Superior snacking with all-butter mini chicken or steak pies

What is it?

12 All Butter Pastry Mini Pies, M&S Food Collection (€10/420g).

What’s good about it?

The M&S Christmas Party Food range always has lots of new and innovative products. This one veers towards the traditional, rather than adventurous. There are six mini pies filled with chicken, leek and smoked bacon in a creamy sauce and six with marinated steak in a pale ale gravy. Both have an all-butter shortcrust pastry base and an all-butter puff pastry lid. The chicken pies have little savoury nuggets of cheese on the lid, while the beef have a sprinkling of poppy seeds, so you can tell them apart. They are very tasty indeed, both varieties. But a word of warning, they’re delicate as the butter makes the pastry very short and crumbly. Two warnings actually, the filling is molten hot when they come out of the oven so let them sit for a bit.

How do I use it?

The pies cook in the oven in 15 minutes (at 180 degrees like all of the Party Food range, which is handy if you are cooking a lot of different snacks and canapes). They are found in the chilled food range, but can be frozen and baked from frozen, in which case they need five minutes longer in the oven.

Where can I get it?

The pies are available in M&S stores.

Armenian chicken with sumac onions

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Andy Noonan’s chimichurri

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Andy Noonan’s salsa criolla

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Andy Noonan’s baba ganoush

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Anything else?

They are included in the four-for-the-price-of-three Party Food Deal, which is good, because they are on the expensive side, especially if you are catering for a party.

Send your Shelf Help product suggestions to marieclaire.digby@irishtimes.com