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PORK PIE – after the Melton Mowbray fashion

I dug up my old recipe in response to my mates’  Harriet and Evan’s request for pie recipes for their food project on KCRW’s Pie a Day Blog Project.

This is my own interpretation of an English traditional dish. The methodology and recipe is a cross between that of my mother, Doris Whalley and Jane Grigson (‘Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery’ is one of my all-time favourite cookbooks). The recipe is complex, takes considerable time and is definitely a labour of love which is why I only make this pie about every five years! Nor is it for the diet conscious. Lovers of lo-cal should avert their eyes.

In the north of England these pies are often known as ‘stand’ or ‘raised’ pies. A local nickname, from the Manchester area, for a smaller individual-sized pie is ‘a growler’. And of course the pork pie has also made it into rhyming slang parlance as in the phrase telling ‘pork pies’ or, more commonly, ‘porky pies’, i.e. ‘lies’.

Melton Mowbray is a small town in Leicestershire, in the English Midlands. The town has strong culinary associations. Stilton cheese originated near Melton Mowbray, and is still made in the town today. Stilton cheese takes its name from the village of Stilton, 80 miles north of London, on the Great North Road. This was a staging post where the cheeses were offloaded by local deliverers for bulk transportation to London. No Stilton cheese was ever made there.

Although supermarkets routinely carry pork pies with the label ‘Melton Mowbray’, there is in fact a specific hand-raising process and recipe which marks a pie as a Melton Mowbray pork pie. On 4 April 2008 the European Union awarded the Melton Mowbray pork pie Protected Geographical Indication status, following representations from the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association. As a result of this ruling, only pies using uncured pork and made within a designated zone, are allowed to carry the Melton Mowbray name.

The phrase “painting the town red” is said to have originated in Melton Mowbray. In 1837, celebrating a good day’s hunting, the Marquess of Waterford and his friends, under the influence of alcohol, found several tins of red paint which they daubed liberally on to the buildings of the High Street. Were this to happen today and were the offenders inner city kids they’d have been sentenced to community service at the very least. I presume the Marquess and his mates got off scot free.

A hinged mould (mine came from my grannie) facilitates making this pie. Mine measures around 9 x 5.5 inches and is just over 4 inches deep. Otherwise, use a round or oval mould with parallel sides, like a deep Le Creuset dish of similar dimensions.

For the jelly

1,000g (approx) pork bones, plus a veal knuckle or a pig’s trotter.

1 medium sized carrot

1 onion, stick with 4 cloves

6 peppercorns,

Bouquet garni

Salt, pepper and lemon juice to season

The jelly can be made the night before if you wish and refreshed by re-heating it just to pouring consistency.

Put the ingredients (no salt) into a large pan, cover with water and a lid and bring to the boil. Simmer for 2-3 hours and strain. Return to stove and boil down to 500 ml. Season carefully with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

For the pastry crust

700g plain flour

1 level tbsp salt

2 level tbsp caster sugar

250g lard

Cold water

Sieve the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre. In a saucepan dissolve the lard in hot water and pour the mixture into the well. Mix with a wooden spoon or electric whisk or combine in a mixer or food processor. Knead the warm dough until smooth. You need to be able to work it but it must not be so soft that it slides down the side of the mould.

For the pie filling

1 onion, chopped fine,

750g pork shoulder meat, coarsely chopped

250g pork sausage meat

200g chopped streaky bacon rashers (Melton Mowbray purists should omit – bacon is cured)

100g Leicester, Cheshire, Cheddar or Wensleydale cheese, broken into small chunks (optional)

1 Cox apple, peeled and finely chopped (optional)

2 tbsp fresh sage, chopped fine

1 tsp ground mace

100 ml English pale ale

1 large egg, beaten

Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees C.

Cook the onion lightly in a little oil and reserve. Mix together the onion, pork shoulder, sausage meat, bacon, cheese and apple (optional), sage and mace and moisten with the ale. Season sparingly with salt and pepper.

Line the mould with the pastry, reserving about a quarter for the top. Spoon in the mixture until the case is filled about three-quarters of the way to the top. Roll out and cut a lid for the mould. Moisten the exposed edges, place the lid on top and crimp the sides to seal. Brush the top with the beaten egg. Lay 3 circles of baking paper on top of the pie and bake for 2 hours . Remove from oven and allow cool for 2 hours. Cut a hole in the lid large enough to insert a small funnel and pour in the stock until it just starts to overflow. Place in refrigerator until set.

Remove carefully from mould and cut into wedges to serve.

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By Ernie – June 18, 2010

TASTING AUSTRALIA 2010 – ADELAIDE DIARY

Day 8

Kicks off very quietly, like one of those old blacky-white colonial-themed movies. “I can’t stand it, Carruthers. The drums have stopped; it’s too demmed quiet out there.” The media room is deserted as I saunter down for my crossants and multiple espressi. Oh, Jesus, it’s only 5.30.

The inner insomniac strikes again! Hard to sleep when it’s so hot. For a person who is pretty conversant with emerging technology how come I can never figure how to work an hotel air-conditioning system? Why is it I always end up with the heating stuck on the ‘American Tourist GTi’ setting? Why do I never seem able to summon up the temerity to seek help from hotel staff? I draft a curt note and leave it meekly on the reception counter. It reads “Please set room air conditioning to minimum. Thank you. 912.”

I go walkabout in a deserted Adelaide, which would be a very pretty town if they knocked down all the utilitarian modern architecture and just left the huge and sympatico parks and fab churches, returning an hour or two later to find my colleagues have eaten all the croissants and taken up all the space at the computer stations. Clearly they have been as tardy about sending copy home as I have and are now breaking their fingers to recover lost time and meet once far-away but now imminent deadlines.

Outside, along the Torrens, the public are flocking to the fair. The ‘boating lake’ is busy once more and the local sailing club has organized racing for Cadet dinghies. The young crews seem much more sporting than the precocious little bastards at Bolton SC. No, well, not much, illegal pumping of sails; no NSPs (non-sailing parents) on the bank doing their F1 Team Manager thing – binoculars draped around neck and screaming “Nigel! For godsakes bloody tack now!” Here, it’s all very civilized.

I mosey back to the hotel and do an interview with a local radio man and another with Evan Kleiman whose weekly ‘Good Food’ programme, produced by Harriet Ells is a great reason for tuning into Los Angeles radio station KCRW. The interview is here http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/gf/# It’s the third one on the programme called ‘Compostable/disposable’, no sniggers please

For lunch I go to Mongkok on Gouger Street, a northern Chinese restaurant recommended by the nice student serving in the coffee shop I breakfasted in on day one. Despite her recommendation it’s not that cheap – doubtless there’s a special tariff for attractive Chinese students – but it is very good. I had a searing hot beef dish. I also came across – in Pitt Street, I think – a Korean butcher with sit down barbecue tables in the adjacent room. How good is that for saving on shoe leather, if not air miles. Truly Adelaide is full of sendipitious culinary surprises. After lunch I track down the Chinese herbalist and buy shedloads of ginseng; also a patent catarrh cure I’d recommend to anyone, consisting of little black balls, like large beads of caviar – you take 8 at a go, three times a day. Farewell, Dublin’s winter at last.

In the afternoon the Barossa boys turn out in force. Big Bob Mclean, legend in anyone’s lunchtime tells me he enjoys a bottle of ‘stickie’ for breakfast. “Surely you mean with breakfast, Bob?” “No, for” he emphasizes, with a guffaw of a laugh. Louisa Rose from Yalumba struggles in with an Imperial (that’s six bottles in one) sized monster of the impressive Signature Shiraz. She doesn’t trust any of us to pour.

At some point I have to go up and put on what Rankin calls “your dining t-shirt” for the Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards Dinner. I decide to confound him by wearing a jacket and tie. After some deliberation I ditch the tie. It is Australia, dammit. At the do I am pleasant and polite to all but of course inwardly seething because the purple prose of my restaurant reviewing didn’t make the podium. Still, one of my NZ chums, Margaret Brooker picked up a Silver Ladle for her children’s cookbook so I was slightly mollified. Rankin makes a fine speech, name-checking me as the man who led him astray in 2005. Fame of a sort, I suppose.

Good to rendezvous with WA’s noted wine writer and old buddy Peter Forrestal again. Forrie was in good form. The après nosh seemed a much lower key event than last time. Didn’t get to cavort in my customary energetic dance sequence with the delightful Maggie Beer, shame that.

Not too late a night. We are leaving for the amazing Kangaroo Island at first light. And the air conditioning has been turned down to 18. Bliss.

Posted in Food, Musings, Travel.

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By Ernie – June 14, 2010

TASTING AUSTRALIA 2010 – ADELAIDE DIARY

Day 7

Enough of all this frivolity there’s work to do.

Up early – insomnia again – down for usual brace of flat whites, croissant, melon and the Hail Mary Muesli Bar – tastes so bad you can feel it doing you good. Tempted to a cleansing James Squire IPA but refrained.

On to web to acquire and marshal argument. Today, myself, broadcaster Alan Saunders and chef-turned-farmer Matthew Evans are involved in Word of Mouth, a new feature of Tasting Australia. We are to debate against some smartypants school kids, topic being ‘The kitchen is the hub of the universe’. We are proposing.

This will be no push-over. The opposition are the local debating champions who have put forward their crack trio. Still, I am on form, despite self-imposed lack of James Squire, having assembled an impressive array of facts culled from history regarding the importance of the culinary output to conquering armies from the days of Alexander the Great to the present. At the eleventh hour, though, I decide to ditch this approach in favour of a tear-jerking tale about a nerdy, geeky, socially-inept kid (me) who was rehabilitated by an awakened interest in cooking. Before we started I went among the audience and distributed Kleenex.

Matt kicked off the debate with a logical dissertation. He was rebutted by a sparky lass with a penchant for filling the unforgiving minute with puns, lots of them, each propped up by a generous dollop of culinary terms. I rose to my feet and accused her of “over-egging the pudding”, (good that eh?) before unleashing my dolorous tale. Tears flowed, two of the ladies in the audience wanted to adopt me.

The opposition’s middle person was firmly of the logic tendency, accusing us gastro types of having low self-esteem and insufficient imagination. She’s probably right. Next Alan, our anchor man, left the audience wanting more with a witty diatribe. We had it in the bag. The gap was narrowed, but not closed, I felt by an impressive youth who entertained the audience by revealing tales of his own culinary ineptitude, nub of his argument being “It didn’t really matter and anyhow I can always phone for a takeaway”. Yes, this one was ours.

Unfortunately, the cunning students had packed the audience. The volume of nose allowed them, marginally, to carry the day. We demanded a re-clap, to no avail.

Afterwards, a walk along the river bank (actually the Torrens here doesn’t seem like a river, more like a large boating lake. Pedalos outnumbered the black swans). The public at large were clearly enjoying the food and drink provided by the various stalls – for Irish readers, a larger and much less frenetic version of ‘Taste of Dublin’. Had a good chat with a man with a mobile pizza oven about the techniques of wood-firing, several glasses of wine and a few zzzs in the sunshine.

That evening we all departed by bus for Sparrow Kitchen and Bar, where the huge cold chamber full of salumi and prosciutto had us salivating. Unfortunately the team from their sister restaurant had been imported to do a near-reprise of the pretty tour de force that had won them the trophy. Have to say that the hard-nosed press gang found some of the combinations a bit contrived, evidence that what works in competition doesn’t necessarily cut the mustard over your actual dinner.

I found a brettanomyces-infused red. Took it over to fellow wine scribes Rick Allen and Winsor Dobbin who concurred, as did the sommelier, a young Londoner who whispered confidentially, “It takes an Englishman to find brett” Hmmm… not sure some of my Aussie winemaking friends would agree.

Afterwards back to Hyacon. Usual chaotic service in the bar but they do have a lass who makes a killer Tanqueray 10 martini.

Posted in Musings, Travel.

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By Ernie – May 25, 2010