INVERSE GALA PIE

Galas are funny things. You only ever seem to get 3 types - luncheons, swimming, and pies. And while you could feasibly eat the latter at the former, you'd probably not want to do the middle one too soon after or you'd be very sick indeed, and no one likes doing lengths around a load of regurgitated eggs. They'd even shut the council pool for that, and there's usually a dead seagull and a miasma of fag butts in the shallow end there - and that's on a good day.

Oh, and there's gala bingo as well I suppose, but that's just full of pensioners and hen dos, so they probably wouldn't want pie so much as Werther's originals for the first lot and jugs of novelty cocktails with risque names such as "Crabs on the Beach", "Jogger's Nipple" and "Celebrity Sexy Love Island Iced Tea" for the second.

But back to gala pie, which for the uninitiated is basically a pork pie with an egg-based truncheon shoved up it. And let's face it, an egg is a strange item to put in the middle of a pie anyway. I mean, what's it supposed to represent? Are you meant to be doing some feeble sub-Paul Daniels routine where you're tricking people into thinking that you made an egg appear mid-pie? Or is it more that you're framing yourself as some hapless but lucky kitchen novice and somehow a hen wandered in while you were making lunch, did an egg in your mix, and no one noticed? And if so, where'd the shell go?

And gala? That implies some sort of fabulous celebration, but when was the last time something like this happened at a gathering you were at:

P1: "Man, this party's rubbish. Shall we go down Boots instead and muck about in the passport photo machine?"

P2: "Yeah, sounds good. I mean, look at the food. There's only crisps and stuff and that stupid pork pie they're cutting up into slic...wait. Wait a minute. Is...is that...IT IS! OH JIMINY JEBUS IT IS! IT'S A BOILED EGG IN THE MIDDLE OF IT!!!"

P1: "SHIT THE BED, THIS HOEDOWN JUST WENT OFF THE CHAIN!!!!!!!!"

Never? Precisely. So let's turn this nonsense on its head and make something genuinely surprising. Egg in meat? Been done a zillion times and makes no sense anyway. But meat in egg? That really would get the party (wake) started (finished)!

Ingredients:

This week's exercise in cholesterol-sodden idiocy will require:

450 g of plain flour (the dullest of the flour flavours)

100 g of strong white flour

75 g of butter

0.5 teaspoons of salt (or 20,000 grains if you want to be precise)

100 g of lard

9 eggs

2 sausages

200 ml of hot water

A loaf-shaped tin about 4 inches across by 8 inches long on the bottom. Yes, I know those are imperial measurements and this isn't 1958, but the stupid recipe I followed for the pastry only gave metric measurements for the top of the tin for some reason. Look, don't blame me, I just copied dead-eyed professional bread moaner P. Hollywood's effort. See useless tin sizes: here 

Method:

Easy bit first. You need your sausages to be cooked, so cook them. And depending on the size of your loaf tin you might want to squish your sausages up a bit to make them shorter and fatter so they'll fit in. Which can lead to what can only be described as the sort of harrowing vista usually seen exclusively by the guy whose job it is to load things that have been cut off someone into the hospital incinerator.

After the incident with the hedge trimmer, Grandpa never played the piano again...

While they're cooking, you can make a start on the hot water pastry. Bung all your flour into a bowl and add the chopped up butter, then rub it in until it's thoroughly mixed up, like a massively unappetising helping of fatty, dry muesli.

For a quick, easy and remarkably disappointing alternative recipe, just pull out the chunks of butter once covered in flour and serve as 'cow fudge coated in diet sugar'.

Once that's done, put it to one side and start making omelettes like you're the short order chef in a US diner and someone has just ordered half a half dozen omelettes. Or in other less confusing words, make 3 omelettes. You want these to be fairly thick, so I used a small-ish pan and 3 eggs a go. If you've got a square pan, so much the better as that'll make your omelette a better fit for your loaf tin. Like lego. Or leggo! L-egg-o, get it? Because it's eggs! Oh sod you then. I'm wasted here, I really am.

I'm glad I took a picture of this one because I failed miserably at flipping the next two so it looked like absolute carnage, whereas this one makes it almost look like I know what I'm doing (as long as you ignore the burnt bits).

Once you have your 3 omelettes and 2 cooked sausages, you can put off making your pastry no longer. Which is a shame, as this is the only bit that's slightly time dependent so you have to get your skates on. Metaphorically, that is: roller skates are a terrible idea in the kitchen from a health and safety point of view, and the less said about ice skates the better - though keep those handy at least as if all your knives are in the washing up you can use one to slice up your pie later. (And as an added bonus, the pie grease will probably make your skates extra slippy next time you're down the rink. Win-win!)

Pop your chunk of lard into the hot water, add the salt and stir until dissolved.

When you think about it, molten lard is basically the 'white chocolate' version of that horrible meaty drink you can make out of bovril. Or: cellophane gravy. Which coincidentally sounds like it should be the name of a 90s grunge band.

Once your lard is delightfully runny, pour the lot in the bowl of flour and butter mix, and stir until it starts to come together. Then, get your hands in and finish the job. Once you've got a solid ball of pastry, plop it out onto your worktop with a bit of flour down to avoid sticking and divide into thirds. Put one third aside (this will be your pie lid), combine the other 2 back into a ball and roll out flat enough to fit into your tin to cover the bottom and sides. Oh, and grease your tin if you haven't already. Better yet, get someone else to do it for you as you're probably covered in flour at this point.

What you can't see, or indeed hear, from this photo is that when I picked it up to put it into my pie tin I realised I'd rolled it too wide and not long enough. Thankfully it's fairly forgiving pastry so you can easily pull off chunks of it and stick it back on elsewhere, so I patched the short end doing just that. Also thankfully my daughter wasn't in the room to listen to me call it a stupid doughy fuckwit.

Once you've made what's essentially a tiny pastry coffin, put in your first omelette - you basically want it thick enough underneath so your cooked sausages are roughly going straight through the middle of your pie. 

This could be a shot from a particularly disastrous, unaired episode of Supervet where an infection didn't clear up. Also: instead of a new artificial titanium spine they accidentally used sausages.

Once your sausages are in, fill in the gaps either side with bits of omelette, and then use the last one to go over the top. Then roll out your pie lid and flop it on.

The 3 cuts are to let steam out - sadly I haven't secured a lucrative sponsorship deal from Adidas.

Next, it's oven time. You want to give it 30 mins at 200 C and then about 45 mins or so at 180 C. It should come out a 'golden brown', though hopefully won't have a 'texture like sun' as the texture of the sun is nuclear fusion, which will probably lead to mouth ulcers. Once it's cooled enough so you can touch the tin without swearing, you can attempt to extract it in one piece.

It's a bit tatty round the edges as I'd obviously got a bit overzealous with my crimping and had managed to smoosh the lid over the lip of the pie tin, so to get it out had to crack bits off. I'm sure that happens to all the best chefs though - I bet Gordon Ramsay is always cracking one off! Wait, that doesn't sound right at all...

The results:

And so, on to the money shot. We all know that the 'wow' factor of a gala pie is when you cut into it there's an egg right in the middle. So did I manage to replicate that, but in reverse? Hell yeah I did - check this out!

It's a bit like a pie cyclops. Or pieclops. Actually, that's a brilliant name - why the hell are they called gala pies when they could have used that? Idiots.

But looks aren't everything, of course. Which is just as well, as otherwise this blog would probably have even fewer readers. But I digress - the real question is, how did it taste? Well actually, pretty good. The pastry was a wee bit dry and a bit thick in places, but that's likely more down to my not having mastered it yet (read: I've never made it before, so it's bloody amazing it came out as well as it did).

Admittedly you'd not want to eat too much in one go, as it's a bit 'hefty' going down - it's not that I don't like omelettes, but I don't tend to wolf down three 3-egg ones on the trot, And not covered in pastry to boot. But then you probably wouldn't eat a whole gala pie in one go either, unless you were on one of those awful enforced works picnics and standing by the buffet table was the only way to keep that boring guy from accounts who smells like a bus station vending machine and likes to talk about his collection of antique toothbrushes away from you, as he's allergic to cheese.

In summary, I'm quite pleased. But as it was loosely based on his recipe, let's leave the last word to Paul Hollywood. From the recipe I linked to earlier, his opening quote was:

"I love pies that have the treat of whole eggs hidden inside."

Well you'll go apeshit for this one mate - it's got 9 of the sods in it. Clearly I should go on bake off - with this pie alone it'd be in the bag!

Next time: I dunno, I'll probably change my mind anyway. Custard cream soup?