h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today I have had for my lunch a Salmon Cottage pie. This is clearly wrong, you surely don't need telling that. I must admit that I have always struggled to remember the difference between a shepherds pie and a cottage pie, but I know that neither of them has salmon. I think that the one with the beans (the one I am predominantly interested in) is cottage pie. I rationalise this by assuming that shepherds pie (the one with the vegetables) is the one the shepherd makes when he is out for the evening sheep herding and has only a basic hut which he has not stocked with beans. Instead, to conserve space, he has only an oven, a mincing machine, a potatoe peeler, a potato masher, a saucepan, a frying pan, a pie dish a food preparation surface, a side of lamb, a sack of potatoes and a sink. To fill the pie he makes do with vegetables from the fields around him. No beans for him, not until he returns to the comfort, greater warmth and superior storage facilities of his cottage, where he can make a totally different pie.

We are fortunate, really, to live in so culturally diverse an age. I can now enjoy pies that would once have been the preserve of shepherds, cottage dwelers, admirals and fishermen. And with this range of choice available to more or less everyone it frankly begagrs beleif that the people who constructed my pie were not aware that fish pies are eaten by fishermen and admirals. It is possible that some poor deluded company once tried to market a pie enjoyed by seamen, but I doubt it sold well. Salmon being, as we all know, a posh fish, I imagine it is reserve for admirals, and not for the mere fisherman, although given that they caught the slamon in the first place, they probably stowed a couple away in order to vary their exclusively pie based diet from time to time, laughing at the mono-pied admirals as they did so.

So the pie rules are a bit confusing, especially if you are of the breed who thought a pie requried pastry. But there are some basic recipe rules which a person in charge of pie-making for a supermartket chain ought to know as standard. One of the most fundamental is that fish was not enjoyed in pies by either shepherds or cottage dwellers. In case your wondering, there was a short lived cottagers pie, but that didn't go down very well either.

So what was in the pie with the salmon? I've a pound or so of leftover salmon from last night in the fridge, and, if none is left over after tonight, I've a salmon head and tail in the freezer (What? There's supposed to be good meat in salmon cheeks, and there's a good couple of inches of meat attached to that caudal fin. the original fish was a 15 pounder, if I remember--kinda small, but hey, it was free!)

Thanks Benjamin - I enjoyed this

And when you get a vegetarian version? I was served so many veg lasanga's as a child I didn't know it was supposed to have meat in... Likewise for cottage pie. A tin of green lentils and a stock cube does as well as mince.

a Salmon Cottage Pie is so wrong even Spiller and I can agree with that

and oh how we ague about pies

you can have a fish or a cottage or a shephard pie these will have fish, or meat (that aren't sheep based) or sheep fillings in them with potato on top, and of course you can have veggie pies

pies with pastry, according to spiller have to be 'full jacket pies' pastry top and bottom containing a filling

you can buy small pies, these are different though from pasties

a pie,well I consider it to be a pie, a filling of choice with a topping of pastry is according to Spiller is 'stew with a lid on', not a pie

something with just a pastry bottom is a flan, or a quiche doesn't come into pie debates

Who'd've thought pies could be so complicated.

Enjoyable read, made me

Deb

Gosh, so many questions. I can't really remember what was in the pie. A cheese sauce, I think, salmon, obviously, and mashed potato. Probably an onion or something, but you're deviating so far from a shepherd that it really ceases to matter. You might as well sling in an ostrich egg.

I'm not sure who would specifically eat vegetarian food. Cartoon character desperate dan always ate cow pie, with horns on it implying the cotents was cow (with horns- like cows have). But if you follow the pie-is-named-after-eater logic of most pies, then a cow pie would probably be based around grass, and perhaps other vegetables. Ditto, then, for rabbit pie, for example.

Thanks for the comments, I'm glad you derived as much pleasure and curiosity from my pie as I did.

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