Pork pie

Woops. I started to write this then forgot about it, then started again and forgot yet again, so here goes again! Again!

What is wrong with me? I've made gazillions of Pork Pies the last couple of years, yet never written a blog post about it. So here goes

Pork Pies are a big hit in my parents' household. Or should I say my dad and uncle are Pork Pie crazy. Particularly my uncle. I even once created a photo mug with Pork Pies on it for a Christmas present for him.

The recipe I use is the Paul Hollywood one the bakers had to bake in the technical challenge in series 2 but I've adapted it slightly to our tastes and I also don't add the jelly - basically because there is no room!

Ingredients:

1 pork loin from the supermarket meat section (approx 350g)

2 rashers of bacon

1 small onion

1 small bunch of parsley

1 tbsp white pepper

2 tsp mustard powder

Pinch of salt

You can use a food processor to chop the pork loin and bacon however recently we prefer a thicker cut so I chop by hand into small chunks. Chop the onion and the parsley and mix in a large bowl with the white pepper and mustard powder. 

Hot water crust pastry:

353g plain flour

73g strong white bread flour

73g butter

87g lard

1 tsp salt

180ml boiling water

1 egg

Excuse the rather odd measurements above but I've increased the quantity to suit our needs as I use an extra deep silicone muffin tray (it makes the pies almost twice the depth of a standard muffin tin size pork pie).

Heat the oven to 190c. Mix the flours together, add the butter and rub in with your fingertips. Melt the lard slowly in a pan, you don't want it really hot as you're adding boiling water so go carefully. Once melted add to the boiling water and now add the salt. Pour into the flours and butter mix and stir with a knife. Bring together with your hands to make a ball, it will be warm. 

So on to tins - my family prefer a much deeper pork pie so I use my mum's deep silicone mould which makes 6 pies. The quantity above makes 6 extra deep pies and 4 standard muffin tin sized pies so would make at least 12 standard muffin tin sized pies.

I prefer not to roll out the dough in one big sheet because as it cools it becomes a lot lot tougher to work with. So I pull off small segments of dough and roll out to make enough for one pie at a time. 

I then either roll out all the pie liners and fill the tin with them before adding the filling and topping with a lid or I make one pie at a time. It depends how I feel. But take some pastry, roll out, cut out a round and pop into the tin making sure it touches the bottom, comes up just over the sides and that there are no holes in it. Then fill with your mixture and cut out a lid attaching it on top, squishing the side and lid together so there's no gaps and make two small holes in the top. I really pack my meat in so there's no room for jelly. I don't like the stuff anyway.

Mix the egg up in a cup or bowl and brush each pie with the egg so it gets a nice glaze and pop into the oven for 50 minutes (60 minutes for the extra deep ones). 

Lovely warm or leave to cool and enjoy on their own or with whatever sauce you fancy.

I've used this recipe to also make egg filled porks and loaf tin sized pork pies.