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
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