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.

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.

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.

A touch of northern sophistication

Classy and sophisticated food doesn’t only mean haute cuisine. It doesn’t even have to mean that you have to have slaved over a hot stove for hours and hours either.

The weekend produced a number of dishes that, I’m willing to assert, were as classy as owt, even if they were not likely to grace the tables of La Gavroche.

In fact, although this was never a particular intention, it all went a bit northern over the last few days.

The mood was established early on Friday with a visit to Broadway Market – a far quieter experience than can be expected on Saturdays.

Fin & Founder now seem established as residential fish merchants. I still use Vikki wherever possible on a Saturday, because she’s been there since shortly after the market arrived to change out lives. But a permanent fishmonger is an absolute boon.

It’s not cheap and it’s clearly aimed primarily at the growing rather more middle class residents that have moved into the area in the last eight years.

For a while, I wouldn’t go in. The shop had originally been Spirit’s general West Indian store, which used to have a small amount of fish.

Spirit, however, was shoved out in – how to put it carefully? – dubious circumstances by our favourite greedy local landlord, Dr Roger Wratten, whose mere name always puts me in mind of Bill Tidy’s dastardly villain, Roger Ditchley.

One such occurrence might be construed as an accident, but the countless times Wratten has hiked rents to push out businesses makes it very far from that.

He’s done it on at least four other occasions that I know of – and that’s just on Broadway Market.

Spirit’s shop lay empty for ages, before being done up and becoming home to Fin & Founder. The dreadful doctor is apparently no longer the owner of that site so one can’t exactly hold them to blame.

I rather enjoy shopping there. On Friday, it was to get some thick cod fillet for dinner.

“I’ll just pin bone it for you,” said the young man serving me.

“Oh, no need for that,” I replied. “I can do that.”

He looked surprised.

“OH, I have my own pin-boning pliars,” I explained. “Wüstloff ones.”

He made no further query.

Obviously, preparing the customer’s fish in such a manner ‘adds value’ and helps justify the prices. I know I’m not going to get a discount, but I really don’t need it done.

In some cases – such as prepping squid – I downright love doing the job myself.

Fin & Founder is, I think, symptomatic of so much that is happening in British food – certainly in the cities.

Were it not for shops like this, run by people like this, there simply would not be a fishmonger on Broadway Market. And there are no proper wet fish shops within walking distance either.

The traditional fishmongers’ died off over a number of years – yet more of the collateral damage caused by supermarket expansion, plus the greed of those commercial landlords.

So it could be claimed that good food – proper food – has unfortunately become elitist in such areas.

The tragedy with this is that now it’s apparently considered a middle class, well off thing to actually want good food.

How on earth did we reach such a depressing point – depressing, indeed, on so many levels? It’s not the case in every other country, that quality food is considered only the preserve of some perceived elite.

And indeed, what I wanted to cook on Friday was light years from being ‘elite’.

The intention in this case was to make something I do rarely – fish and chips.

Rarely, that is, because I don’t have a deep fat fryer or chip pan, and therefore have to use fresh fat every time. Which ups the cost a bit, but it’s worth it.

In this case, that meant a dozen 250g blocks of lard, since I’ve given up deep frying in vegetable oil.

It’s such an easy dish.

Cut your chips and soak them for 30 minutes or so in cold water. Drain and dry thoroughly.

Make your batter. Pure Delia at this point: 110g of self-raising flour, a good pinch of salt and 165ml of water – all whisked together until it’s lump free.

In this case, thinking that some people use beer instead of water, I made use of some sparkling water that was in the fridge.

Now it’s just a case of melting and then heating the lard.

You need it to be at a temperature of 190˚C. This used to mean relying on chucking a cube of bread into the shimmering fat and seeing it if cooked in a minute.

But since I’ve actually got a jam thermometer these days, it’s a darned sight more scientific.

In go the chips for up to five minutes. In reality, I found that they were well on the way by three minutes, so they were decanted onto a paper-towel lined plate and the fish, which had been waiting in the batter, was slipped carefully into the second pan.

Once the fat in the chip pan is back up to heat, the chips go back in for about two minutes.

And real chips are not a pale yellow.

The only processed thing about the meal was a tin of mushy peas. And the only downside? The smell, which I managed to keep in the kitchen alone.

But goodness me, it was good.

It amazes me that we have come so close to losing sight of what a fantastic dish this can be.

Near us, in Dalston, Is Faulkners fish and chip takeaway and restaurant. It’s supposed to be good, but is poor for anyone who has had the real thing.

The same goes for the North Sea Fish Restaurant (and takeaway) in Bloomsbury.

Neither are cheap and yet the chips aren’t even hand cut for starters.

Both would be left standing by the very down-to-Earth, dock-side chippy we ate in in Scarborough, last spring.

Yet such experiences are few and far between. Which is sad, I think. Very sad.

But on to more weekend fodder.

My new friends, Si King and Dave Myers of Hairy Biker fame, were the source of Saturday’s dinner – a meat and potato pie.

Not that they’re just my new friends – The Other Half has been the one remembering when the current series is on and tuning in every week.

And the ‘bakeathon’, with the duo intrepidly biking and baking their way around Europe is certainly most enjoyable.

This wasn’t bad the first time I did it, last autumn – but it was even better this time: moister and, err, wittier.

The pastry, as previously, was made using lard. I used good beef mince (400g for the two of us).

A good squeeze of tomato purée was substituted for the ketchup, since I didn’t have any of the latter in the cupboard, but Worcester sauce and HP sauce were used exactly as the recipe specified.

I kid you not – this is also good. Very good.

Oh, it might not be haute cuisine but, just like the fish and chips, at its best, a proper pie is a thing of enormous pleasure and very high quality.

And since I made up the amount of pastry mentioned in the book, I have just under half to use up later this week. What a dreadful problem to face – what pie to make next?

The tao of pie

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened the birds began to sing,

Oh wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?


Nursery rhymes are a fascinating subject in their own right – and this one might have been about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

In that context, the description of the dish as “dainty” is sarcastic – it’s a wreck of a recipe. But it does tell us that a pie, of itself, would not be considered unsuitable for a monarch.

We don’t really think of savoury pie as a posh dish today – well, perhaps apart from game pie and that’s as much down to the remaining sentiments about game being posh/rich people’s food in England.

But if pie is, in general, the domain of all of us ordinary folk, then up north it takes on a deeper importance and in Lancashire, it’s pretty much a religion.

A few years ago, the Telegraph reported that after a discussion with a northern fan about the half-time pies at her beloved Norwich City, Delia Smith was encouraged to change the club’s supplier to Hollands Pies – from Lancashire. And when news emerged last summer that Hollands had been bought by a non-UK company, there was outrage locally.

Indeed, in recent weeks, I’ve been finding a Hollands meat and potato pie quite acceptable half-time fodder at Manchester City games.

As I mentioned the other week, I have fond memories of eating meat ‘n’ tatty pies – with black peas – at bonfire nights in when we lived in Mossley.

My mother used to buy little pork pies from a local baker in the town, Cakebread. She’d heat them through for tea and serve them with baked beans. The crusts were thick and peppery, and the meat densely packed but moist.

She made her own pork pies too: she’d spend an age trimming and chopping some pork until it was almost mince, then it would be mixed with dried onion that had been rehydrated in a white enamel mug with blue trim, plus grated potato, before being packed into pastry-lined enamel pie tins and topped with more shortcrust.

That, on the savoury pie front, was pretty much my mother’s repertoire. She would do a version of steak and kidney – but not in a pie, cooking the meats separately and serving them on a slice of piping hot pastry. That was Sunday dinner I particularly looked forward to.

If we had a steak and kidney pie (or chicken and mushroom, for that matter), it would be a mini Bird's Eye frozen one: she kept the little foil containers, watched them carefully and then found various uses for them – including as the receptacle for our ration of sweets and chocolate when she divvied this out a couple of times a week.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I spotted a new book by Si King and Dave Myers: The Hairy Bikers’ Perfect Pies: The ultimate pie bible from the kings of pies.

A flick through tempted me, but I left it on the shelf – and then, unable to put it out of my mind, ordered a copy less than two days later.

With the burgeoning sense of food nostalgia inspired initially by Nigel Slater, I had set my course for pie.

I also ordered a trio of old-fashioned pie dishes – three different sizes; all round and with wide rims; enamel with a blue stripe on the rim. And a pie bird – a nod to that nursery rhyme.

Like my Mason Cash mixing bowls, there is something hugely comforting in having such traditional equipment. And it's considerably cheaper than some other options.

For instance, in all honestly and without fear of overstating my culinary skills, I did not feel that I needed the Breville Antony Worrall Thompson VTP099 Gourmet Pie Maker (only £25.46 at Amazon, instead of the RRP of £47.99).

I don’t know what’s worse: that or Marco Pierre White trying to keep a straight face while telling us that Knorr stock (ingredients for the beef stock pots at £1.46 for four of 28g each: Water, Salt, Beef fat (5.0%), Yeast Extract, Vegetables in Varying Proportions (2,3%) (Carrot, Leek), Sugar, Flavourings (contains Milk and Mustard), Beef Extract (1.3%), Vegetable Fats and Oils, Thickeners (Xanthan Gum, Locust Bean Gum), Colour (Burnt Sugar Caramel), Herbs (Parsley, Lovage), Rosemary Extract, Apple Juice Concentrate, Carrot Juice Concentrate, Onion Juice Concentrate, Spices (Pepper, Paprika), Garlic) is every bit as good as the real stuff.

After the goodies arrived, I picked a midweek evening to make my pie debut. The plan was something involving chicken – based on the first recipe in the book, for a creamy chicken, ham and leek pie. Because it was midweek, I was preparing to cheat a tad, using ready-made pastry.

In the shop, I went to pick up a packet of Jus-Rol shortcrust (£2.80 for a kilo). Then I glanced at the ingredients: Wheat Flour, Vegetable Oil, Water, Salt, Lemon Juice, Preservative: Potassium Sorbate.

And I decided that I was damned if my first pie was going to be made with a pastry made with vegetable oil. And lemon juice.

Back in the kitchen, I rubbed together 350g plain flour and 100g each of butter and lard, before adding a large egg that had been whisked up with a tablespoon of chilled water.

It came together well, but fretting a little too much about not letting my warm paws heat it up to much, I probably didn’t press it together quite enough.

Defying convention, Myers and King suggest not putting the pastry into the fridge before rolling it – that makes it harder to roll – but doing that and lining the tin first. This works quite well.

In the meantime, I had skinned and boned four chicken thighs and added the meat to a pan in which I’d been gently cooking some sliced leeks in, in a little lard. Some chopped smoked streaky bacon joined it.

In another pan, I very gently heated some whole milk and a little stock for the sauce, with the chicken skin and bones in, along with the rind from the bacon.

In another pan, some butter was melted and some plain flour added and cooked through for a minute, before I started adding the milk/stock.

When that was a decent consistency – you need it quite thick – I popped the meat and leeks in, together with some chopped parsley and sage, then left it to cool down.

Pop the kettle on. Grab a biscuit. Put your feet up.

And then, after a while, you can decant the filling into the lined dish, roll out some more to make a lid, trim, crimp the edges and, if you want, decorate it.

I opted for a postmodern statement with the latter, cutting out the word ‘pie’ and sticking it on with the egg glaze. Just so nobody would be left in any doubt.

You need to have pre-heated the oven to 200˚C (180˚C fan). Myers and King recommend putting a baking tray in the oven to warm up thoroughly while it’s heating.

And then it’s the matter of a mere 35 minutes before you can remove it, slice it and eat.

I served this with mashed swede, since it needed something on the side, but I didn’t want to add more complex carbs, since there was already pastry involved.

The pastry didn’t look perfect and I hadn’t made it quite thick enough to withstand the serving process, but it was beautifully flakey. The filling was tasty enough to satisfy The Other Half, who tends to be underwhelmed by anything he considers ‘bland’.

One thing is certain. Pie is now firmly on the household agenda. And in keeping with my recent revelation that cooking something regularly helps you get to grips with the skills required, there’ll be another one very, very soon.

Mary, the gift of lard and real roots food

I am one very lucky girl. One mention of my difficulties in procuring lard for my culinary shenanigans and a volunteer stepped forward.

Meet Mary, a hospital housekeeper from the Midlands, who brought me a second delivery of lard and dripping today.

Mary – you are an absolute diamond.

I think chips are on the cards – I haven’t made any since July – and this time I’m going to see what the results are like using dripping.

There is also the question of pies. Only yesterday, I noticed that the Hairy Bikers have a new book out all about pies, pies and nothing else but pies.

Since I seem to have dipped into a state of nosh nostalgia – thanks largely to Nigel Slater’s utterly delightful Eating for England – I have been drawn to pies.

Well, that and frequent trips to football matches where, after the hiccough of Manchester City’s legendary chicken balti pie, I have settled into a routine of eating a meat and potato pie at half time.

If I had an extra hand, I’d get a drink of Bovril too: the other day I caught a whiff of the stuff somewhere and I was instantly transported to a wintery, Pennine terrace where that beefy drink acted as half-time anti-freeze.

Slater talks of Marmite but not Bovril: for me, it's the the latter that has a Proustian quality – Proust, that is, given a football makeover.

Why on Earth would anyone consider memories of being so cold with such fondness? A certain innate masochism, perhaps? That might – until the last few years at any rate – explain my love affair with Manchester City.

But back to pies: with the nights crowding in, I want food likes pies. And I want to cook pies. Nothing fancy – but real big-flavoured comforting pies. With lard in the pastry.

It can’t be steak and kidney, since The Other Half doesn’t eat kidney, and even chicken and mushroom seems too fancy Dan for my present mood.

Meat and potato pie, then. It’s the season, I’m sure. I remember eating meat and potato pie, with black peas on the side, at bonfire nights near Mossley. Jacket potatoes too, baked in the fire. And parkin – real parkin.

Simple flavours. Food that was hot in the hands; warming against the cold and the night. The heat and the crackle of the fire; the pop and the fizz of fireworks blossoming in the velvet black above.

This drift into the joys of nostalgia and northern food took another, unexpected boost on Saturday. Shopping at Euston for fodder for the trek to Manchester, I was rendered nearly giddy with delight to find a pack of four small Eccles cakes. It was like coals to Newcastle: they’d been made just up the road from City’s stadium – just down the road from my old school.

I don’t recall having Eccles cakes in my childhood. This is a different nostalgia – something more collective and region based. This is roots food. This is food as something that is about who you are – who you think you are – who you want to be, where you come from.

And this, in so many ways, is what I think we have lost – to a degree at least. It's not that we shouldn't enjoy foods from other culinary cultures. I think, for instance, that Jamie Oliver makes an interesting point about this in his new book/series: that other foods have become our cuisine. Yes – to an extent.

The French have quite taken to couscous in recent years and it has become part of their national cuisine.

But I do think we'd done a bit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in culinary terms. Don't mess around with a Yorkshire pudding, for instance – there's no need, because it's perfect to start with.

London isn't the only place in Britain – and as such, it isn't representative of the country as a whole – but it seems that the bulk of eateries in the places that I move on a daily basis don't serve any British food.

And there's nowt wrong with pie – any more than there's anything wrong with Yorkshire puddings or fish 'n' chips or many, many other dishes.

But let's not get too serious tonight. I need to try making some of those Eccles cakes too – and it occurs to me that lard might be helpful there as well.

Mary – thank you for the gift today (and for your previous delivery). I promise to use it well and appreciate it. And I promise too to write about at least some of what I cook with it.