Open Features: Hail to the Pork Pie!
Hedley Haigh, in this mouth-watering offering, writes of his enthusiasm for pork pies.
My love affair with Pork Pies really started in 1935 when I started work at the age of 14 at Slawit (Slaithwaite) Co-op in the Butchery Department.
One of my first duties was to take a large tray of unbaked pies (balanced on my head) from the pork butchers or made up deparment to the Bakery about 100 yards down the street.
I left them there for baking then brought them back to the shop where I placed them on a tray on a big shelf.
Then I filled them with gravy, a hot liquid jelly, from a large enamel jug.
They were put on sale before the jelly had set. If you saw a chap walking down the street with a jelly-stained tie you knew he'd had one of my pies and hadn’t been able to wait for the gravy to jellify.
The head of the department, a wonderful chap named
Arthur Moss, said if any pies had cracked pastry with gravy leaking out of them they should be put to one side. We were allowed to eat these.
Many times he would see the sad expression on my face and say "No cracked ones? Never mind I'll crack thee one or two!''
I've always enjoyed a good pork pie from that early introduction to them, preferably warm, with the jelly just setting.
Never with HP sauce. I like to taste the pork pie - not the sauce.
When I visit my son at Saddleworth we always go on a pork pie run and visit four or five shops around the Huddersfield area.
Last year I achieved the ultimate accolade. I was guest judge at the Pork Pie Appreciation Society's annual competition.
This society meets every Saturday at The Bridge Inn, Ripponden.
This year's event, the 12th annual charity pork pie competition, is on Saturday 27 March 2.30 pm. The guest judges are Brian Turner, the TV celebrity chef, and Robert Cockroft, theYorkshire Post’s food writer.
The Society have their own web site with news of all their latest tastings.
I’d like to take this opportunity to say cheers to all pork pie lovers. And may the gravy not run down your chin.
