The Pie Ho

And, low and behold, we’re all caught up! This is the first new pie on the Open Your Pie Hole tumblr! Hip hip hurrah! And the crowd goes wild!

As you may or may not know I spent this past semester studying in London, where I discovered that any ideas we have about American pie elitism (nothing as American as mom’s apple pie or whatever) should be stabbed in the face with a fork. True, we Americans have taken the sweet pie to some strange places, but the British are king (or queen, she’s awesome, love her, happy Diamond Jubilee!) when it comes to meat pies. Almost every Saturday I would go down to Borough Market on the south bank and buy two of the Pieministers’ award winning pies, solving the issue of where my next two dinners would be coming from. I got so addicted to their pies that the thought of not being able to have them on a weekly basis gave me the shakes. So I purchased their cookbook without question.

I’m not in the habit of inviting the scorn of my heroes, so I’m not going to post the Pieministers’ recipes here, just the pictures of my endeavors with brief descriptions. If you want the recipes why not support the Pieministers by buying their cookbook? (It’s an import, so it may be relatively expensive on Amazon in the U.S., but they have a kindle version that’s inexpensive and you can use the Amazon cloud reader to read it on your computer.) However, the good news is once I get the hang of meat pies from recipes in the Pieminister cookbook I’ll be able to create my own meat pies and give you the recipes for those. I already have one or two cookin’ in the ol’ noodle!

I made the Surfer Pie for my family and our neighbors, it has chicken, sweet potatoes, and red onion in a Thai green curry sauce (made from coconut milk) and is made in a “rough puff” crust. Rough puff is a less temperamental version of the traditional puff pastry and damn is it flaky and delicious. We also served it with mashed potatoes (it’s not a traditional British pie, but why not?) and an extra helping of sweet chilli sauce. Greater mouths than mine have given the Pieminister higher honors than a Pie Ho passing grade, but the Surfer pie blows through its taste test final with an A+ none the less.