I will not let pork pies defeat me
After five years in England, pork pies had become one of my favourite British foods. Making them myself was another matter. In the baking attempt I shared in May 2021, I picked mini pork pies because they looked less frightening than a big one, then decided to make the shortcrust pastry myself as well. I had never made pork pies before. Just thinking about it was giving me cold sweats.
The finished batch would turn out to have a slightly different identity: little pork burgers, with pastry tops that didn’t meet their bases. Fortunately, looking like a pork pie and tasting good were two different things that day.
The pastry was already a problem
I started by worrying that the pastry recipe wouldn’t make enough. Rather than risk running out, I doubled it, then looked at the enormous amount of flour and wondered whether that had been a mistake. I also briefly forgot that doubling the dry ingredients meant doubling the water. These were not encouraging signs, and we hadn’t reached the pork yet.
Rubbing the butter into the flour was supposed to produce fine breadcrumbs. Mine weren’t especially fine, but I got bored and moved on. Bringing the mixture into a dough wasn’t much more reassuring: it looked crumbly and fairly gross. I wrapped it up and tried to press it together into something that resembled a ball. A previous mince pie pastry attempt had nearly made me cry, so rolling out another batch was not a task I was looking forward to.
There was plenty of preparation before I could even fill the tin. I cut parchment pieces to help lift the pies out later, buttered the holes and fitted the paper inside. Then I needed twelve pastry circles for the bases and sides. I didn’t have the cutter the recipe wanted, so I used a large drinking glass instead. The circles came out in assorted shapes, sizes and thicknesses. Some weren’t particularly close to circles, but they were in the tin, and that was enough for me at that point.
The filling was the good part
The filling brought together Cumberland sausage meat, smoked bacon lardons, breadcrumbs, mace, sage, pepper and a little salt. I squeezed the sausages out of their skins and mixed everything together by hand. It looked disgusting while I was doing it, but this part was far easier than wrestling with pastry. I filled the cases quite high and still had some filling left over.
What I wasn’t sure I had left was enough pastry for the lids. I rolled the rest out, tried a smaller glass and found that the circles were a bit too small. By then I was wondering why I hadn’t bought ready-made pastry. I kept going anyway and managed twelve subpar little hats. They didn’t need to be pretty; I just wanted the pies closed.
That didn’t quite happen. I used my fingers to apply the egg because I didn’t have a pastry brush, fitted the tops and could still see substantial gaps around them. I thought the meaty juices would probably escape through the sides. Once the first bake was over, the pies were completely open. They smelled incredible, but they looked like burgers.
Ugly pies, excellent filling
For the second bake, I spooned on more egg because the pies were hot and I still didn’t have a brush. The finished tops browned in patches, the pastry was too thick, and none of the pies had sealed. I wanted to try one hot anyway. The kitchen smelled of bacon and sausages, I’d been at this for ages, and I was hungry.
The pastry on the bottom was still quite goopy when I opened one, and there was too much pastry overall. The filling, though, tasted wonderful. I loved its peppery, mace flavour, and it had been the easiest part to make. I thought I would try these again with bought pastry and better rolling. I’d rushed that part because I was getting bored, and it showed.
Later I came back for a cold pie with piccalilli, the chunky pickle in mustard sauce that I hadn’t known before moving to England. I’d bought a jar especially for this attempt and found it strongly pickly and mustardy. With the cold pie, it was significantly better. I couldn’t explain exactly why, but the balance tasted perfect to me. By the end I was full of pastry, sausage, bacon and butter, and still reaching for a little more.
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