Tag Archives: pie

The Pie Report

25 Replies

The pie on the website

The recipe I based the pie on was a Hairy Biker’s recipe called Vegetarian Chestnut and Mushroom Pie. It is available here on the BBC website. I followed the recipe almost to the letter, but substituted white wine for the marsala (it had been hanging round since Christmas) and used English mustard instead of Dijon. I always like to follow the recipe first time round, then you know if i works or not. It did. Everyone liked it and when I discussed making it simpler and cheaper Julia has suggested trying it without chestnuts but keeping the rest of it the same. Time for a costing and an evaluation.

The filling

The dried mushrooms cost £100 a kilo, which sounds a lot. However, the  recipe only calls for 15g, which is £1.50. I used fewer chestnuts than recommended but there will still plenty and I have enough to sir-fry some with brussels at the end of the week. Call that £1.50 too. Wine? We usually have something around that will do, so by the time you add pastry (60p), leeks and mushrooms you have a pie which cost us around £5 and served three.

A “good” supermarket pie will cost about £4 and serve two, and won’t be a patch on this one, so I’m going to stop worrying about cost.

My version, showing contents

I still need to try a cheaper version as an alternative for when I want something and don’t have dried mushrooms and chestnuts in the cupboard but I’m not going to mess around just to reduce costs.

Cocaine costs about £30,000 a kilo (according to a website I found whilst researching prices) and Chinese meals, even when divided into two in a frugal manner, still cost more than this pie so I really need to take a look at my attitude to food and life in conjunction with the cost of pies. I don’t, in case you are wondering, advocate cocaine, or any illegal drug, as a substitute for a good wholesome pie, but just thought (having been horrified by the cost of dried mushrooms per kilo) that it would make an interesting comparison.

Once again my vision is not quite borne out by the photo

Rhino Horn is about £44,500 per kilo in China and has no proven scientific value, in case you were wondering how it compared.

The internet is a wonderful thing, as I have said before. A very tasty pie recipe, a quick look at illicit drug prices and an overview of rhino poaching countermeasures – where else can you get all that? Even modern TV doesn’t have that variety to offer within 20 minutes.

I am going to resist putting “”cocaine” and “rhino horn” in the tags, as I don’t want to attract unwanted attention.

The pie before cutting

 

Steak Pie and Idle Chat

8 Replies

I went out for  meal last night – Steak and Ale Pie at a local pub. Since I last had it either the portions have grown larger or my capacity for food has ben reduced. I’m hoping, after  over a month of losing weight, it is the latter. I hve to get my portion size down, it’s the only way to do it. Experiences like last night are worrying, because it’s an example of how you cn start eating too much again.

Newstead Abbey Again

Work was dull in parts, interesting in others. I ate my sandwiches far too early. This has always been the case. When I worked on farms I ate at lunchtime but as soon as I had a job driving between farms to do blood tests and monitoring I started eating my sandwiches about half an hour after leaving home.

I had an email last night, two tanka accepted to go with the tanka prose I previously had accepted. Some editors are very quick. One of the others tells me they don’t send out rejections, but if you haven’t heard from them within 12 weeks you can assume it’s safe to send the poems to other people. This isn’t satisfactory and I don’t usually submit to editors with similar policies, but I fancied a change this month.

For January I sent out 11 submissions. I missed one out because they wanted poems to a theme I didn’t feel like writing and two because they were competitions and I’m not altogether in favour of competitions. You tie up the poems for months, pay for the privilege, and then when you read the winning entries you wonder what idiot picked them. Sometimes I optimistically enter a competition but am usually brought down to earth when I read the results.

Next month I just have five. I may look for a few more, or I may just take a rest.

 

Newstead Abbey again

Thanks to Julia for the photos again.

Is there anything you feel too old to do anymore?

12 Replies

I’m going to use the prompt this time. I feel too old to think of a new title for myself.

I’m also too old to train for a new career, or even look for a new job. Nobody needs a cripple with a bad attitude. Admittedly I could hide the attitude long enough to get through the interview but the fact I can’t walk without sticks is a bit of a giveaway  regarding my lack of mobility.

To be honest, I felt too old to train for a new career ten years ago. I did have a try at training to become a teaching assistant but after being told my Maths and English skills weren’t up to it compared to all the teenage girls they were signing up (and signing up to do basic literacy courses at the same time) I decided to give it a miss. I’ve mentioned that before so I won’t go on.

The bottom fell out of the TA market as schools had to tighten up on budgets so I probably didn’t miss much.

However, I’m not too old to have a laugh or eat takeaway food or drive my wife mad, so it’s not all bad being old. You can get away with a lot, and you’re never too old to have fun. I should probably add a link to a poem here. I think this one will do nicely, though it is not a surprising choice. Apologies for my lack of adventure. I would have chosen this one, but it would only serve to allow me to name drop.

Did I mention I once had a poem published in a magazine on the page facing one by Roger McGough? It is still one of the highpoints of my poetic career.

I just watched Crocodile Dundee after a break of over 30 years. It seems to have worn quite well and I enjoyed it. This proves more about my simplicity than the quality for the film, but it just goes to show, that you’re never too old to have a laugh.

Time for tea now. Pie and mash. As I said, I am a simple soul.

Pi, Pie and Piglets

12 Replies

I am home alone, abandoned by my wife, who has gone out for a meal with a group of people she used to work with. It is cold and there is little in the house to eat. So far I have kept body and soul together with a few crumpets I found hanging around and I am going to fry a few onions in a minute as we have a couple of finger rolls and some hot dog sausages left over from yesterday. It is, as repasts go, adequate.

Tomorrow we will have mushroom pilaff as a neighbour brought us a dish round, having made more than she needed. We will eat it with the last of the hot dog sausages. There are eight in a jar and only two of us. They are the big ones, about a foot long and doubtless crammed with more animal detritus than I would wish to know about. However, they are cheap and I like them. Eight for £2 and they last for 3 meals. At that price you don’t expect actual meat. I once spoke to a man who owned a food processing factory and he said the best ingredient for hot dog sausages was chicken skin. Well, it’s often the best bit of the roast chicken so why not use it?

He used to have a great line of pork pies too. They used chicken and pink food dye to produce the meat filling, but he had to stop using the recipe when picky politicians passed a law about having pork in pork pies.

And I can’t tell you about the cow head machine, or you’ll never eat a processed meat product again.

Header picture is a proper pork pie. Footer is a group of cute piglets, as they pause to smell the flowers on their journey towards a sausage skin.

Politics you say? Yes, there has been some politics, but I’m placing it exactly in the hierarchy where it deserves to be. First I will discuss poultry byproducts, then I will go and fry some onions. Maybe after that I will return and discuss politics. I may even discuss biproducts – they are not the same as byproducts but they don’t set off the spellchecker so care is needed. Fortunately I checked, as I was hazy on the spelling. A biproduct is a term used In category theory and its applications and as a result of my diversion I know that it is both a product and a coproduct and of no possible use to anyone but a mathematician.

I am not a mathematician and prefer my pies with an “e”. See what I did there? Mathematical pun. I’m on a roll tonight.

Piglets – like a pork pie but not as crusty

Simple Cookery from a Simple Man

17 Replies

My soup recipe just got even lazier because TESCO are now doing vegetable packs specifically for soup, with everything cut small and mixed with onions and chilli. Add water, a stock cube and a hand blender and you have soup. I put garlic in this one too. And a few extra onions.

At this time of year our kitchen is so cold you can leave it in a pan on top of the cooker with no need to use the fridge. We’ve had it for tea once and I’ve had it for lunch three times. The rest will go in the vegetable curry tomorrow.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Sweet potato, butternut squash, onion, garlic and chilli soup

We also had the lazy pie this week.

Chop leeks, celery, chicken, mushrooms and tarragon.

Soften the veg and brown the chicken, Stir in some flour and milk to make a sauce bit and bung it in a pie dish.  We had a gammon joint this week too, so I cubed some of it to make this a chicken and ham pie. This is optional.

Then unroll a sheet of ready-made puff pastry, cut off a bit about the size of the pie dish.

Argue about who had the pastry brush last.

Pour a little milk on top of the pie and rub it round lightly with your finger tips.

Add “pastry brush” to the shopping list.

Cook until it”s brown on top. This takes about 40 minutes if you put it in the oven cold but I really don’t see the point in heating up an empty oven first.

Serve with whatever veg you have. We had brussels and red cabbage (which I make in quantity and eat all week).  With hindsight I could have selected a less environmentally damaging combination. Think methane.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Chicken Pie and vegetables – sorry about the smudge on the lens

I know ready-made pastry and “parachute pies” (ones with just a top and no bottom) are all frowned on on serious pie circles, but ask me if I’m bothered. It’s crispy, it’s flaky and it tastes good. You don’t need all that stuff underneath.

This cooking stuff really is quite simple. I can’t really see how so many people seem to be able to make a career out of it with TV and cookery books and  such. As for Delia Smith being made a Companion of Honour “for services to cookery”, well I am, for once, speechless…

Yesterday, I forgot the Title

17 Replies

Number One Son cooked tonight, so there are no photos of the food. By the time I got back from picking Julia up from work (tonight being her late night) he had it ready and it seemed rude not to eat it right away.

It was, for those of you who like detail, a steak and shallot pie from Keelham Farm Shop, Skipton. The pastry was good and crispy and there were good chunks of meat in it. For my taste it was a bit over-salted (which seemed to come from the pastry) and shallots are always a bit too sweet. It was still good though.

We’re having the samphire tomorrow.

We had the orange and chilli marmalade this morning. Julia likes it. I’m dubious. I’m not sure there’s a gap in the market for a marmalade that slips down nicely but leaves a burning sensation in your throat.

Did I mention the rhubarb flavored chocolate yesterday? It was quite nice, and very Yorkshire, but it didn’t make it through the night. In fact, when I check, I notice it didn’t even make it into the blog.

The day started with a trip to work, with traffic jams and many thoughts (mainly homicidal). It progressed (if that is the word) to more traffic jams, a trip to the sorting office to pick up a parcel, and a blood test. It only took two attempts this week. I’m hoping I pass as they have currently reduced the interval to a week and weekly blood tests are a bit limiting.

It all turned out to be a bit of an anti-climactic day in the end. Even the threatening clouds didn’t turn into the threatened storm.

At least, when I got home, I had parcels from ebay to open.

I really must start getting things organised.

27 Replies

I went to Leeds today. It rained. And to make things more depressing I trusted the satnav, which never ends well. If I ever enter Mastermind my specialist subject could well be “Being lost on the Ring Road in Leeds”.

I’m home now and watching The Apprentice. It gives me no hope for the future. If I was the producer I would rewrite it as a horror movie and  kill one every week in a horrible, ironic manner. The one selected from tonight’s show, to make and sell burgers, would be in serious trouble if I had access to an industrial-sized mincer.

To be honest, if I was in charge I’d feed the lot of them through it, including Lord Sugar and Baroness Brady. I give them their full titles because I know, from reading his book, that he considers it important, even if most of us find the current honours system a bit of an embarrassment.

Fair play to him though, if you excel in your field you deserve an honour. Not quite sure what field the Amstrad email phone was a leader in, but the principle is sound.

I like Claude Littner, I’d let him have his own series. Well, with my plan for the rest of the cast you’d have quite a few weeks to fill in.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After leaving Leeds we went to Skipton and visited a farm shop. We bought rhubarb coulis, samphire, marmalade with orange and chilli and a big steak pie. I will try to take pictures tomorrow if I have time after eating. It’s a big pie and will take some shifting.

Today’s photos were snatched during a dry few minutes. Sorry there are no better ones.