Lord of the Pies

Open any newspaper or magazine at the 'Lifestyle' page, and there'll inevitably some article about diet. It'll go on and on about healthy eating, explaining how to avoid those excruciatingly addictive chocolates, cream buns, doughnuts and Coca-Cola. Apparently it's impossible only to have one chocolate. "Just say no," the mantra goes in its attempt to steer the yoof away from addictive substances, or you'll clear the shelves of Dairy Milk, Ferrero Rocher or Quality Street.

Now I enjoy a chocolate as much as the next Goat, but I personally can't see a good reason for troughing an entire box of Black Magic - both layers, and even the Coffee Cremes - while watching the telly.

My weakness, for we all have at least one, is savouries. Pasties, flans, quiche and best of all: Pies.

Keefieboy is a fan of steak and kidney pies, and I'm pretty much in agreement with him. A 'proper' pie consists of a lower layer of pastry, a delicious moist meaty filling and a pastry crust on top. So-called cottage pie doesn't really count because there's no bottom pastry at all and the top is mashed potato. What use is a pie that you can't pick up in your hand if necessary? I think those individual hot, ready-to-eat pies from Spinneys et al are excellent. Wrapped in alumininium foil and perched somewhere in the engine bay, after a couple of hours of desert driving a hot steak and kidney pie is a gastronomic delight.

Fruit pies are a little different. I feel that a shallow pastry-lined dish full of fruit is more of a flan, or even a tart. However, I still refer to one of these full of cherries and covered with a pastry lattice a pie. By my definition, I suppose Beef Wellington (one of my favourite things, along with raindrops on roses and bright copper kettles) is a sort of pie. Check out The Fat Expat for a recipe.

Although they fit my description, I feel that fish pie is some curious travesty. I'm biased because I'm allergic to seafood, but cracking open a pastry crust to reveal a piscatorial filling makes me feel as if some great blasphemy has been committed. The Stargazey Pie, in which herring heads poke out of the rim, is nevertheless a Cornish tradition.

And this provides a slick segue into the Cornish Pasty. It's not made in a dish or tin, but nevertheless fits my rather arbitrary definition of a proper pie. Nanny Goat was born and bred Oop North, or at least in the English Midlands just north o't'River Trent and should in theory not be able to produce a decent pasty. But she learned how from her mother-in-law who was dyed-in-the-wool authentic Cornish. Until at last, imagining a kind of Cornish Yoda: "Arrr! Maaarrster the Apprentice has become."

Nanny Goat has now left the Land of the Sand for the more temperate Mundane Kingdom. Evidence of her visit remains: a freezer full of pastiferous delights.

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