Eyes on the Pies
“Every day is an excuse for a pie,” insists O’Callaghan. “Winter’s great for hot pies with a bit of body to them—steak and kidney, chicken and mushroom—but in summer you get picnic pies, such as a Gala Pie, Pork Pie, vegetable and goat’s cheese pie. They’re all good.”
A British Obsession
“We British eat £1 billion worth of pies every year,” says O’Callaghan. “There’s got to be something about them that we can’t resist. Personally, I think it’s because a pie is almost a complete meal within itself.”
Tips on Making Pie Perfection
1) “Make sure the filling has a crunch and a bite to it”, advises O’Callaghan.
2) “Create a sauce that’s tasty enough it could be drunk on its own.”
3) “Bake a pastry that could be eaten like a biscuit—crisp, with an egg-yolk glaze that glistens after it comes out of the oven.”
4) “Make sure it doesn’t look all neat and perfect, like it’s come out of a factory: Give it character, so it looks like it came out of a home.”
Sur-pies Entry
So, what pie makes a pie fanatic tremble at the knees? “A Chilean empanada,” declares O’Callaghan. “It’s actually a pasty, which complies with the definition of a pie as ‘a filling completely encased in pastry.’ It’s a pasty made of fried onion and minced beef, heavily flavoured with ground cumin and stuffed with sultanas, a couple of olives and a quarter of a boiled egg. Heavenly.”