Hollywood - Paul Hollywoods Pies and Puds

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Note My baking times in the recipes are for conventional ovens. If you are using a fan-assisted oven, you will need to lower the oven setting by around 1015C. Ovens vary, so use an oven thermometer to verify the temperature and check your pie or pudding towards the end of the suggested cooking time. Introduction We have a strong culinary tradition in this country, much of it based around the kind of food that fuelled working people: farmers, shepherds, fishermen, labourers, factory workers and so on. Their food may have been frugal and simple but, skilfully made with fresh local ingredients, it could be very good: hearty, delicious and sustaining. With this book I want to rekindle our affection for that kind of straightforward food, the fare that previous generations thrived on.

Its all well and good being able to make a tricky sauce or whip up an elaborate gteau those are wonderful culinary skills to have but theres something about a deep golden home-baked pie or simple steamed pud that warms the cockles of your heart like nothing else. So what youll find in these pages are simple recipes unpretentious and comforting often honed by generations of cooks from particular regions of the country. Ive focused on pies and puddings because I feel these dishes really sum up the strengths of our culinary culture and because many of my all-time favourite dishes fall into this bracket. Man cannot live by bread alone not even if the man is me and a pie can so often give you pretty much an entire meal in a dish. Not all of these recipes are old-fashioned classics. Some take their inspiration from other cultures like my spicy chicken and chorizo empanadas and the lovely spinach, feta and pine nut parcels.

And some of the sweet options, such as my dark, rich chocolate and prune tart, and irresistible salted caramel and coffee clairs, are more contemporary. But every recipe is true to the spirit of good, honest, home cooking and at the heart of the book are iconic British dishes such as Yorkshire curd tart, Cumberland rum nicky and my particular take on shepherds pie. Youll see that many of the recipes have their roots in the north of England. Thats because Im a northern lad and its northern cooking that springs to mind when I think of pies and puddings. They remind me of my own youth, growing up in the Wirral. We eat lots of pastry up north and were very good at making it! My mum was a great pastry-maker.

I remember her one-and-only pie plate, which she would use for all kinds of sweet and savoury pies, every one decorated beautifully with pastry trimmings and baked to a lovely golden brown. As a boy, I would pick sour apples from the tree in our garden, or gather blackberries from round about, and they would all end up in one of Mums pies. They were the best Ive ever eaten: really simple, but so good. She was great at puddings too. The thought of a hot treacle sponge or a bread and butter pudding, waiting for me at dinnertime, got me through many a school day. Hand-raised pork pies, made with crunchy, hot water crust pastry that broke irresistibly when bitten into, were the stuff of my childhood.

And every bakery and chippie where I grew up sold pies and pasties: steak and kidney with a puff pastry top, cheese and potato pie, Cornish pasties with chips all served drenched with gravy. I was shocked when I moved down south to discover nothing had any sauce! The dishes in this book do not require great skill or years of baking expertise. Many are the kind of thing our mothers and grandmothers learnt how to cook while they were growing up, and would then be able to turn out for their own families. They may well have made their pastry without even weighing the ingredients, and adapted the filling according to what was cheap and to hand, to create something welcoming and warming out of very little. Our increasing desire for quick-fix fast food is partly to blame for the waning of this tradition. But Ive always believed that time taken cooking a good meal for people you care about is time well spent.

There is nothing more therapeutic than putting together a fine suet pudding, nothing more satisfying than the smell of a golden crusted apple pie baking in your oven. And actually, a lot of the time needed to produce a good pie or pudding is not hands-on work time its in the chilling of the pastry, the simmering of the stew, or the final baking. We have also been conditioned to see pastry and sweet puds as unhealthy. But Id take issue with that. They may not be low in fat, but I would rather eat a fruit-filled pie, topped with pastry made of nothing more than good flour, butter and eggs, than some reduced-calorie, ready-made dessert, full of colouring, corn syrup and preservatives. Im not suggesting we should all be eating puddings and pasties every night, as people used to do when hard physical labour and huge appetites were the norm, but food like this is a precious part of our culinary heritage and I want to make sure we keep celebrating that.

There are recipes here that will take you all through the year, but youll find the balance tipped a touch more towards cold weather cooking. For me, pies and puddings are dishes for the autumn and winter, when we all need that little bit of extra central heating. Rain, frost and wind give you the excuse, if you need one, to really ladle on the gravy and be lavish with the custard. Those comforting extras are all part of the experience for me. A pie brimming with savoury juices or a pudding sitting in a moat of hot custard might not be the most glamorous or elegant of dishes, but they are among the most delicious I know. Looks and stylish presentation are not the most important things with these recipes; what matters more is the way they make you feel.

This is food that comes from the heart. EquipmentIts well worth investing in good-quality baking equipment. You dont need to buy a whole range of cake tins, tart tins and pudding moulds in different sizes just stock up on a selection of well-made essential items of kit and cooking becomes a breeze, and a pleasure.Mixers and electric whisks Im a great one for doing things by hand but Id have to say that a mixer or electric whisk can be very useful when making puddings. This is particularly true if you need to beat eggs into a thick moussey state for a light sponge, or if you are whipping egg whites for a meringue. Doing either of these by hand requires a lot of elbow grease! You dont have to splash out too much: you can get a decent hand-held electric whisk for around 20. dishes with a pastry base) you will get a crisper result if you use a metal tin rather than a ceramic dish. dishes with a pastry base) you will get a crisper result if you use a metal tin rather than a ceramic dish.

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