A pie from the past

The week just ending has, apparently, been British Pie Week. It’s difficult to know just who declares such things – whereas it’s also been National Butcher’s Week, but that’s rather clearly industry-related.

The only proper-looking website for pie week revealed that it was all the idea of Jus-rol pastry, which is one of the brands owned by General Mills, itself one of the world’s largest food companies, so on that basis, I decided against making much of it.

But then something else happened.

Some time ago, out of curiosity and a certain sentiment, I bought a copy of Recipes of Lakeland, which was complied by readers of Cumbria and published in 1966.

It’s an intriguing record in its own right, illustrated with idealised black and white photographs from the area.

It’s very easy to view Lakeland through the haze of Wordsworthian daffodils and chocolate boxes, as an eternally picturesque part of the country.

But it’s also a hard place – the fells are not the easiest farming country and the eastern fells of the Eden Valley perhaps even less so. For instance, it doesn’t get much bleaker than Shap Fell – yet my parents knew people who farmed even up there.

Browsing that booklet again a few days ago in a mood of nostalgia, I had been looking at the vast array of biscuits and breads and cakes when I spotted something called a Westmorland farmhouse pie, and the germ of an idea took root.

The recipe itself is scant in detail. Diced mutton, beef and bacon are layered in an earthenware pot on top of sliced potatoes and followed by layers of onion and carrot in between. It’s finished with a further layer of potato.

The ratio of potato to meat is approximately two to one, but it's not really the sort of dish where you need to worry about measuring things.

Water is added to cover, the lid is popped on and it goes into a slow oven for two and a quarter hours. Then a pastry top is added and it has another 45 minutes.

A pretty picture and plenty of puddings.

Voila.

The recipe doesn’t say what sort of pastry.

I don’t remember eating anything like this when we were staying on farms in later years – I have abiding memories of all the family where we stayed, plus us, sitting around the vast, old table in the dining room next to the kitchen; a room with a sort of ancient, dark wood dresser built into one entire wall, full of small, square cupboards.

And I remember having tea with cold meats and Cadbury’s miniature chocolate rolls, and I remember hams.

Nothing like the farmhouse pie features in those memories, but I had a hunch that this was a dish for the end of winter, when supplies were running thin. And a little research supported this – not with any mention of the dish itself, but noting that those meats would have been dried to preserve them through the harsh fell winter.

The right pot for the job.

There were always going to be limits to just how authentique it could be – not least because I wasn’t going to be using leftover mean that had been preserved for the winter.

Question one was the dish: I have an earthenware one – but it’s rather deep to make this for just two people and be able to put a pastry lid on.

The best option seemed to be one of my enamel pie dishes, which would then tightly ‘lidded’ with foil for the first stage of cooking.

And finally – what pastry?

The obvious would be shortcrust, but I did consider trying my hand at puff pastry before settling for a really flaky short made with lard.

It’s a dish that reminds me of Lancashire hot pot, with its layers of meat and vegetables, topped off with potato.

On Broadway Market early this morning, before many stallholders had even got their produce ready, I was delighted to find that Matthew had a little mutton – already diced: we were on.

In the end, with the amounts I had (approximately 400g beef and 200g mutton, plus two rashers of unsmoked back bacon), I plumped for that earthenware, half-glazed pot – a lovely worn, old one, made in France originally and a house-warming present from the days before I was really interested in cooking.

First layer of potato with some of the meats and thyme.

It has, in the years since, been used for more than one Lancashire hot pot, and although it made the pastry lid a tad awkward – that had to be fitted inside the pot – it was the best choice from a practical point of view because of diameter and depth, while it even leant aesthetics to the business, its very sense of age seeming perfect for this culinary dip into the past.

So, the base was lined with a sliced potato, followed by a layer of mixed, diced meats, then onion, carrot and celery (another slight change) and more meats, before the final potato.

Seasoning was salt, plenty of ground black pepper and dried thyme, added as the dish was built up.

Water was added – but not to cover, only up about three quarters of the way; also reminiscent of how I've learnt to cook a hot pot.

The oven was heated to 140˚C (fan) and the lidded pot placed inside.

It got two and a half hours to start before I added a shortcrust top – 150g plain flour mixed with 75g lard, a pinch of salt and cold water to bring it together.

The temperature of the oven was raised to 180˚C (fan) for a final half an hour with the pastry but no lid.

It could have done with more salt – I’d been particularly cautious about that, given the bacon – but let's face it, it's easier to add salt than take away.

Otherwise it was a success, with enough to feed two of us twice – it'll be reheated tomorrow for lunch, with a fresh pastry top made from the remaining dough.

This is the sort of food that wins brownie points just for the glorious smells that gently fill the house as its cooking; the sort of smell that makes a house a home.

And if the combination of meats and vegetables seems a little clichéd, that’s because it works well.

This was hearty food – and is very much a dish that, having been discovered, will be made again.

Time for the bird

I'm not counting my chickens – the 'flu may only have gone into temporary hiding – but today was the first time this year that I felt seriously in the mood to contemplate food, never mind actually do something about it.

So what was on the menu?

Well, given that the temperature is dropping to something like actual winter levels, the first thing that occurred to me was that soup would be in order for lunch.

And since, after a fortnight of general ickiness there were various things in the fridge that needed using, a spot of leftover soup suggested itself.

Soup is a wonderfully forgiving dish when it comes to experimentation. Unless you try to be really outré, how can you go wrong?

I took a couple of rather gnarled parsnips that had been in for rather too long, peeled and chopped them, and added them to a large saucepan with butter and finely diced onion in it.

Some thinly-sliced celery – floppy and way beyond using in a salad – joined it, plus a couple of cloves of garlic and a large pear, peeled, cored and chopped, that was getting rather soft.

The thing is, I know that apple goes with parsnip – so why not pear, when I've got one that needs using? Onion and celery are obvious because they help form the base of many a dish.

I added a stock cube and some water, and let the whole thing simmer gently for some time.

Taste, taste and season/think.

It was actually not bad at all; but what would give it a real little boost? How about a glug of Worcester Sauce? Okay – not a bad idea: let’s try that.

And so I did. And after a total of around 40 minutes very gentle cooking, I carefully mashed it all down a bit, checked for seasoning, added some cream and allowed it come slowly back to a bubble again, before serving.

And I must say, while it’s never going to win any Michelin stars, it was very pleasing and comforting.

Only an hour or so later, it was time to get on with dinner. Because on days like this, what could be better than a pie? But a pie needs time and care and a bit of dedication.

For a change – well, I’d been intending to try one for a while – this was going to be a chicken and mushroom pie.

Now, I will make puff pastry by hand one day, but today was not that day. Fortunately, you can easily buy frozen puff pastry that isn’t full of crap: shortcrust pastry is a different matter.

Unfortunately, I forget to get it out of the freezer early enough – but more of that later.

I was using a Hairy Bikers’ Perfect Pies recipe for this – with adjustments.

The most obvious adjustment was that that is for 5-6 portions. But it also states chicken breasts. Now why? On all but the very best birds, breast meat is bland. Okay, it's low-fat – hence the mass love affair with it, but I’ll let you into a secret: chicken thighs are cheaper and tastier.

And it’s one of the few cuts where I actually have decent butchery skills – helped by a very good pair of kitchen scissors.

So, four thighs were skinned, boned and cut into four pieces each.

A good handful of flat leaf parsley was finely chopped and added to approximately two and a half tablespoons of plain flour.

A large banana shallot and two fat cloves of garlic were finely chopped.

Approximately 200g of button mushrooms were halved. Some dried porcini were rehydrated.

At which point I was rubbing my hands in glee at being so organised: assorted ingredients in small bowls all ready and waiting to be cooked.

Ah. Then there was the question of the stock.

Since only 150ml was needed – max – I pulled one of my small jars out of the freeze and set it in the sink in hot water. A small jar defrosts quickly.

The Hairy Bikers’ process is interesting. You start by melting 25g butter and a spoon of oil, and then gently cooking your mushrooms for just two minutes.

Once that’s done, you pop them in a bowl and toss with the flour and parsley mix.

Then it’s on to cooking the shallots and garlic, in more butter and oil, for around five minutes, until softened.

Into that, add the chicken, to which you’ve added seasoning and some chopped/dried thyme, and cook for just two minutes, before adding the flour and herb-coated mushrooms, and giving it a further minute.

Then it’s time to deglaze with some white wine – about 100ml – plus approximately the same of chicken stock; or a little more. Enough, anyway, to bring the sauce to a nice thickness.

Take the pan off the heat and add a serious glug of double cream. Stir in. Bring back to the bubble. And then decant into your pie dish and leave to cool.

Now this was the point at which I realised that I hadn’t defrosted the puff pastry.

Doh!

No: not ‘dough’; ‘doh!’

The packet went into a freezer bag and then into the sink with the hottest water possible. It’s a remarkably effective method – I don’t have a microwave.

Then it was a question of putting my pie bird into the centre of the dish – its debut – and rolling out some of the pastry.

With the edge of the dish brushed in beaten egg, a strip of pastry clung easily. And it was followed by an entire disc, pressed carefully down around the pie bird, and with more beaten egg to glaze.

Then all that was left was to bake in a 200˚C (fan) oven for 40 minutes, by which time the pastry had risen in a rather lopsided but exhilarating manner.

This was my first attempt at a puff pastry-topped pie – and by god, it wasn’t bad at all.

But perhaps the most wonderful thing about the whole day has been a sense that I’m back (or almost) to being me.

Forget the canapés – try northern nostalgia

Trying to look glam – with oven gloves and a very large pie.

If you have any parties planned for the festive period, and are contemplating what food to serve, then TV ads for such entertaining are probably best avoided.

There is, of course, the usual Iceland ‘prawn ring’, which this year, you could follow with ‘lasagne bites’, before tucking into a cake filled with Bailey’s profiteroles.

If the cake sounds overly sweet, just turn your mind back to the pasta.

The mere idea sends shivers down the spine the moment you find yourself wondering how they do it.

How do you make a lasagne – with a real ragu and a real béchamel – but that comes in tiny portions that hold together enough to be finger food.

Yes. Exactly.

Not that such dismal ideas are the preserve of Iceland. M&S are currently bigging up their ‘prawn balls covered in croutons’. Now I like prawns and I like croutons, but this sounds like an idea created by some sort of malfunctioning random generator.

And on the basis of the TV advert – where they’ll inevitably be seen at their best – they look about as enticing as a snowball covered in stones.

So when it came to deciding what I was going to serve at a small and dreadfully select 50th birthday bash on Saturday evening, such finger food was the last thing on my mind.

Instead, with a lurch of northern sentiment, I opted for meat and potato pie à la the Hairy Bikers – before realising I hadn’t got a big enough pie tin.

That was easily solved. But the outstanding question was still what to serve for afters.

I had been iffing and umming for weeks. But with the autumn having proved a busy one, plans had gone onto the back burner, along with pretty much the whole of Christmas, where they both barely raised a simmer.

Thus I found myself sitting in bed on Saturday morning, a tisane by my side and the iPad in my lap, praying for answers from the Great God Google.

When one arose, it came with the heady aroma of nostalgia – and delivered by the most perfect vehicle of precisely that: Nigel Slater.

The answer was a coffee walnut cake.

Now I like baking, but I don’t actually do avery much of it.

Slater’s recipe, though, looked a doddle and, he said, only took an hour from start to finish.

As soon as I got back from the Saturday shopping, it was straight into the kitchen.

First up, the sponge cake. At this juncture it became clear that while I have three cake tins, they are all of slightly different sizes. In the case of two of them, the difference is only very, VERY slight.

What to do? Use the two and hope to sketch lightly over the slight difference with the aid of plenty of buttercream?

Or make one deeper sponge, hope the timings still work the same – and then cut it in half?

I opted for the former. Followed by a brief bit of hair tearing on seeing the words: ‘Line two cake tins’, only to nearly collapse with relief when I read the recipe properly and found that only the bases needed lining.

The next discovery concerned the sugar. I had a bag of unrefined light brown sugar in the cupboard and, having not been completely thorough in my reading of the recipe, had thought that that would do. In fact, the order of the day was “unrefined golden caster sugar”.

Drat and double drat.

I decided to go with what was in the cupboard. This was creamed with butter before three eggs were gradually added to it in the mixer.

Goodness – how wonderful is the smell of creamed butter and sugar?

Then the flour and baking powder are gently mixed in, followed by chopped walnuts and a teaspoon of coffee. Slater advises using instant – while he’s used espresso, he has “come to the conclusion that the latter gives a richer, more rounded flavour.”

The next comment is an illustration of why he’s such a joy to read.

“The only bore is having to go out and buy the stuff. And if anyone looks as if they are about to get snooty with you, just remind them that Elizabeth David apparently drank instant coffee by the mugful.”

Once in the tins – and once I’d remembered to put the oven on as well as set the temperature – it was easy.

They cooked in just over 25 minutes – I remembered the skewer test – and then it was simply a question of beating butter and icing sugar together, and adding more coffee.

I really couldn’t be arsed with buying instant coffee, so had made a small pot of strong espresso on the hob.

The buttercream was supposed to include more chopped walnuts, but I skipped that too, and went simply for the nuts to decorate the top.

Spreading the cream mix was enormous fun and it all looked reasonable by the time I’d finished.

And so to the pie. Well, I’d bought 1.1kg of mince, which led to the discovery that I needed to cook the filling in two pans, given that there were also carrots, onions and celery involved – and that was before the potato.

And wow – that’s the most pastry I’ve ever mixed up – and the largest single piece of pastry I’ve ever rolled out.

It took the entire afternoon and left me with only an hour to get myself ready before the hour chimed. I really don’t know how professional cooks and chefs do it.

But get done it did. One of my guests, who is a food tech (domestic science) teacher later observed: “You couldn’t have got more lard in this pastry!” In other words, it was well and truly short.

And she also commented that for all it was very down to earth, it was also sophisticated, simply by being done properly.

Most to the point, there was none left. And the cake was just as well received.

Now that’s what I call party food.

* Nigel Slater’s full article and recipe on coffee walnut cake is here.

Memories of pies past

Saturday evening. The dishes had all been cleared away and we were sitting in the living room watching The Generation Game.

My mother was at the back of the room, seated at the table. A folded tablecloth was spread her end of the old, dark wooden dining table, folded away now.

In front of her, a chopping board and a white enamel tin, trimmed with a narrow blue stripe on the rim.

Slowly, methodically and laboriously she was cutting up beef; excising the cartilage and any gristle. And probably a lot of the fat too.

It was almost a surgical procedure, requiring huge concentration. And it always had the aura of being a chore.

But the following day, together with lamb’s kidneys, it would be cooked into steak and kidney; rich and tender, with an unctuously sweet gravy, served with a piece of a golden, crispy disc of shortcrust pastry.

It’s amusing to think that my mother deconstructed a steak and kidney pie – I have no idea, to this day, why she did it, but it is one of those dishes that I think back on with real fondness.

Yet food for her always had the element of a chore; it was ‘a duty’. And in many ways I’m grateful that she considered it such – she looked after us seriously, and on a very limited budget.

I simply wish that she’d have been able to take more joy in it – and that she’d passed on some of her knowledge.

Not that’s not still well and truly in the land of the living. But while we’ve slowly danced around the core issues in recent years, I still find the questions at the heart of the matter hard to ask.

Who had first deconstructed that dish? Her or her mother before her? And why?

She did make pies. I remember – with equal fondness – her pork pies. Cutting and trimming the pork would take at least as long, but these were Saturday lunchtime pies.

She hated onion, so would only add a little from a box of Whitworths dried, rehydrated in boiling water, to the pork and grated potato – I have no idea what else apart from the obvious seasonings.

There’d be two of these joys. The second would be finishing cooking as we dived into the first, with decent bread and butter on the side.

When I tried to reproduce one a few years ago, it was dry beyond belief. I haven’t repeated the experiment – mostly because I want to hold on to the memory, of which dryness holds no part.

But all this struck me again yesterday, as I stood in the kitchen in the early afternoon, cutting beef and removing the cartilage and gristle.

I was not as precise as my mother – well, not quite. But then it was not a chore. And the aim was not something deconstructed, but something retro: a steak and mushroom pie, straight out of the pages of the Hairy Bikers’ pie bible.

I had asked Matthew for chuck steak, but in keeping with these times, he didn’t have such a specific cut, instead offering me ‘braising steak’.

At home, I diced it and got rid of the gristle, then browned it in fat.

Now this was my first departure from the recipe. The book says, on the one hand, that it’s a real “heritage” dish, but then says to use an “oil”.

I used lard. Much more “heritage”.

When the meat was browned, it was removed to a dish and replaced in the pan with thinly sliced onion and three cloves of finely chopped garlic. These were then gently browned.

Now the recipe called for the meat to be decanted into a casserole dish and sprinkled with plain flour. But that means that the flour is not cooked through.

So instead, I added a heaped tablespoon of plain flour to the onion when it had softened, allowing it to cook through for a minute, before starting to add red wine and deglaze.

From then on, of course, it was a matter of playing it by ear, until it had reached a desired consistency. Approximately 250g of beef stock went into the mix too.

Once this was fine, it all went into a casserole, was brought to the boil on the hob, then lidded and popped it into an oven (130˚C fan) for an hour and a half.

Trust me – the smells were divine. But you do have to switch the oven on. I set the temperature and then forgot to turn the damned thing on – distracted by a call at the door.

Fortunately, it was simply a matter of things being delayed, not ruined. But I still felt like smacking my own head in annoyance.

Anyway, once that was done, approximately 250g chestnut mushrooms, quartered, were added – and it went back into the oven for a further half an hour.

In the meantime, it was a chance to get on with the pastry.

We’re talking 400g plain flour to 250g butter, plus one large egg – approximately.

I used 300g flour – and the relevant proportions of the other. Use whatever cold water you need to bring it together – add gradually.

Once mixed, it was wrapped in cling film and popped in the fridge.

Once the filling was cooked it needs to be allowed to cool. Reset the oven to 190˚C (fan).

When the filling is cool, the pastry is rolled and a tin lined.

It’s with the beef, onion and mushroom mix. The rim is brushed with beaten egg and then placed on top.  Once trimmed, glazed with more of the beaten egg, and with a couple of cuts in the top, it’s returned to the re-heated oven for half an hour.

For me, pies are a discovery. And they are also a learning experience. They’re very much an English thing too – and I am learning to increasingly love them and understand them as part of my own heritage.

But when I think back to my mother, surgically chopping meat, I still struggle to unite these culinary discoveries and memories of pies past. Or rather, with the processes that led to those pies of yore.

I don't think my pie was as neat as my mother's – and I still make the error of rolling it so thin that it tends to collapse a bit when I'm serving. And I could do with a proper pie slice.

But do you know what? I really don't think that those are the cardinal issues. Because at the end of the day, I get pleasure and a sense of acheivement from making a pie – and most important of all, it's good to eat.

A couple of unrepeatable (hopefully) food experiences

It’s a long, long time since I visited the Sainsbury’s at Angel, Islington. I’ve nipped into the little one at Euston Station occasionally to grab something before a train journey, or the one at Manchester Piccadilly for the same thing in reverse, but that’s it.

However, after making a meat and potato pie on Sunday – the perfect welcome for the autumn’s first stay-in-and-curl-up-on-the-sofa-with-the-cats day – I was left with some spare filling and plenty of pastry.

It was a question of finding the most convenient place in which to buy a little extra beef mince to make up enough filling for a second pie.

On a Monday, Henry the Broadway Market butcher is closed, so I nipped to the Angel Sainsbury’s on Monday after work, where I remembered they have a little ‘butcher’s’ counter.

I found myself wondering how on earth I’d ever managed to keep my sanity when having to shop regularly in such places. And how anyone else manages to do it now.

As I was about to enter, a mother was having to fight off a screaming child, dressed in primary school uniform, who wanted what appeared to be a bright cornflower blue lollipop that his mother was trying to keep just out of reach.

Inside, I was met by cacophony combined with chilled air from the cool cabinets.

Near the tobacco check out were shelves of prepacked sandwiches, crisps, magazines and newspapers.

And then, taking the obvious route, fruit and veg, followed by a vast aisle of what seemed to be largely ready meals and ready meal components.

The ‘butcher’s’ counter was where I remembered it. It had little variety and seemed to be exclusively prime cuts. If Sainsbury’s read this, the young man who served me was very charming and entirely efficient.

The place was rammed. I needed milk and razor blades (for The Other Half, not my wrists) and spent some time hunting the latter down.

The far wall of the store, for its entire length, now houses confectionary. To be scrupulously fair, that means that this Sainsbury’s at least doesn’t do the trick of putting the sweets next to the tills.

Then I noticed what looked like entire aisles of Mr Kipling’s exceedingly good cakes (full of things you wouldn't bake with at home – who the hell would put vegetable oil in an apple pie?). And aisles of crisps and snacks, of course. And fizzy drinks.

The sheer amount of which make the fruit and veg look insignificant by comparison.

There were schoolchildren, picking up snack fodder and adults picking up vast multipacks of crisps for their children. The place was rammed. The queues were tedious.

I should point out here that Islington is not just a posh area – it also has some very poor people. The customers in the shop were a reflection of the area’s mix.

It could be said that one of the problems of thing and reading about food seriously is that you start to see certain things.

In the Joanna Blythman book that I have just finished, she talks of the vast numbers of Britons who eat on the hoof. In the couple of days since finishing that, I have been surprised at just how much I’ve noticed this.

And it seems to defy most social categories. I suspect it hasn’t only occurred this week.

The subsequent second bite of the meat and potato pie was welcome: no junk; the only ingredients that were not homemade from scratch were the HP sauce, Worcester sauce – and the ketchup (organic from Daylesford).

But the days other negative food experience had occurred earlier in the day, when there was a slice or two of cake available in the office – and I took advantage.

It was Victoria sponge – but after a couple of bites, it went in the bin. The reason? Quite simply that it tasted as though it was at least 50% sugar.

Even the layer of buttercream filling seemed to include so much sugar that the texture was granular.

So there you have it: two food experiences I will be trying to avoid repeating any time soon.

It's all in the process

At a recent economics conference, Karel Williams, professor of accounting and political economy at Manchester Business School, revealed something that I had never remotely suspected: the biggest industry in the UK is food processing.


Given the bad rap that processed food has, it wasn't particularly heartening. Processed food is one of the things that is contributing to the rise of obesity and diabetes in the country.


So the fact that the very process of food processing is so important to the national economy leaves a slightly unpleasant taste in the mouth.


But it does raise the question of just what we mean when we talk about 'processed' food.


A couple of weeks ago, on a recent trip to Broadway Market for Saturday shopping, I spent some time engaged in a chatting with Trevor, who runs one of the cheese stalls.


The subject under discussion was processed food. I can’t recall precisely how the conversation had started, but start it had, somehow, as I took advantage of the bowls of cubed cheeses to try the full variety of his wares.


Trevor mans the stall that specialises in selling the full range of Mrs Bourne's Cheshire cheeses, which I have been enjoying since the market was created.


But in his past career, he spent 15 years working for a major supermarket chain as a cheese buyer. Trevor knows his cheese.


Most food are processed, we agreed. Even olive oil, which everyone knows is a healthy food. It's the antithesis of what we think of as being processed.


But at the most basic level, it has been through processes to turn it from the olive that is picked from the tree, to the grassy, green oil that is drizzled elegantly onto salad or pasta, or sits in a bowl, with a pool of equally processed Balsamico floating in the middle, awaiting the arrival of good, crusty bread.


Bacon is processed too – not just the stuff that has been pumped full of water and antibiotics and hormones – but the bacon that has been cured in a traditional manner; that sizzles so teasingly from beneath the grill, rind crisping, before you slap it on a plate and greedily wipe out the pan with bread, making sure not a molecule of taste is lost.


Frozen peas are processed – albeit this is processing at pretty much its most simple. And, as mentioned in previous posts, jolly good they are too – particularly as a welcome relief in the darkest, coldest months of the year.


Cheese, of course is processed – and not just the floppy sheets of plastic that are draped like shrouds over burgers in fast food outlets the world over.


But there is processing – and there is processing.


Trevor told me that the most popular smoked cheese in the UK is applewood-smoked Cheddar.


Which sounds pretty decent. Until he explains how it’s made - having visited the factory to see it done in his previous job.


They take grade two Cheddar and, in effect, mince it.


To this, they pour ‘smoked flavour’ from a bottle.


Then they press it all together again to make it look like a solid cheese, and sprinkle paprika on the top to make it appear as though it has been smoked.


Is it only me that goes: 'Yuk!'?


The real smoked cheese - and I bought some from Trevor today - is, well, it's smoked. You can tell that from the colouring – and the way that's so uneven.


He explained that even when Wensleydale has cranberries added, the cheese is not totally minced before the fruit is added. And let's face it, it's fruit being added - not something from a bottle of 'smoke flavour'.


Look for the ingredients, incidentally, of that applewood 'smoked' Cheddar and you'll simply find 'smoke flavour' listed: they don't tell you what is used to make that flavour.


But even within processed foods, there are big differences. This morning, I picked up a pork pie from another stall. A processed item, obviously. Ingredients: "outdoor-reared British pork, wheat flour, lard, water, sea salt and pepper".


Now let's take a Melton Mowbray pork pie from Waitrose - in other words, a quality pie from a quality retailer.


Ingredients: "filling - pork, potato starch, rusk, gelling agent, pork gelatine, salt, spices". Pastry - "wheat flour, lard, water, animal fat and vegetable oil, including hydrogenated vegetable oil (with emulsifier mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids), salt egg".


I had to do a bit further research on some of this. Diglycerides are glycerides "consisting of two fatty acid chains covalently bonded to a glycerole molecule through ester linkages".


You any clearer? Neither was I.


Apparently, they're used as food additives to help blend together ingredients - such as oil and water - that would not usually mix well.


Perhaps such unnatural combinations are required because they help increase shelf life? I really don't know.


I do know, however, that the pork pie that I bought, and ate part of as part of a late lunch, was quite delicious.


And I do also know that, although a relative pie-making novice, I've never needed an additive like that to make unhappy partnerships of ingredients bind together.


But there you go.


Processed food is obviously not bad, per se. Like so much else in life, there's processed food; and there's processed food.


There are people who believe that you shouldn't eat any processed foods at all - I remember such a food Puritan suggesting, in an internet discussion, that one should, for instance, never out butter on a baked potato or in mash.


He observed that you would 'get used to' the dryness. Possibly. But why would you want to?


Not all processed food is bad - but the more I read labels on what I am contemplating buying, and the more I learn, the more I find myself trying to simplify what I select and eat.


And setting aside even the question of what constitutes healthy food or not, I'd suggest that, as in so much, the real deal in smoked cheese is far tastier than the one that had 'smoke' added from a bottle.

Never mind chewing the cud - chew the cow

According to a news report yesterday, organisations representing just about every single doctor in the UK have decided that obesity is a big problem and it needs tackling.

“News”, did I say? Sounds more like history, given the popularity of the subject in the mass media.

Well okay – all these organisations have agreed that it’s a problem and needs dealing with.

But the answer is surely simple? According to a billboard advert in Gloucester earlier last week, if you’re not ready to “meat your maker”, you should go vegan.

And as if that were not enough to make you split your sides, it was illustrated by a picture of a coffin-shaped pie.

The advert had been funded by campaign group Peta, which had chosen the city because a new mortuary that can take corpses of up to 50 stone had just been opened there.

According to reports, Peta’s Yvonne Taylor said the ad was designed to highlight a link between meat pies and pasties with obesity and other ailments.

With enormous panache and sensitivity, she continued: "The best thing that coffin dodgers can do for their health and to help animals is to go vegan.”

Ah. That’ll be the animals that won’t exist any more if everybody stops eating them, will it, Yvonne? What would sad people like you actually do with your lives then?

The thing is, if people want to be vegetarian – or even vegan – then fine and dandy.

Just don’t behave like a bunch of religious fundamentalists nuts and try to convert everyone else with claims that are, at the very best, spurious.

Mind, the advert did actually have an amusing aspect, since historically, pie crusts were known as coffins, but one doubts that Peta activists actually have this sort of knowledge and intended such a play on words.

It is, as I’ve said before, one of a series of new forms of Puritanism. And its followers are every bit as boringly intolerant and bigoted as those who believe their version of god is the only one there is and everybody else is wrong.

The claims that eating meat is the cause of obesity and assorted illnesses is piss poor – the French Paradox alone is evidence to the contrary.

But like religious fundamentalists, facts and evidence are not the strongest suits of Peta and its ilk, preferring the sanctimonious statements of faith of the truly saved.

Few people would claim that rising obesity is not an issue – but this is about as useful a contribution to any discussion as a Daily Mail article claiming that neon lights during night shifts give you cancer (but only during a month with an 'r'). It makes government policy on public health look coherent by comparison.

Anyway, I know that other people were irritated by the advert. And I suspect – with a wry smile – that it is exactly the sort of thing that produces the opposite effect that was intended.

Apart from anything else, going around telling people that pies and pasties are bad for you (ignoring ones that don't contain meat) is a bit of a stupid attack on a UK cultural icon.

From a personal perspective, I made sure to schedule plenty of meat for the weekend. Just to make sure that I die – and that I get fatter than I am and get lots of illnesses.

Yesterday – and utterly apt for a day of sport – I settled on good pork bangers from Henry Tidiman, which were cooked gently in a little lard and served with boiled spuds and peas, bot of which came with butter.

And today, after spending further hours in the garden, it was time for a steak and ale pie, with top-notch braising steak from Richard at Wild Dartmoor Beef.

Excellent beef – and even grass finished, unlike some other producers that make great claims.

The recipe came from the Hairy Bikers.

I sliced an onion and chopped some de-rinded, smoked streaky bacon, and cooked them gently in a little lard, before adding a finely chopped clove of garlic.

When golden, this was scooped into a casserole and replaced with the diced steak itself (around 450g for the two of us).

That’s browned and added to the pot. The frying pan is deglazed with approximately half a bottle of ale and this goes into the pot too.

Then the rest of the ale and a little beef stock, a tablespoon of tomato purée, a couple of bay leaves and some thyme are brought to the boil and join everything else in the casserole.

It’s covered and goes into a pre-heated oven (160˚C fan) for at least two hours until the meat is very tender and the ale has sweetened.

Take it out, add a little cornflour that's been blended with water and pop back to thicken.

Then add some halved or quartered chestnut mushrooms, let it cool and decant everything into a pie dish. Roll out some puff pastry and top with that. Brush with whisked egg (Argh! Another dead baby non-human critter!) and bake at 180˚C for 30-35 minutes until the pastry is golden.

Consume with something apt like mushy peas on the side. Go on – a few vegetables every now and won't do you any harm.

And as if that were not entirely bad enough, then later this week I shall be eating Bambi.

It all put a contended smile on my face.

But then, I’d be prepared to wager that Father Christmas isn’t a vegan either – and look at him for longevity.