Читать книгу Beginner's Guide to DIY & Home Repair - Kathryn Hawkins - Страница 5

Pie is something I can remember eating and enjoying throughout my childhood. Minced meat, sausage or cheese and potato pies made inexpensive, tasty and filling suppers for our Mother to make us, and at the weekend, for a special treat we would have a homemade apple pie with custard or sometimes vanilla ice cream – we didn’t have a freezer, so we would wait in pie-eyed anticipation while Dad went off to the corner shop to buy an icy cardboard packed square of Cornish ice cream before we could tuck in. On every picnic, there was always a pie in some form or other – individual pork, sausage rolls or a wedge of egg and bacon pie were the most memorable.

When we went on holidays to stay with my grandparents in Devon, Grannie Watts would always produce a homegrown-fruit pie at some point – usually rhubarb or blackcurrant – served with luscious clotted cream. And always with homemade, short, buttery pastry – there were no short cuts in those days! – and a quirky blackbird pie funnel sticking out the top. Grannie’s sister-in-law Dorothy used to bake for the family café, and a visit to see her on the way to the beach meant that our picnic basket would be embellished with freshly baked, and still warm, savoury pasties. I do remember bad pie experiences just as well though: school dinner pies are certainly amongst the worst ones I have eaten. I can’t remember any savoury, just the pudding ones. The pastry was dry, hard and tasteless – mercifully only pastry on the bottom – and the filling or topping was either too sweet, paste-like and flavourless, or so sparse it looked like it had only been shown the pastry!

What is a pie? Well, I think a pie is different things to different people, so for the purposes of this book, I have kept to my own specific boundaries. First and most importantly, it must have pastry as the key ingredient – you’ll find no mashed potato tops or other pastry-less pies in this book. Secondly, the pastry should be baked to form a crisp crust or shell – so no steamed pastry. And, finally my pies have either a pastry top and bottom (or all round pastry casing), or are top crust only – this is typically British; if there is bottom crust (like an American pie) it must support a good hearty portion of filling and be topped in some way. Apart from that they can be any shape, size, in or out of a tin or dish, and made up with any type of pastry.

Pastry is a vital constituent of a really good pie, but the filling is of equal importance. While I have been writing my recipes, quite by chance, I was asked to be a judge on a panel for the Perthshire region of the Scottish Association of Meat Traders Steak Pie and Speciality Pie competition. I met some experienced pie making butchers who explained the techniques they used to get the right amount of filling in a dish but still achieve a good crisp puff pastry layer on top. We had a fine old time looking at the differing pastry textures and tasting the meat and gravy, and it was a very interesting, and extremely timely experience for me. On balance, it was the pastry that let most pies down, and then seasoning came in a close second.

I have tried to come up with pies for every occasion in the recipe section. To start with you’ll find recipes for different types of pastry if you fancy making your own - if you have sufficient time, I do recommend you try and have a go. There is something very satisfying about making your own pastry and the taste and texture of the baked result is far superior to anything readymade. However, time is of the essence, so I do state the quantity of pastry each recipe makes to enable you to substitute in a readymade version if you need to.

There are 70 glorious pie recipes to follow the basic pastries which are divided up into different chapters depending on the filling, and you’ll find recipes for large family pies as well as individual ones, using a variety of different types of pastry.

Before you start cooking though, you should read my tips and techniques on general pie and pastry making. Making a large meat filled pie is quite an investment on time and ingredients, so it seems a shame not to get a good result because of a simple problem in putting the pie together.

I hope you enjoy the book. I certainly had fun making all the pies and sharing them with friends and family, watching faces light up as I produced my latest pastry creation – pies are a very sociable food and everyone seems to appreciate a good one.

Happy pie making!