Black bean and Lentil Pot Pies!

This tasty pie was invented due to a number of things that happened. One was that Reuben decided to make vege burgers using black beans in chilli sauce instead of regular beans as we'd run out. Now it may sound good and certainly did taste great however they looked horrible! Some people wouldn't think so, but when he put the pot in my face to show me I thought it was something that had gone very very bad in the fridge, not to put you off or anything! It did smell good!

So we made the patties and they tasted fantastic but we both found it hard actually seeing them on our fork going into our mouths (looked a lot like mince to me). So anyway, I met up with my good friend Emily for lunch on Friday and we went to Modaks which is a local Dunedin cafe that has several vegan options. I ordered a lentil pie and that gave me the idea to use Reubens horrible looking but great tasting burger mixture in a pie! Sorry for the long drawn out explanation but here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

puff pastry (New way vegetarian society approved)

1 onion chopped finely

1 tin black beans in chilli sauce

1 tin of four bean mix

1 finely chopped courgette (or grated - we don't have a grater at the moment hence why it was chopped)

3 mushrooms finely chopped

salt n pepper

squirt of tomato sauce

3 Tbsps cornflour

So you first need to drain the four bean mix then add the black beans in chili sauce (delmaine brand in NZ) - don't drain the black beans as you'll get rid of the sauce (I did this once silly me). Mash the beans together using a fork or potato masher, or even a food processor. Then mix in the finely chopped onion and remaining ingredients. Our mixture was also quite runny which isn't ideal for patties and which is why it worked perfectly in a pie. I used large muffin tins, greased them with olive oil and cut the pastry sheets into four small squares. Place each square into the tins (once they've thawed so they don't break). Then spoon the mixture into the pastry cases. You can leave them open or use an additional pastry sheet and cut small squares to fit on top. Bake in the oven until the pastry is golden brown!