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.