I ate all the pies

It's British Pie Week- apparently - so what better way of celebrating this thinly-veiled marketing campaign for JusRol pastry by ignoring their product and having a proper pie instead? And beer, of course. After all, pie without beer is like, er, any other food without beer. Pointless. With the possible exception of cinnamon yoghurt. But that's not realy food, that's just milk that's gone off in the vicinity of spices. Anyoldhow, back to pies. Mmmmmm, pies.....


Let's take a look at the ingredients. Pukka Pies are the choice of chip shop drunkards and canteen diners across the land. I was tempted to buy some taste-the-finest-special supermarket jobbo, but I can't resist a Pukka portion. Especially the black-tray all-steak version; after all, last year's Publican Food Report named steak pie as the best selling pub food dish, so it seems fitting to have one today. I'd have made some lazy mash (bake potatoes, mash them with butter) but I plumped for an even lazier version - Asda readymade with just enough cheese mixed in. And you can't have pie and mash without mushy peas, although at 47p a tin I'm assuming they were mushed by choirs of seraphim and cherubim wearing raw silk slippers stained with saffron.

Now the hard part, which beers to choose. Pints, definately. Something robust enough. I don't fancy anything stoutish, though. There were some bottles knocking around the back of the cellar from last year's trip to Norfolk... they looked as if they'd do the job. Fox Branthill Best seeemed big and bittery; Elveden Ale looked, er.... like a stone flagon, so I was assuming it would have big bittery insides too.



The Branthil Best was cracked open first whilst the pie was baking. I bought this at The Real Ale Shop last year, the malts in the beer being grown at the farm where the shop is based. It poured with a good, rough brown body and gave huge carbonation on opening. There was certainly a tasty malty wash to it with some nuttiness and fleeting oats eeking out. And only 3.8%; it carried a fuller body than I'd expect at this ABV. I was thinking about how those rich malts would work with the deep steak gravy in the pie. Sadly, I was drinking more that I was thinking and managed to down the pint five minutes before the meal was ready.

So I was forced to open the Elveden Ale. To be honest, I only bought this because of the stone bottle - when I'd put together a box of beer at The Real Ale Shop, this looked too good to leave on the shelf. It was advertised as "strong ale with a fruity aroma and hoppy finish" but - WOW! - it was so much more than that. A literally brilliant body, marmalade gold iridescence, a wispy white head. Then the most sublime melon liquour nose, sweet fruit salad edges, hints of strawberries near nettles, hop prickles in the finish. Only one problem with this beer - it was too good to enjoy with steak pie.


The beer was left to one side, then, as I tucked into a plate of pie-mungous lovliness. The Pukka pie had decent chunks of meat slavvered in a sticky gloop that may have been gravy.. but as it was tasty enough, it's best not to enquire. The cheesy mash was cheesy enough without being overpowering. The mushies were... OK, but probably needed a bit of vinegar in there to give them an edge. But it's great to have a Pukka pie that's not been sat in a chipshop hotbox for three hours, slowly steaming itself to death. The pastry had plenty of bite and the filling hadn't been skimped on.

To make things even better, once the nosh was out of the way I got to spend twenty minutes savouring the Elveden Ale. Tons of gentle melonish flavours, undercut with sweet citrics. Herbal notes too - couldn't nail which one, but it gave the whole beer a lift up. More Pukka's are needed with more beers. And I've just thought of pairing a fish pie with the Nelson-Sauvin-like Thornbridge Kipling. Can every week be pie week, please?