It Was the Best of Pies, It Was the Worst of Pies - Anticipation as Appetiser

Our healthy eating programme has been very successful, to the extent that I've overshot my target and am sneaking the occasional treat to rebalance things.

Like all right thinking people I love pies. I had not eaten one in over two months when I bought a Holland's steak pie the other day. It looked incongruous in a trolley of lean meat and fresh fruit and veg, the contrast no doubt adding to its allure. Once heated its aromas wafted through the kitchen, demanding instant consumption. Thoughts of finding the pie of my dreams flooded my little brain.

The rarity value gave me a bit of a thrill, as the only pie indulgence for months it had to be welcome. But it served as a reminder of just how poor so much 'shop-bought' food is. Meat in small pieces, pastry floppy, gravy all mouth and no trousers. It was then the best of pies (in recent times) and the worst of pies (likewise, and because it was a major let-down). 

Culinary anticipation is not always rewarded with the supreme pleasure hoped for. I went on a tour of Michelin-starred restaurants in Southwest France last year (life is hell etc), the food in one was superb, in two pretty good, and the others disappointing (in one the food was actually nasty except for the cheese that was bought in). That may have been because of the power of that star. Time and again I have eaten venison with images of Friar Tuck and medieval feasts in mind, only to find it has been dry, chewy and lacking in flavour (whether I or a chef has cooked it). Years ago I was given Durian in Malaysia, Durian being the fruit that smells, to put not too fine a point on it, like crap. Promised a marvellous experience if I could get past that I found the actual taste was a bit like mucal mango, but not as good as that sounds. 

However often I'm disappointed I hope that I still have such anticipatory experiences to come. It's like Christmas morning as a kid, the moment before the presents are opened is generally better than the presents turn out to be, but if you think about it that still means the morning is hugely pleasurable. I will eat steak tartare one day (if courage doesn't fail me yet again). Maybe fugo too, though I have heard the taste is as exciting as whiting. And maybe I will meet two personal needs and find a venison pie that would have made Tuck beam. 

Intravenous Pies

Two months ago we started on what was euphemistically dubbed our Alternative Eating Programme, having determined en famille that we all needed to lose a few kilos.

There were in my case numerous reasons to think it necessary to do so - in no particular order: 

1. Some Type 2 Diabetes in the family history; 
2. My father, whom I resemble in many ways, is nowadays significantly overweight, and I have started to think about such long-term health issues; 
3. I was developing a belly that same father told me once begun could never be lost;
4. A friend, a year younger than I, died suddenly last year;
5. We are heading for the Indian Ocean this summer: surfer shorts with beer-gut  - not a good look.

I read around the subject, and it made sense to follow GI dietary guidelines, i.e. reduce fats and oils in cooking, go big on fresh fruits and veg (with exceptions - no dates, no big loss, beetroot and broad beans, more of a blow); all starches to be wholemeal; no frying unless unavoidable; grill meats. Add to that the use of plenty of chilli (it supposedly speeds the metabolism); plus zero-fat yogurts (calcium helps bind fats and rushes them through the system).

We have eaten really well since this began: no missed meals, Friday still brings plebean (alternative spelling to irritate Ms B) steak night, puddings aplenty (but fruit-based). In austerity terms it has cost more (though had we been doing this between June and September it would have been far cheaper, our allotment and garden providing masses of F&V then). I felt a bit hungry on two occasions at the day's end, but otherwise no lethargy (important given SC is entering exam period) in fact quite the opposite, no stomach complaints, nothing much to report. We feel reasonably full, our diet is balanced and varied, calorific intake probably a couple of hundred below the norm (if there is such a thing). But the weight has dropped off.

Actually I have overshot my target and am considering using pies intravenously to rebalance things. 

Apparently women do reduce more slowly than men, but The Dear Leader - less in need than her subjects - has likewise clearly slimmed down (for reasons of state security her weight is kept secret from us). Which all makes me wonder: how come slimming is such a massive industry? Is it a similar thing to processed foods - there because so many are incapable of doing the work themselves?

The Pie

Last night I cooked the pie. Not a pie, the pie. It was one of those sadly all too rare occasions when something sublime results from ordinary labours in the kitchen.

Some twenty years or more ago I made the soup, a fish soup whose stock enriched with anchovies was deep and rich and seasoned to perfection, whose fish-flesh was done to creamy rightness and no more, whose vegetables retained toothsome crispness without any hint of the raw.

Neither of those dishes was innovative, or had fancy flourishes. But they were utterly delicious. In fact, they were probably my ideals because they were ordinary things done exactly right. That is perhaps why I am so often disappointed by restaurants it being cheffy to tamper, add the unique, the unusual, the previously unthought of touch. Unthought of because so often they don't go. Last year in and around Parma was happily different, the food in three separate places proud to be based on hundreds of years of tradition, skill, and judgement, the ingredients used wisely. So for example I ate cappelini in brodo that will forevermore be the version of that simple delight for me.

The pie by the way was made with steak bought from Robinson's butcher's shop in Chipping, the cubed meat browned before joining onion, carrot and turnip already fried until beginning to colour, then lots of whole medium-sized mushroom added. I am increasingly convinced that where possible mushrooms should be kept whole, they keep their flavour better that way. The cooking liquor was just water to which I added a tsp of Bovril and a glug of rum, then thickened with cornflour ("How horribly unfashionable darling, nobody uses flour let alone cornflour these days", to which my response, as a master of repartee, is "Naff off, it works.").

This filling was stewed in the morning at 150 centigrade for two and a half hours, then when cool put in the fridge until used at night, heated until warm and covered with a cheaty Sainsbury's puff pastry lid. The pie, in its Le Creuset metal dish, was cooked at 220 centigrade for 20 minutes (not the 190 for 10 minutes suggested on the pack) and emerged with top crisp and interior hot. Hot and delicious. It was the pie.

Years ago I saw a French film where a man who had trained and practiced for years to do the perfect Japanese tea ceremony achieved his goal, and immediately died, his life complete. Silly sod. I prefer to think of how sometime in the future I can repeat the experience.

Necessity and Invention

For my wife's daily salad fix at work I too often rely on the easy green leaves, toms, walnut and cucumber with a tiny bottle of homemade dressing (as well as liking salad she is always - like all too many women - focused on her weight, and if you look at cheaty bottles from the shops they nearly all have sugar high on the ingredients list). Day before yesterday that wasn't an option, everything in the list bar walnuts having run out here, so I had to do a bit of quick footwork. Some leftover rice; slivers of ginger; orange segments sans skin; and a small amount of orange pepper: lovely colours, flavour enhanced with a knife-tip of cinnamon and some salt, the lot dressed with olive oil and a slice of lemon. How healthy.

I had a pie.

Great British Pie II - Mushrooms are the New Meat

I'm defrosting some stewing beef that will be the basis of a pie tonight - my prediction for the food trend of 2013 is indeed the return of the Great British Pie big time, though they will be largely homemade as chef-restaurateurs will not be keen to make something that involves substance more than style. And the effete and fashion conscious crowd that writes restaurant reviews for the Sundays would probably pan them if they did serve something filling and tasty instead of chi-chi platters acceptable to anorexics.

I had to dash to Sainsbury's for some emergency Olbas Oil for my wife, currently suffering with woman-flu, and they had no decent stewing beef in - quelle surprise - to bulk out what I had already, so I opted to buy some mushrooms which weight-for-weight are a fraction of the cost, and will provide a nice difference in textures.

A digression. As with men not being able to multi-task, man-flu is a myth - my last illness was in fact Spanish flu with a touch of Ebola, Malaria, and SARS [whatever happened to SARS btw?] that I was lucky to survive. I nearly had to go to the doctor, that's how serious it was.

The pie tonight may well be cooked in Adnams Tally Ho, though that will be a sacrifice. We decided rather belatedly to do the dry January thing (after a convivial evening on Friday 4th, and a slight rise in weight over Christmas), so that's the closest I'm going to get to a beer for three weeks.

Along with Olbas Oil I picked up some flowers btw, which are probably about as effective.

Simple Savoury Pies

One of my fondest childhood culinary memories is of a great aunt who every time we went to stay with the family would produce what used to be called a plate pie - a shallow pie-dish filled with something savoury, like (her version) mince, onions, and tiny diced carrots, sometimes with small pieces of spud to bulk it out. This was covered in decidedly thick shortcrust pastry, so it was a filler-upper. And a very cheap supper.

Cow Pie

I felt a bit ashamed the other day using bought puff pastry (but it was Sainsbury's own, far cheaper than the big brand one and no damn different) to make something along those lines. I had three chicken thigh fillets to use, some scraps of cooking bacon (I say again, what is the other stuff for if not for cooking?) one of our big thick leeks sliced finely, and a few mushrooms. Each element was cooked separately in oil and butter, one after the next - a question of capacity and washing up - then mixed in the oval dish and the lot cooked in the fan-oven at 180C for about 25 minutes (not the 10 claimed on the packet). Served with beans and stovies it was a one course meal that warmed, filled and satisfied. At a rough guess the pie cost £3.50, and for something that substantial bought in packets I reckon we'd have paid £6 in the shops.

With the upsurge in interest in baking chi-chi cakes and muffins recently it is time we had a revival of the great British pie on TV (producers, please employ me to work on this). The cow pie pictured above, enjoyed at a Keswick pub-restaurant, shows the way forward.