Thursday 24 September 2015

Hunter's Pie (2012)

This was the first time I had ever attempted to make a cold raised pie and it involved considerable emotional investment.

In the end, I used about six chicken breasts, a poussin (which was a waste of time - scraps of meat), a guinea fowl, a pheasant, a partridge, bacon and sausage meat. There may have been a quail in there as well.

Cousin Pen helped me strip the carcasses of their meat. Mace, juniper berries and lemon zest.

Now it was time for the scary bit: the pastry. Mum's recipe said rather airily "Make a hot water short crust pastry" and I tried to think of what, precisely, I had seen her do. Inspiration came in the form of the book I suspected she took the method from: Jane Grigson's English food. Ridiculously easy it turned out. Flour, lard and hot water, mixed together then plastered round the bottom and edges of the pie tin. I had wondered whether there would be enough - but there was, just, though I had to make a little more to complete the lid. Sausage meat over the pastry. In went the meat, followed by the stock (Iberico ham bones and water - nothing else), with the lid on top, decorated with a cut out crocodile.

The result was reassuring. A Christmas Pie: deep and crisp and even.

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