Mmmm. Pie...
You, Sir, are a bastard. Now I feel a hankering for pork pie, which must be left tragically unsatisfied!
There's just something about a pork pie, something quintessentially British, that means nobody else ever gets it quite right. You'd think that in Germany, the natural home of Schweinefleisch that something equally as good that fits the same niche would have evolved, but sadly it has not.
I'd post you one, a proper Melton Mowbray, but hoping that a pork pie would survive the Royal Mail, German customs, and hungry Deutsche Post workers would be beyond reason.
Do me a flavor, C... scope these guys out:
https://parkersbritishinstitution.com/product/1-lb-melton-mowbray-pork-pie
Site looks like a couple young upstarts and a boutique website... but if I can get a shade of the taste of a proper pork pie or fission fish & chips... I might spring for a order big enuf for free shipping, or add them to the itinerary & swing around that way next time I'm in New York.
mnem
Yeah, right.
Every Englishman knows that the finest pork pies come from the pretty Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray. We’ve based ours on the age-old Melton recipe. It’s handcrafted with uncured cuts of traditionally seasoned, peppery British pork, encased in a thick, hot-water crust pastry. The pastry is made to a secret recipe, passed down through the family from a Yorkshire butcher.
So, is it a Yorkshire recipe, or a Melton Mowbray one, because it can't be both. Can't say I like all the air inside the pie either, that does not speak of one who knows their craft. Moreover, "Melton Mowbray Pork Pie" is a protected origin designation. So, as far as the UK ,and probably still the EU, are concerned they're breaking the law as I assume that they're making these in Buffalo. What are they going to sell next, Parma Ham from Maine, Champagne from Idaho, and Dijon Mustard from Louisiana? It might be one thing to claim that they follow the Melton Mowbray tradition, but quite another to bill it up front as a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. Also the filling looks
very pink for uncured pork for a full 1lb pie, the real thing is quite grey with only perhaps a tinge of pink.
Oh and "secret recipe"? Boil lard in hot water, add flour and salt , mix vigorously, turn out and knead briefly. In "bakers percent": 35% water, 30% lard, 1% salt. Resultant pasty should be able to be raised into a pie shape around a former (called a dolly) while still hot and stand up on its own without the dolly once cooled. Not much of a secret.
I'd avoid. See if you can find someone over there selling the real thing. Dickinson and Morris (
www.porkpie.co.uk) is a respectable mass manufacturer of said comestibles and thus likely to be big enough to possibly have some export trade.
If you're minded to make your own the trick, as with traditional British sausages, is that if it looks like you've got way too much pepper in your seasoning, enough that you're thinking "
Did I misread the recipe?", you've probably got it right.