I am not sure if I like pie.
It is the type of annoying question that is asked endlessly, repetitively
by a twelve-year-old boy with an irritating sense of humour.
What is a pie, anyway? A stew with structure, mousse in a noose, mustered custard?
Besides, I'm on a diet, and pie is just an extra layer of sin (not that sin's
necessarily a bad thing), a puff around the protein.
What I could really do with is a spoonful of inspiration, a cup of courage
and a dash of diligence. Will I find these in a pie?
Take lemon meringue, woman's magazine pie, for example. It has a crunchy base
- easy to make. Crush up ancient dunking biscuits from the bedside barrel,
soak them in the greasiness of melted butter and leave them to firm and mould
themselves into a new shape at the bottom of the tin. The filling is tart yet
sweet, jellied. Without a structure to its sides it wobbles gently as you carry
it. The topping is light, whipped airy whiteness, the white of wedding dresses,
of clouds before the rain falls upon unnoticing lovers, of spume at an English
seaside. It's gone in a couple of bites, no need to chew - and what's that
at the end? That slight surprise, that lack of honest eggs and lemons, that
bitter-sweet synthetic aftertaste - ah, yes, it was obviously made up from
a packet of powder.
What about an apple pie then? It doesn't have to be American, or even à la
mode. There's a better structure here, a more substantial longer novel,
still feminine with its sprinkled sugar-crust pastry. It's a shame about
the mush of bramleys at the bottom, stewed to an amorphous layer of cotton-wool,
but the coxes make up for it, sliced crisp and fanned into a pattern,
with a tartness, a bite, a splash of colour at the edges where the peel
has been left on. An apple pie is easy to pack, perfect for a seaside
picnic, light on the stomach, easy to digest, but not sustaining for
long.
Quiche is for vegetarians, the bearded, bilious, bad-breathed - guides to numerology,
astrology; handbooks of the boring and the arcane.
Game pie is redolent of guns and traps, strange morsels floating face-down
in the gravy. It takes a good detective to identify each mouthful, searching
out the poisonous mushroom, lining up the hare, the pheasant and the venison
on the side of his plate and choosing which to dispose of first. It's sometimes
topped with a layer of intellectual puffery, decorated with curlicues and whirligigs
of pastry decoration, but the contents is generally fairly predictable, with
the occasional switch to partridge or rabbit for a faux originality.
Custard pies are filled with aerosol cream. They deflate in minutes and simply
aren't funny any more. Cow pies are Westerns, of course.
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Pork pie is the heavyweight, the staid, the intellectual. It comes
with a medal sealed around its neck, a first prizewinner at a show,
for its weight, its appearance, its golden-brown importance. The
judges didn't taste it, though. They didn't want to cut the crust,
to burst the bubble, to admit that this pie tasted at bottom like
every other. Its hot-water crust is architectural in the stability
of its structure; once moulded, it will stand alone, unfilled.
The pork is legendary in its use of every part, the brain, the
eyes, the tail, the brawn - all but the squeak - and it is layered
with chunks of politically correct pink veal. A tasty jelly has
been poured around the whole, uniting theme and plot, filling every
space, excluding the air. It's a heavy dish. You wouldn't want more than
a little slice at a time.
The king of pies must be a steak-and-kidney. It appears honest in its
simplicity, smooth on top, slightly scalloped around its sealed edges
by the clean-nailed hands of an expert cook, supported in the centre
by a pottery blackbird, representative, allusive, legendary, handed
down by generations. Break the pastry open and it is thick enough not
to maze into countless brittle fragments. Then that scent rises and
you know you are in the hands of a master-chef. The balance is right,
the mix is honest, nutritious, memorable. The kidney adds iron to the
amalgamation; the steak is from firm, free, well-muscled, grass-fed
cows. There is no extraneous fat, but sometimes there might be an unexpected
mushroom to roll around one's tongue, and a silken slide of shallots.
The gravy is the key. It differentiates one cook from another, but
they all have in common their hatred of synthetic powders and granules.
They'd rather use a good beef stock, where bones have been roasted
overnight in a low oven
until richly brown, and then simmered for days in a stockpot of water
and wine, with carrots, peppercorns, onions and added tasty unexpected
leftovers, so good that the ingredients are imperceptible. The whole
is sealed, baked, perfect - an entire meal in one dish. You might not
need to eat again for some time.
Sweeping generalizations about pie preferences are almost as invalid
as those about books, or sex, or music. In the end it comes down to
individual taste.
Do you like pie?
