There’s a lot of meat and fat in a pork pie including the hot crust pastry which is made with lard and butter.
I bought a whole tub of dripping, which is basically like lard (pig fat) but from beef, as my local Coles didn’t have any lard. I’ll be making Yorkshire puddings with the remainder in a few weeks.
And, bugger, I can’t make the Roy Hattersley joke now.
The acid in the piccalilli cuts through the fat in the pastry and meat.
To cut through the fat in a pie you want an acid pickle. If you have nothing else shop bought Branston pickle or Piccalilli will do.
But when in search of perfection, it’s time to make your own (although I’ll be drawing the line at making my own beer this week). Piccalilli is really cheap to make and the result is far superior to any shop bought product packed with preservatives and emulsifiers. Even the twidow, who has an aversion to the shop-bought stuff and is as usual shitty with me, admitted how good home made piccalilli is.
But be warned as it will also dye your hands, trousers, white dog and bleached floor yellow.
As usual I’ve researched several recipes including one from Marco Pierre White’s Great British Feast and then found I had too few shallots and too many onions
Ingredients
A shitload of cheap salt
A cauliflower broken into florets
2 medium-sized onions diced
2 shallots diced
An English cucumber
500ml cheap white wine vinegar
150ml malt vinegar
15g tumeric
Half a teaspoon of paprika
15g mustard powder
150g sugar
2 tablespoons cornflower
1. Mix the Cauliflower, onion and shallots. Cover with salt and soak leave overnight.
Wash off the salt and dry.
2. In a pan, boil the white wine and malt vinegar, sugar, tumeric, mustard powder and paprika.
3. In a cup gradually mix the cornflower with the liquid,adding more liquid gradually. Tip back in main pan and boil again.
4. Mix everything, including the cucumber which you have now peeled and chopped into cubes.
5. Store in a very large jar and leave for one day before eating.
6. Get on with the bloody pork pie
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Like this search for the perfect pork pie, glad you liked mine on Twitter. Unfortunately I don’t have the recipe anymore, but I do remember we used three cuts of pork and we made it with hot water paste. Also a jelly was made with pigs trotters and poured into the pie when it came out of the oven. This ensures an even spread of the jelly inside the pie.
Looks like you are ok for Piccalilli but I thought I would send you mine anyway. Its been good to me over the years and is foolproof.
Thanks for the entertaining reading
PICCALILLI
INGREDIENTS
MAKES 1.25KG APPROX 5 x 250 g JARS
CAULIFLOWER 1
LARGE BROWN ONIONS 3
BABY ONIONS 20
CUCUMBER 1
WHITE WINE VINEGAR 600 ml
MALT VINEGAR 300 ml
CHOPPED DRIED CHILLI 5 g
CASTER SUGAR 350 g
ENGLISH MUSTARD POWDER 50 g
GROUND TURMERIC 25 g
CORNFLOUR 40 g
SALT AND PEPPER
METHOD
Cut the cauliflower into small florets. Peel and cut the baby onions in half. Peel and cut the Spanish onions into 1 cm dice. Place the cauliflower and onions into a bowl and sprinkle with 25 g of salt and leave to stand for 24 hours. After, rinse in cold, clean water and dry.
Peel and de-seed the cucumber and cut it into 1cm dice. Sprinkle with a little salt and leave to stand for 10-15 minutes. Rinse in cold clean water and dry. Next add the cucumber to the cauliflower and onions.
Boil the two vinegars together with the chilli and then leave to cool for 30 minutes. Pass through a sieve discarding the chilli.
Mix together the sugar and the remaining dry ingredients in a bowl. Add a little of the cooled vinegar to the dry ingredients. Bring the bulk of the vinegar back to the boil, pour into the sugar mixture, and whisk until it is all blended together.
Bring this mixture back to the boil and cook for three minutes, then simply pour over the vegetables and mix well. Leave to cool. Jar.
yumm sounds a bit like zucchini bread and butter pickles (which my fridge is full off
Darren, Sounds similar to the recipe I followed for Pork Pie. Thanks for your version of Piccalilli too. I might try it with the additional onions.
Cheers, Ran.
I thought dripping was beef fat, and lard pig?
Zoe, changed. The dripping just said animal fat on the pot which is weird. And wikipedia obviously got it wrong as lard being a more refined dripping. But I just checked Harold McGee like I should have in the first place. He says Lard is pig. He doesn’t mention dripping referring to beef fat as tallow although Reader’s Digest says dripping is beef or mutton fat. I must admit, apart from Goose fat, I haven’t spent much time working with fat.
Wikipedia wrong!!!
I just checked the lard and the dripping in the fridge (how’s that for a giveaway*) and both say only “animal fat”.
* Although I only use dripping to make Sichuan hotpot, honest.