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

Well, if you have a bit of time on your hands... A19384194

You can order the real deal online, Leggsy. A *bit* pricy, but not too bad, actually!

There must a reputable butchers in Cambridge where you can buy a decent pork pie, 2legs. I mean, Cambridge has plenty of up-market punters who'd buy that sort of thing, and you're relatively close to pork pie country, being Melton Mowbray and environs.

Or you could just make your own

There are, only two butchers in town, to my knowledge, both owned by the same guy... Mind, that is two more butchers than we have fish mongers... Cambridge has teh most generic town centre of any town or city in the UK, according to some survey done quite a few years ago... prescious little independants left, after Tescos, sainsburrys and Waitrose have come in and killed off the independants Waitrose actually, is probalby the most likely place I'd get something like an authenic t one... I used to be able to buy home made/hand made pork pies, and other pies, of various types, from the farm shop opposite me, but that's turned into some ultra trendy, overpriced Italian deli, which is broadly speaking just another sandwich shop, and so overpriced for their substandard cooked meats and cheeses etc., that I won't use them
That making it... sounds like a lot of hastle though I guess the cake tin you do it in, needs to be high sided... does it have to be lose bottomed? I'm pondering some of my medium bread tins, would make rather decent sized, albeit oblong porkpies... they'd be nice n easy shape for slicing off sections though yeh... square or oblong is the way to go... its what I do when I make pizza as my ability to make the dough into an actual* circle is zilth I did make square rolls too, for a while... that was kinda weird, but making a round roll isn't too* hard... actually I still kinda like the oval ones I make, sort of like mini ciabata only not ciabata dough I must see if the butchers does do any cooked stuff, like maybe porkpies, I don't think they do, but I've probably not asked

I don't think I'm enough of an aficionado of pork pies to want to do all that work!

That does surprise me, 2legs. Only two butchers in the whole of the city? Or is that just the town centre? That's very sad. I suppose not too many butchers would make pork pies anyway. Farmers markets?

It's really not that much of a faff to make that recipe. Dicing the pork is the most time-consuming part, everything else is pretty easy. And yes, it's a springform pan, although if you fancy it there's no reason why you couldn't go old school and make the traditionally-shaped pie by hand raising the crust over a dolly or a jar. Well, apart from the difficulties I mentioned earlier about getting the pastry off the jar but I'm sure with practice or technique it gets easier.

Y'know, if you use a loaf tin you could make a gala pie All you need to do is find some chickens that lay long eggs

Oh, and if you don't want to make the pig trotter stock you could do what I do and use ordinary stock and some gelatin.

Making the stock, and pouring it into the little hole at the top, are two things really putting me off... I have* made stock before, but I wans't great at it, and its a lot of hastle, and the pouring it in the little hole thing, I could see going drastically wrong for me
I have to be careful about making anything that requires any new tin, or piece of equipment as there is no room left in my kitchen for anything since about three years ago (hence there is a Tesco home delivery container, (plastic box basically) perloined and sitting in the utility room on the washing machine, or tumble dryer, or the floor, containing all my bread tins, baking trays, baguette trays, rolling pin, empty tubs, oven roaster, and somet other stuff I think which hasn't got any space for it in the kitchen...) < simularly I have no space in the cupbaords containing spices etc., for any new spices or herbs; as it is I have to keep tins in the fridge, as there is no cupboard space, and the top of the fridge houses flour, cooling racks for baking, my big 5 KG sack of rice, a george forman grill, my toasted sandwich maker, and spare reserves of spices that won't entirely fit into the tubs in the cupboard

I had an idea.
It was an insane idea.... but, in some ways made so much sense....

I have a massive front room.....
When the lodger is gotten rid of, and I get the front room back, the idea was/is.... turn the front room into a massive kitchen with a small commercial deck oven at one end, and a set of gas rings, and lots* of storage space round the sides, plus a proper* working big extractor fan, on the outside wall, and a massive wooden table in the middle, and also sneak a big hifi and couple sets of speakers in, and just 'live' in the 'kitchen' so, if I did that, and the front room became the kitchen, but was still* the front room, I culd have the kitchen as is, as .... storage space for stuff... or a bigger bathroom.... or... yes.... one massive long table in it, for making bread and stuff on! screw it. make the kitchen and* the front room, the kitchen! nah... I recon that* wall isn't that* essential to the structual support of the entire upstairs floor... where's me sledge hammer gone

So, essentially, you're opening a restaurant, without customers Y'know, if I won the lottery I'd probably do the same kind of thing - equip myself with a commercial kitchen

I make stock a couple of times a month usually. I eat a lot of chicken thighs because my supermarket sells packs of four organic thighs for a very good price. I roast them and eat them with mash and two veg and gravy (winter) or various salady items (summer), but I keep the bones in the freezer, and when I've got a good collection I put them in a six (US) quart stockpot along with a couple of carrots, an onion, a stick or two of celery (all organic), plus a faggot of herbs and some Japanese seaweed (they don't tell you about that in the cookbooks but it's very good in stocks, and it's a nice saltiness without adding salt), cover it all with water and simmer for a couple of hours. I use it in stews, soups, anything that needs stock, and sometimes heat it up and drink it as a broth.

Actually, I was looking online a few weeks back, and found a couple of pretty small, commercial ovens, which were cheaper than poncy domestic ones one can buy on the high street... with the added advantage, they've not got any stupid 'self cleaning' 'paint' on the inside, just plain steel/metal, which is* possible to clean, unlike any of the interiors on domestic ovens, which are just cheap nasty rubbish

Mind, the sort of oven I'd really* like is like a two deck bakery oven... they are not* cheap even second hand

IN reality, rater than doing this plan, and it costing a fortune to get any building type work done, etc., it'd probably be cheaper for me to find a bankrupt bakery with half decent sized living space upstairs, and buy it, along with their equipment, and just turn the downstairs bakery parts, into basically my front room/living space, and keep the upstairs as bedrooms and bathroom etc... actually... if I was going to do that, I may as well go all the way, and just open a bluddy bakery!