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

The filling has shrunk a little as it's cooled so I was able to get about half a (UK) pint in, but there was a little bit of escapage from one side. I've tipped the pie up slightly so the stock isn't running out of that hole any more, but I don't think I'm going to be having for dinner tonight The pie itself is still warm so it's going to need an overnight stay in the fridge for the stock to set.

Le sigh.

pah! you should leave it at least six months to mature before eating! preferably wrapped in an old sheet of leather, and burried in four foot of peat, in the middle of a moor! I'm gona have to look at pork pie recipies soon, out of interest... mind, I'm getting a huge list of things I want* to cook, and haven't gotten round to yet

Know what I've used to bung the hole up? A corn niblet

I mature rich fruit cakes for six months, I mature some beers for six months (mostly for a lot longer), and if I was making certain salted pork products I'd probably mature those for six or more months, but this pie is getting eaten

I don't think porkpies really* need to be matured/laid down thank BoB.... I doubt I'd have the willpower to not* eat it as soon* as it was cooked and the jelly set

off into town today, more Polish ham, and cheese, probably more salad and fruit bits n pieces, and quite tempted to pick up a batch of sausages from the butchers; It looks like being a wee bit cooler this weekend, but getting back into the 30s for all of next week; Have a cunning plan to cook all* of the sausages, and another batch of chicken breasts, tomorrow morning (or at some point during the day), to give a load of ready cooked meat in the fridge, to have cold with salads, or in sandwichs, or, well, whatever I want to put it in/with Knowing my luck if I buy the sausges, and then defrost the chicken breasts tonight, it'll end up being a scorcher tomorrow from early on

Does your butcher put sawdust down on the floor like I remember them doing? Probably some health/safety/littering regulation against it these days

I really should go to the Saturday morning farmers markets more often. That's the only place I'm going to get off-piste (for Austin) things like suet, kidneys, pigs trotters or most other kinds of offal. Some of the supermarkets have a very good butchers department but the only offal you'll find on a regular basis is liver (beef or chicken), but there's no guarantee it'll be there every week. Plenty of good beef, obviously. Well, it is Texas after all, and plenty of pork products too But not back bacon

The weather forecast says that we'll be warming up later in the week too. Mid 90s for the next three or four days and then 100s after Wednesday, so it looks like yesterday's baking marathon was well timed

You know, asides in TV shows from the way back when, I cna't ever remember going into a butchers that had sawdust on the floor, not even when I was young! That must have stopped in the 80s? maybe even before... or perhaps it just didn't exist where I was in Suffolk, when younger...
It is* a proper butchers though... he'll happily dice up any meat your buying, or joint a whole bird, etc, they kinda specialise on game stuff although I've as yet to get round to buying any rabbit, or phesant or anything... I did get some venison from there, a year or two back, for a casserole though Its the same guy who runs the butchers has two shops in the town so I think sometimes they're carriing differnt stock to an extent in each...

I got 8 of their 'basic' sauasages today, which I think are pork and sage.... or is it thyme.... nah, sage I think... but they're just so* tasty so little fat in, but so* tasty Mind, I've had a few of their other sausages before, which are rahter good, but more suited for particular things; the wild boar ones, I thought a bit on the dry side (I guess even less fat), but very tasty nonetheless The burgers i made using the butchers beef mince... yeh... burgers are cheap, crappy junk food.... if they're bought from certain multinational chain 'resturants' or indeed multinational/national frozen food companys... but homemade... (mind, I'm sure by the time I finished making them, the beef was 80% or less of the total, chopped up bacon, onion, garlic, herbs etc., etc.,etc., probably got a bit carried away with the extras )
Which reminds me, next time I make burgers, I want to emulate the fabulus give the inside of your mouth first degree burns, burgers, I had years* ago (hmmm.... 97 or 98 I think).
two thin* burgers, squidged together... only... the clever (and dangerous mouth burning bit), a large* slice of mature cheddar, or simular, first placed between the two halfs of the burger... and then fried, grilled etc., as a single burger, with the magical mouth burning melty cheese in the middle of course, served with half a dozen rashers of streaky chrispy bacon, fresh lettuce, tomato, ghurkin, mayo and a large homemade roll daminit... your making me ... I'm making me feel hungry now

I had to give into temptation and bought some substandard pork pies, from a local shop... I can't think of anythwere here, that might actually sell non mass-produced decent ones

Surely they aren't that hard to get, especially in England I would have thought! Even the likes of Tesco should be able to provide a decent handmade Melton Mowbray or something. At least I hope so, as that's what I'm counting on later for my pork pie needs...

Mass produced fast food burgers are dreadful, you'll get no argument from me on that, but a good homemade burger is a thing of beauty, although I've never felt much of a desire to make them, and I'm not sure why. If I'm going to make something round from meat and other savoury products I think it'll be a rissole My mum used to make rissoles on a Monday from left over lamb (when she wasn't using it to make a shepherds pie), and it was one of my favourite meals of the whole week, except for the Sunday roast the meat came from in the first place. It's been more than 35 years since I've had one but I can still remember that flavour

Oh, I remember what else I wanted to say.

I spent about six months working in Arundel in the 80s, and there was a game butcher in the centre of town (looks like it's not there any more). Now, I'd never seen anything like this before - we didn't have those in Romford, and I must have been there at just the right time of year because they had hundreds of pheasants hanging up outside the shop.

Pee yew, what a pong But I knew enough about these things even then that you hang pheasants to improve the flavour, although it was difficult to understand how, at the time with that smell of rotting meat, how it worked.

When you get it en masse like that, it's a bit overpowering, yes. I was working up the country a while ago, and round about lunch time, a couple of trucks from the abattoir drove past. That smell filled the air for the rest of the afternoon.

The butcher might not be there any more but the caff where I used to eat my dinner every day still is The thing I remember most about that place is they had Radio 2 on the wireless.

I know that abattoir smell all too well. I lived on a road in London for a while that must have been the route from a nearby slaughterhouse to wherever it was they took all the heads, carcasses and other bits left over after the meat-for-human-consumption was removed, because three or four times a day a huge lorry would pass by and the smell was enough to make you puke, especially during the summer It was very close to a junction and we prayed the lights would always be green when one of those passed by.

The smell of the pheasants wasn't anywhere near as bad as that, but the smell of food en masse, when it's maturing, can be overpowering. The place where I had a Saturday job had a food store in the basement and there was a cage where they kept the cheeses. Not cheese, cheeses. Whole rounds. The first time I went down there it almost knocked me flat

Well, yes, the supermarket does* have things, called 'melton mobery' porkpies.... but having tried them, they're still so far removed from the real* thing, taht they're not worth the extra money they cost, compaired to the regular supermarekt ones; just, of course, the supermarket can charge double as a result of putting 'finest' or 'quality', or 'hand produced' on the packet of the expensive ones, and the very same product in a cheaper looking label is consequently half the price

I can't remember the last time I had phesant or rabbit, or game, cept for the venison casserole I made, last year, or the venisorn sausages I had, probably about the same time... <

Rissoles? yeh... I've heard the name.... Not entirely sure if I've had em... so, whats the differnce between a proper home made burger, and a home made rissole? I may* have had them as a child, but I really can't remember

Trying to decide what to do with the rest of the cooked chidken I have left for tonight... its cooled a bit here, so I maybe oughta actually cook soemthign to go with it... or just throw it in a cold salad again, of course risotto... or something with pasta... or pierogi and then the chicken done with tons of butter and garlic ... or just wild rice and chicken n mushrooms, and maybe fennel seed, and/or cumin... Or make chicken chow mein and use up some more of the noodles I discovered lurking in the cupboard a few weeks back Mind, not got any beansprouts for the chow mein... so it'd just be a chow mein source style thing, with chicken n mushroom and onions instead of spring onion ... oo... I've got eggs, spingapore noodles might work just about...
Or, of course, just a giant massive sandwich filled with half a pound of cooked chicken and mayo

Here's a recipe for rissoles that looks like the kind of thing my mum used to make, although hers weren't round - they were more like a very fat burger or a very squashed meatball http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/rissoles_85938

ahh... so in that recipie, when they say 'cooked lamb, minced', they mean a roast join of lamb, (I.E., the leftover from the Sunday roast), then minced, rahter than just getting lamb mince, and frying it to cook it first... Looks kinda interesting... I rarley do a roast though ... I must get into the habbit of doing a roast joint, once we've gotten towards the autumn/winter, just to save money on the meat as its useually cheaper as a large joint than minced/sausaged/diced/wahtever

I returned pork-pie-less, as none of them looked like much cop. The only ones with really tasty-looking pastry were the supermarket own ultra-value brand, and I didn't care to think about what passes for pork inside them.

Yeah, rissoles is one of those things you'd always get on Monday, a way of using up the meat left over from the Sunday roast. Here's a thing though. We'd rotate the Sunday roast - pork, beef, lamb - but I can only remember the leftovers from lamb - shepherds pie and rissoles. I know there must have been meat left over from the beef and the pork... maybe that's when we just had slices of cold meat off the bone. Or perhaps she made rissoles from pork or shepherds pie from minced beef. Which would make it a cottage pie.

The pork pies I got from the supermarekt, today, (well the little 'lcoal' or whatever they call it smaller supermarekt type thing), were basically the cheap ones... having eaten them, before, they taste alright... the pastry is actually not too bad... they've got meat in them... Pork is normal I guess, but horse, zebra, donkey or cow, its all the same really anyhow... it did* actually taste like pork, last time, as much as I could tell Problem is, with recent media coverage of the food stuff thing, everyones spotlighted the big supermarkets, but as all the brands, and companys concerned are just fundimentally conerned with profet, I doubt the bigger/better brand names are any better than the worse of the bunch Hence I normally stick to the butchers, and don't tend to buy too much processed food, if I can avoid it.. If I get anything like filled pasta I always go for the veg/cheese ones, not the ones with meat.... seems the safest bet

I've just cut the first slice out of the and left it on the countertop to warm up before I tuck in. It looks like a , it smells like a , and best of all - there's jelly

One of the benefits of making your own is that you can dice the pork to exactly the size you want it. The filling in some of the pies I remember was almost homogenous. I know that it's the done thing to mince the pork in some versions, but I prefer it this way.

*covers ears*
nah nah nagh nah nah can't hear you nah nah ah nah nah nah damn... didn't work... I@m envious and I now need* a proper* pork pie immediately!

*goes to look at yellow pages, for companys offering emergency home delivery home-made pork pie services **

hmm. a bit nieche....