Lentil and mushroom red onion pies- recipe from Vegan Food magazine

A Winter chill is finally starting to set in here in Barcelona and is making me want comforting, carby, Winter food.

Vegan Food magazine (issue 1/Oct '13) has some gorgeous-looking recipes for Winter main dishes, and I had brown lentils on hand so I thought that the lentil mushroom red onion pies (p62-3) would fit the bill nicely. 

The main challenge for me was picking the wine. I don't drink, so know nothing about wine, but knew that I wanted to get a vegan wine if possible. I checked Barnivore, but also the Animal Aid and Viva wine shops as I wanted to see pictures of the labels. One vegan brand that I recognised was Albet i Noya, a local, organic Catalan wine. I was able to get a bottle of Albet i Noya red wine in Veritas for €5, which isn't the cheapest for wine here (you can get a carton of "table" wine in some supermarkets for as low as 50c), but I thought it was worth it to get a vegan wine. I can't speak to its quality for drinking, but it worked nicely for cooking.

I followed the recipe mostly as written (which is unusual for me) except that I used puff pastry (Carrefour Bio) instead of shortcrust.  I also used half a tablespoon of Biona vegan worchester sauce and a tiny dash of Marmite instead of gravy powder as I didn't have any. The recipe was intended to make six muffin-sized individual pies, but I only have four muffin-sized cases (they are actually flan cases). So I ended up with four individual muffin-sized pies, and one large pie for which I didn't have enough pastry left to completely cover. How is it that I always end up with more filling than pastry no matter how closely I follow a recipe...?

Anyway, despite my pastry woes I was very happy with how the pies turned out. The red wine reduction with red onions and balsamic vinegar adds a lovely, rich undertone to the thyme-y lentils and mushrooms and the puff pastry complemented it all perfectly. Very Wintery and French.