Pork and Apple Pie
Ingredients (enough for 6 pork pie sized pies).
250g (9oz) of plain flour
250g (see above) of strong flour (I use bread flour)
75g (2.5oz) of unsalted butter
100g (3.5oz) of lard or dripping
125ml (erm, about a quarter of a pint I think) of boiling water
1.5 tsp (1.5 tsp) of salt
500g (1lb) of pork loin or pork Escalope (pronounced "Es-ka-lop," not "Es-scallop")
3 apples (I prefer golden delicious)
1 lemon
125ml (1/4 of a pint again) sparkling (fizzy) water
A bottle of sweet white wine.
(please note Dad, no onion or garlic)
Method.
Open the wine, and have a drink
Sieve the flours together into a bowl, and add the butter. Rub with your fingers until the flour looks like breadcrumbs. Or, cheat and use a food processor like me.
Have another drink.
Heat the lard so it's just melting. This requires a very gentle heat, or a Floridian climate.
Have another drink.
Add the boiling water to the melted lard, and then the salt, and stir thoroughly until the salt has dissolved. Add the mixture to the flour, and mix well with a spoon until it starts to clump together, then get mucky with your hands and finished mixing it by kneading it.
Have another drink. Send for more sweet white wine.
Roll pastry out into a sheet 6mm (1/4") thick, cover with cling film and leave to cool for 20 minutes.
Open new bottle, and have a drink.
Hammer out pork into thin slices, and cut to fit into ramekins or small pie dishes.
Have another drink.
Peel, core and thinly slice apples.
Mix zest and juice of a lemon to sparkling water, and add a glass of wine.
Have a drink.
Lightly grease ramekins, and line with pastry. You should have just enough for all six. If you don't, make the pastry thinner, or have less pies.
Have a drink or two (because that last bit takes for ever)
Layer the pork, then the apple, until it's full, and add a splash of the water/wine mix.
Seal the top of the pies with more pastry, decorate with fake leaves, vent, and then put in the oven at 180c (356f) for about an hour.
Finish wine, doze, burn pies, wake up to blackened smoke filled room. Get takeaway.
