I could start
building the underlying structure of the facial features and I started with that
bony part above the eyes which i believe is called the eyebrow real Ridge oh by
the way fair warning in many parts during this I have to speed up the video
since I took way way too long shaping this but anyway after my eyebrow bones
were done I started on the nose bone which I believe is technically cartilage
and once I had the general shape of the nose done I went ahead and formed the
lips which is you probably know where neither bone or cartilage just some good
old-fashioned muscle tissue and before I knew it my face started to take shape
and from there I continued on with wood I thought were gonna be cheek bones but
I kind of put them too high since believe it or not this is my first
face pie so live and learn and after what we're supposed to be the cheekbones
I went ahead and added some eye lumps and the reason I really wasn't that
concerned at this point with these pieces being too precise is because
after shaping these underlying features my plan was to place a very thin skin of
pie dough over the top and then I'd used that to mold the final face so that was
my game plan and after getting it to this point I slid it on a sheet pan so I
could pop that in the freezer so that those pieces of dough would be nice and
hard when I laid over my skin so I popped the pan in the freezer and the
dough back in the fridge to firm it up a little bit and once that dough had reach
hild a little bit I pulled it out and took half of it and formed it
into a disc and with the help of some flour and a rolling pin I went ahead and
rolled that out to a round shape fairly thin maybe about an eighth of an inch
and once that was that I went ahead and pulled out my frozen face parts and I
centered my edible epidermis over the top and then very carefully I used my
fingertips to kind of push it and pull it into place and because the dough
underneath had been in the freezer and was nice and firm and this dough I just
rolled was nice and soft and flexible it was actually pretty easy to shape into
what you're seeing here and I think it was right about here that I realized my
nose and lips were probably a little too big but I was too far and at this point
to change that plus I didn't really care that much because this is a Halloween
thing and no matter how it came out I was just gonna say that's how it was
supposed to look and as far as smoothing and smearing the dough in certain spots
I found that dipping my fingers in some water really helped and as with any time
we're working with pastry dough whenever seems like it's getting too warm and too
soft to work with we'll just go ahead and pop it in the fridge for a few
minutes so that butter firms back up so that's what I did here and then I went
ahead and pulled it back out and then using a chopstick I made some nostrils
because my pinky was too big and I didn't think a pencil would be sanitary
and then after creating some beautiful nasal passages I moved down to work on
the eyes and my plan was to have one of them open and one of them closed so for
the open one I cut some dough out of the center and then for the closed one I
just cut a slit in the center and then made a second cut right underneath
because I think that's what an eyelid looks like I also took the knife and cut
a little bit between the lips because I was hoping as this bake some of the
juices would bubble up through which they never did but anyway once I was
happy with how my face was looking I decided I need to pop that into the
freezer so it would be nice and stiff and firm so I'd be able to pull off that
paper and then lay that over my filling so I went ahead and transfer that into
the freezer for about 15 minutes which gave me plenty of time to roll out
the rest of the dough to form the bottom crust and once that was accomplished I
went ahead and started spooning in fill sorry not spooning in fill spooning in
the filling which by the way just like the crust is
from our famous tourtière video one of the most delicious things you'll ever
eat so even if you're not gonna make a face
you should definitely try that recipe and once I had that all transferred in I
went ahead and pulled out my now firm face from the freezer and pulled off the
paper and place that on top and then I had to wait about 10 or 15 minutes for
this to thaw a little bit before I could do the final shaping and while I was
waiting and when I had made an egg wash which we're gonna use to paint over the
top and also as you see to add some coloring so I went ahead and beat one
large egg with a tablespoon of water and we'll set that aside until needed and in
about ten or fifteen minutes later that dough is flexible enough to do the final
shaping and as you can see I'm kind of tucking it in a little bit around the
edges because I was afraid if I stretched it too much as a baked I might
lose some of the detail plus I wanted to maintain kind of a rounded shape and not
have this too flat and then once I was happy with that I went ahead and took a
knife and cut off the excess trimming all the way around underneath the edge
of the dish and then after parting those lips a little more I moved on to adding
an eyeball for which I used a half a grape and then I cut and placed a couple
pieces of dough over that to form what I hoped would look like eyelids and by
using a grape I thought as it baked some of those sugary juices would leak out
and kind of caramelize in a gross disgusting way but unfortunately they
never did so I probably should used a cherry tomato or an actual regular
cherry but anyway if you make this that'll be up to you I mean you are
after all the bill 9 of what to use for your face pie eye and then once that was
sad I moved back to the lips and went around cutting some very shallow lines
to make my probably way too large lips look a little more realistic and then
once I finished that I moved on to some fine-tuning
for like way too many minutes and by the way in hindsight all these final tweaks
were totally unnecessary since most of the details kind of baked out as this
cooked including trying to add some wrinkles to the bridge of the nose and
around the eyes and then many minutes later when I was finally satisfied I
went ahead and grabbed the egg wash and I applied this three different times
okay the first time was just a brush plain egg wash over the whole thing and
then I added one very small dropper red food coloring to make sort of a pink
mixture then I used to kind of color the flesh
around the eyes and the nose and then finally for the third application I
added one big dropper red food coloring and use that to color the lips and the
tip of the nose and I kind of thought is this baked that would turn into more of
a blood red look but it didn't it pretty much kept that color and once baked
looked like really cheap lipstick and looked like nothing filled with a
warrant in real life but anyway I went ahead and colorize that face the best I
could at which point I grabbed a fork so I could crimp the edge which by the way
is very hard to do if the dough is warmed up and is very soft like this so
I probably should have popped this back in the fridge for a few minutes or done
it earlier but anyway I pressed on and it worked and that's it my face pie was
finally ready for the oven oh and by the way if you're doing this
for a party make sure everybody gets their pictures right here since it was
at this point the most creepy and horrible and disturbing looking so get
your pictures before you pop in the oven and when you are finally ready to bake
we're gonna go ahead and put that on a baking sheet in case it drips and I also
decided to very loosely tent some foil over the top okay do while my facial
features Brown you too much although I did pull that off halfway through the
baking but anyway I popped that into the center of a 375-degree oven for just
over an hour or until it looked like this oh yeah check it out it's a meat
pie with a face and even though we did lose a lot of detail during the baking
process it's still I thought came out looking very disturbing which if
everything goes according to plan we'll give our guests nightmares for many
months to come so I was very happy and frightened with how good this came out
and I went ahead and transfer that onto a rack so a cool little faster
because that was rapidly losing daylight and I wanted to be able to take some
decent shots me cutting a slice so I let that cool down a little and I went ahead
and took a wedge out of the cheek since that's my favorite part of their face
and even though this was still a little too hot it came out pretty nicely and no
in case you're wondering that weird orange looking thing is not part of the
thyroid gland see that's what I thought but it was actually just a little piece
of golden brown crust that got soaked with the meat juices and I ended up
plucking it out because it did look kind of weird in the
and then just to make it an official food wishes video when infer taste and
again if you have not tried our Montreal meat-pie also known as tourtière do
yourself a favor and check it out it is so delicious
those French Canadians know how to eat but anyway that's it how to make a meat
pie with a face whether you make this with an actual free-range drifter or
simply by using some pork and beef like I did allegedly either way I think this
would make a stunning centerpiece to your Halloween themed party I mean that
my friends is going to be memorable in fact maybe too memorable but having said
that I still really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to food
wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as
always enjoy
you