Chicken and Pork Pie in a Hot Water Dough Crust.

You know, that there are some foods that just go together as if they were designed that way, bread and butter, fish and chips, sausage and mash; a combination I like is ham and chicken made into sausage or pies. So, I thought this last week when my friend Fabio said he was coming over for a cooking evening I thought we could make some pies.

As you might know if you have read some of my other hubs, Fabio comes from Tuscany where they are famous for their pies and sausage so we decided to combine a little bit of Tuscany with a little bit of Yorkshire and see what we could come up with.

I’ve been a pie fan all my life, in fact I’ve a hub about one of my early memories of pies. There is something wonderful about cutting through a deep crust, releasing wonderful aromas and then the satisfying flavours and mouth watering tastes that can come from something as humble as a pie.

Fabio says that when he was younger they used to help in the vineyards picking the grapes to make Chianti and that always the meals they made were some kind of pie, maybe with a little salad. The pies kept them going all day, and made them happy and satisfied with their work.

We made a hot water pastry, I think they are best for pies; I don’t have much time for puff pastry and so on. This is a very traditional Yorkshire method of making meat pies. It’s origins go way back, it was popular in Tudor times and was probably eaten long before that by the aristocracy.

We made a large quantity of meat mix so that we would be able to make extra pies for the freezer.

Fry a chopped onion, 3 cloves of garlic, and a teaspoon of ginger powder in a little oil or butter.

Put the trotter, some carrots, a stick of celery, and the fried onion mix into a large pan, cover with water; add 2 bay leaves, 1 tbls of cider or white wine vinegar, 2 teaspoons of salt, 2 tsp of coriander powder, three large leaves of sage and then boil for two hours or until the trotter is falling apart.

Because we have off-cuts of fat and skin from the chicken I also included them to make a really rich stock and jelly mix.

One whole chicken, remove the legs by cutting the bird in half just behind the ribs. Put the legs aside, they can be frozen and eaten later. [[word of warning…if you chicken was frozen and thawed out you cannot re-freeze the legs unless you cook them.]]

Remove as much skin and fat as you can, and then remove the breast by cutting with a very sharp knife as close to the bone as you can. The carcass and wings can be boiled with the trotter, or used to make a separate stock.

The chicken needs to be either chopped very finely or put through a mincing machine.

To store your stock, strain it well and then three-quarter fill ice cube trays with it and freeze it. You can then use it as you wish just adding a few of the stock ice-cubes to your meal.

For the pork

You need about 1 ½ LB of pork shoulder. I use shoulder because it has a balance of fat and meat, and just like when making sausage you need a certain amount of fat to give it the depth of flavour necessary for this pie.

Mince your pork on a medium cut, you can of course buy minced pork if you don’t have a mincer.

Mix together your pork and chicken mince, add a cupful of bread crumbs and an egg.

Mix in a selection of seasonings; sage, I think is a must for pork and chicken, coriander, salt, white pepper, mace. Add a cup of cider, mix together.

Leave your mix to stand for at least three hours, but overnight is best, just to allow all those wonderful flavours to blend together.

For extra flavour in your pastry add some chopped sage and coriander leaves into the mix.

Make the pastry.

1 lb all purpose flour [lately I’ve started using bread flour]

4 oz lard

3 oz butter

½ teaspoonful salt

To make the pastry; place the water and fat into a pan and slowly bring to the boil, once boiling pour in the seasoned flour and mix into dough. Turn out the dough and be careful it might still be very hot. On a floured board roll out the dough until it is about 1/4” thick and carefully place it over your pie tin. Fit the dough to the tin making sure that there are no tears that will leak when the meat is in.

Take some meat and make it into a ball big enough to fill your pie. Don’t pack it in hard, as you need space for the jelly later on.

Roll out a lid for your pie and seal round the joining with the pie using a little water. Cut holes to let out the steam and to pour in the jelly later.

Now cook in the middle of the oven for 1hour 30 minutes at gas mark 7 around 200C it will be a golden brown when done. Melt your trotter jelly once the pie has cooled and using a funnel with the pie and then leave to cool.

It is quite hard work, but when you taste this miracle of cooking you will so gratified that you’ll want to make more.

Serve it cold with salad or fried chips [French fries]

I love mine with pickled onions, beetroot and homemade bread.