When I think of Heston, being an ex-Westie, I think of the service station on the M4 not a million miles away from my childhood home of Hayes, Middx. That, and perhaps, the book "Crash" by JG Ballard, set in and around this area, though a somewhat fictitiously located Northolt and Shepperton are also mentioned in this novel. Anyhow, I digress...
Heston, for the purposes of this blog entry, is a reference to Heston Blumenthal, owner of the Fat Duck in Bray, near Maidenhead, where they apparently use Bunsen burners, chloroform and nitrous oxide as part of cooking methodology. Waitrose hired him to create some of their not so cheap pies. And so he has. These are housed in wee boxes, right next door in the chill cabinet to the normal Ginsters pasties, porkie pies and other cooked pastry-with-meat delights.
I like pies. People who know me know this. And I know what I like in pie. A pie must have good, slightly crispy but not burnt pastry, with copious butter mixed in. And the filling should be loaded high, with lots of what it says on the packet contained within. If it says steak, one chunk of ratty crap is not good enough. No, there should be whole cow buried therein. Pie Minister pies have certainly got what it takes, though you may need an extension on the mortgage to purchase one.
And so be the case equally with Heston's creation. The filling - in this case chicken, bacon and leek - was plentiful, with loads of cream and a good dash of tarragon for flavour. All in all, a happy sort of pie. The sort of pie to come and see you, make me smile. But there is a dark side.
Remember, I mentioned that this this pie was in the chiller cabinet? Well, what I think when I buy a pie from such a location is that the pie is cooked. Well, it wasn't. I ate the pie on the tube after spending far too long travelling and becoming rather hungry. This evening's tubes were rubbish and my hunger was increasing. So I popped open the pie box and found....
....raw frigging pastry. Raw pastry. Yes, it was raw. And it was glutinous, sticky and - yes, I say it again without shame - raw. The filling wasn't. That's the weird thing. Naturally, by this point, my hunger was that of a rabid wildebeest deprived of zebra for maybe three or four months. It had to be eaten. It was, and I quited liked the filling.
But Heston, old son, old pal, old bean. Puh-LEEEZE tell us on the box that the thing needs slinging in the oven for 30 minutes (a fact I discovered by my second bite) before committing it to mouth.
I can't grade this pie out of ten simply because I've never eaten such a weird one. I'll give it a go though:
Filling: 8
Pastry: 1
If you can beat this pie eating experience, please let me know by popping a comment on this post.
1 comment:
I have certainly tried the pieminister pies and like you I actually think that this kind of pie at this kind of price needs to be full of decent quality filling. I will certainly try the Heston pies, probably the steak and kidney as I will look forward to comparing it to thePieminister PM pie.
This weekend I got to try a meat and potato pie in Preston in Scrumptious which is a cafe on Cheapside. well the pies now technically have to be called Potato and Meat pie and the trick with these northern pies is to make them taste of meat and generally to contain some mince meat though it is the potato which is generally in very soft chunks give these pies their texture. There is usually rich gravy as well but you should still be able to eat one of these pies in your hand if careful, probably leaving a few bits of spud and slop to create a dinner medal with afterwards!
Post a Comment