Food 52

Pork Pie With Hot Water Crust

Pork pie is one of those extremely genius ideas that the Brits should get more credit for than they do. It's about as perfect a meal as they come: rich, flaky, deep-dish pastry encasing the most lovely combination of seasoned pork, apples, and onions imaginable. And, if you weren't convinced yet, there's bacon as well. Not to mention pouring hard cider over the whole thing, and adding some brown sugar and butter just for kicks. Pork pie is also quite the practical food, as it tastes even better cold (!) the next day (!!). And if you want to eat less meat, or just be a bit more economical, you can use more apples and onions and less pork, or even add in some potatoes. The true-blue version, however, fulfills the "meat pie" description to a T, in that it contains meat and hardly anything else. I prefer a pie with about sixty percent meat, the other forty being apples, onions, and either bacon and/or ham for extra flavor. This recipe is adapted from Theodora Fitzgibbon's wonderful series, A Taste of England in Food and Pictures. Note: You can make this with regular piecrust as well; just use your largest pie-pan.