6 June 2007
The Desirous Pie
Pies were not something I was much exposed to, growing up. There were apple pies, of course, or apple tarts as they were called, rhubarb tarts, and occasional forays into other fruit pies, but generally speaking, the only savoury one I knew of was steak and kidney, and I thought I didn’t like kidney. So a “steak pie” was produced, and I ate that happily.
In later years, however, I’ve discovered a fierce love for pies in almost every form. I could claim that it’s due to the English end of my ancestry, but I’m more inclined to blame the fact that I’m male, and pies are clearly Man Food. I can’t explain why, of course, but they definitely are. Perhaps it’s the fact that you can hold them in your hand to eat them, like other items of Man Food such as the pizza, burger, burrito, and good old sandwich.
On the basis of being able to hold the thing in the hand to eat, then, there is no higher form of pie than the pork pie. These culinary delights were largely outside my experience in Ireland until the arrival of Marks & Spencer, who do a variety of sizes, from a mini pie, about two inches across, up through a solid chunk of meat and pastry the size and shape of a half-brick. I would happily eat these things every day - particularly the kind with a boiled egg inside - but some sense of proportion says that I’d end up pork pie shaped myself. And then, my friend Bernhard, who cooks in the SCA, has turned up to some events with a meat pie that defies description, and a fruit sauce to go with it which got him several proposals of various kinds on the spot.
I’ve made some very successful pies myself. Paying my respects to the ancestry of the form, a way to use up various leftovers, I made a stunningly good leftovers-from-chicken-dinner pie last winter. It contained chicken, stuffing, potatoes, peas, possibly carrots, and gravy, and was good enough that I considered producing the whole thing just to make the pie again. A bacon and egg pie - possibly more technically a form of quiche - was also considered a success, and there was a peculiar device involving nothing but vegetables, cheese sauce, and a pastry case which, while defying the gods of pie in its meatless state, was nevertheless rather good.
I have yet to attempt to fuse these two lines of thinking, though, and arrive at a pork pie of my own making. Partly, it’s because I don’t want to examine too closely what has to go into the M&S version. Partly, it’s because I fear producing something that doesn’t come up to the mark. And partly, this thing is in the Mythos of Food in my mind, and I don’t want to sully it with anything less than perfection.
However, when I overcome my fears, it’s the recipe in Jane Grigson’s English Food that I’ll be using. Her recipe contains - for a raised pie - a kilo of boned shoulder of pork, with a quarter fat to three quarters of lean meat, 250g of thinly cut unsmoked bacon, sage, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, salt, pepper, and, bizarrely, anchovy essence. She says:
It makes an excellent piquancy without the least fishiness, rather as oysters do in a steak and kidney pudding.
… and who am I to argue? So anchovy essence is going to have to be something to look for. The meat, she says further, should be diced, rather than minced. It’s also a fairly lengthy dish to cook, needing something like two and a half hours in the oven, quite aside from the preparation time - so definitely a weekend dish.
I’ll report back on how it went, when I find anchovy essence and a free weekend afternoon.
[…] So my search for anchovy essence to use in a pork pie begins not with the grocery shelves, but with Google. That doesn’t look like it’s going to be great deal of use, since the first two results are recipes on thefoody.com, and the third is my own pork pie article here on Rocking Grass. Further down the page, there’s a reference to a 1979 HADAS newsletter, which says that the Roman fish sauce, liquamen, or garum, is vaguely like anchovy essence. I’m aware that garum is related to nam pla, a Korean fish sauce, so I make a note of that, too. However, this isn’t bringing up any nice retail sites with the words “we stock anchovy essence”, so I’m going to have to try another approach. […]