VR has cooked for me for nearly 59 years. By common consent I've recently urged her to be less ambitious. Cooking takes time and I'd much rather she fulfilled her avowed aim, announced on her retirement twenty years ago, to read, and read and read. Some times a couple of novels a day, in all about 230 a year.
Even so there are regular bursts of culinary inventiveness.
What makes a good cook? In my opinion: three qualities. All recipes are regarded as a suggestion not a rigid prescription. Leftovers are a challenge, to be transformed into a dish quite distinct from the original format. And going the extra mile.
All are contained in the above pic.
It required no recipe at all and it is a savoury pie - much more of a treat than a dessert pie. The contents, enhanced with bits and pieces I've now forgotten, were remaindered from a brisket casserole created a week or two ago by grandson Ian, another inventive cook. The superfluous pastry was turned into a touch of wit which you may now observe.
My contribution to the pie was to over-eat it, to the point where I felt quite uncomfortable yesterday evening. I shouldn't have done, of course. I'm an adult who understands cause and effect. On the other hand my discomfort was an inarguable tribute to the pie's onlie begetter.
VR served the pie. I'm not sure my over-developed sense of aesthetics would have allowed me to violate its decorated crust.
Pies are heaven, unless there's offal involved. Sorry to remember now that the Cork Irish have a thing for tripe in a pie. And it stinks.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, well done to grandson and follow-up cook.
We usually bring a cake when we visit my father (90, can cook an egg at a push and heat up ready made food in a microwave) and on our last visit, when he found out that the specimen of the day had been baked by his son-in-law, he only shook his head in wonder (disgust?) and muttered something along the lines of, whatever next with these young people (son-in-law is 67).
Once it was thought effete for men (other than professionals) to cook, a bit like doing embroidery. Now it's considered manly.
ReplyDeleteThe equivalent, among lorry drivers, was to drive aggresssively, up against the bumper bar of any unwary Nissan Micra driver. The new rock-and-roll is to show how precisely they can reverse their unwieldy beasts. In fact it's become a worthwhile spectator sport.
Mmmm, savoury pies ... you'll be pleased to know that my favourite local pub serves hand pies, freshly baked to order (and the crust is hand-made and very tasty, yet lacking in aesthetics). They regularly have five different kinds on the menu. Perfect with a pint.
ReplyDeleteRW (zS): Yes, and that's the point. Dessert pies don't go with a pint.
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly dislike the "pies" that many pub/restaurants now serve. A pie is as VR makes them, not the contents of a casserole with a bit of puff pastry laid on top. It makes it easier to microwave and is not for the customers' delight. My favourite pub pies are huge and constructed on site at the Woolpack pub, Brookland (https://www.woolpackinnbrookland.co.uk/ ). If I manage to eat all of one I invariably leave some of the vegetables/chips.
ReplyDeleteTo feel full post prandial is a compliment to the cook. The Arabs always consider a huge belch as good manners and appreciative.
Avus: I'm surprised that some pies - should I say quasi-pies? - are microwaved in pubs. My experience is that the electromagnetic perturbation causes the crust to collapse into a state that is no longer recognisable as a crust. Since most pub clients arrive full of a latent tendency to complain, this must surely set them off immediately.
ReplyDeleteI wondered whether The Woolpack (alluded to in your link) was the pub we discussed many years ago. I took my Folkestone father-in-law for a drive to a pub just before he lapsed into Alzheimer's and was impressed by the pub's ambience, its internal appointments, its menu, its draught beer and - most of all - its monumental fireplace. My impression was that it was in Ham Street on the outskirts of Tenterden and I even have a card identifying it as The Woolpack though the address is shown confusingly as Warehorne. You corrected me and I see that the Ham Street pub - a mock-Tudor road house - is called The Duke's Head. Also that your Woolpack is quite some way from Tenterden whereas my Woolpack seemed much closer to suburbia, just up the road in fact.
Not that any of this matters, it was a good pub. I returned some time later with my mother-in-law and me buying. As was her wont, she chose a ploughman's on the grounds it was the cheapest thing on the menu. Alas she hadn't allowed for its enormous dimensions and she had the appetite of a bird. Later the same thing at a black-and-white village called Pembridge here in Herefordshire. This time the ploughman's lunch was even more over-facing than the Kentish one and centred on a huge block of cheese, half the size of a house brick. (Carefully wrapped by her in a table napkin and consumed chez Robinson in the ensuing week).
If you want some cheap entertainment try the Tripadvisor comments on the Grand Burstin Hotel, located almost in the harbour at Folkestone. I'd be interested to know if you've ever found a better candidate for The Worst Hotel in the World.
The resultant "crust sogginess" from microwaving is why most establishments just put a puff pastry biscuit on the top of microwaved stew and call it a pie. Real pies have been properly cooked in an oven, but that is too hard for some.
ReplyDelete