JELLY
2 pig trotters
1 brown onion
1 medium carrot
1 stalk celery
10 black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
PASTRY
280g/2 cups + 2tbsp plain/all-purpose flour
280g/2 cups strong white bread flour
A pinch of salt
90g/6tbsp butter
130g/½ cup lard
150ml/⅔ cup boiling water
FILLING
750g/1lb 10oz pork shoulder
500g/1lb 2oz pork belly, rind removed
300g/10oz streaky bacon
1tsp ground mace
2tsp ground white pepper
1tsp salt
20g/1 cup sage leaves, chopped
Leaves from 6 sprigs thyme
8 eggs
TO FINISH
2 eggs, beaten
EQUIPMENT
20cm/8in loose-bottomed cake tin/pan
This is Danny’s famous pork pie, the one that has been imprinted on my imagination since childhood. Looking at Quentin Blake’s line drawings, I could taste the whole thing: the rich pastry, the spiced pork, the large boiled eggs. I didn’t try a pork pie until my twenties, but I knew exactly what I wanted from it, long before I’d had a taste.
Makes an enormous pork pie, for 10 or more
1. First, prepare the jelly. Put all the ingredients into a medium pan with 1 litre/4½ cups of water. Cover, and simmer for 2 hours.
2. To make the pastry, put the flours and salt into a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Put the lard into a jug or heatproof bowl (be careful with this bit; getting splashed with hot fat is particularly painful), and pour over the boiling water. Stir to melt the lard, and then pour over the flour. Mix with a metal knife until it’s cool enough to touch, then bring it together with your hands. Leave it to cool in the bowl.
3. Reserve a quarter of the pastry for the pie lid, and roll the rest out into a disc a bit thicker than 5mm/¼in. Don’t go too thin here, or you risk leaks later. Grease and line the base and sides of a loose-bottomed cake tin with parchment paper, and lower the pastry in. It’s lovely, easy pastry to work with; tears can be patched up, and it won’t protest at being pushed about a bit. Push the pastry right into the edge of the tin, and ease it up the sides, making sure the top edge is straight.
4. Next, prepare the filling. I’m not going to lie; this is a lot of meat to chop. Your butcher might do it, if you’re lucky, but when that’s not possible, I prescribe an audiobook and a quiet, rainy afternoon. Dice the shoulder and belly into 5mm/¼in cubes, and finely chop the bacon. Place into a large mixing bowl, and season with the mace, pepper, salt, sage, and thyme.
5. Preheat the oven to 180C fan/400F/gas 6. Boil the eggs. This is one of the rare times I’m going to recommend you hard boil them. Bring a pan of water to the boil, lower the eggs in carefully (on a spoon so they don’t crack), and set a timer for 9 minutes. Run the eggs under cold water, crack them all over, and then peel carefully.
6. Put a third of the pork mixture into the base of the pie. Arrange the eggs in a circle on top of the pork, and then pack in the rest of the meat. If it domes a little in the middle, that’s fine, but make sure you have 1cm/½in of pastry at the top of the pie edges to work with.
7. Roll out the final portion of pastry, so that it’s about 22cm/8½in in diameter. Wet the top centimetre of the pastry in the tin, and then lower in the lid. Seal the edges, allowing the lid to sit below the top edges, and crimp it closed. Cut a small hole in the top.
8. Transfer the pie to the oven for 30 minutes, and then reduce the heat to 160C fan/350F/gas 4, and bake for a further hour and 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow it to rest in the tin for a couple of minutes, then remove the sides of the tin, and carefully place the pie on a baking sheet. Paint the top and sides with beaten egg, and place back in the oven for a final half-hour.
9. Remove the pie from the oven, and allow it to sit for 10 minutes. Strain the trotter stock for the jelly, and pour it slowly into the hole at the top of the pie. Once you’ve poured half in, leave it to stand for an hour or so before pouring in the rest.
10. Store the pie in the fridge overnight to allow the jelly time to set. Serve in generous slices the next day, with a spoonful of the piccalilli from last winter (p. 32, if you have any left).