When you think of a meat pie, what do you think of? A pastry case filled with meat and topped with a dollop of tomato sauce? Or perhaps it’s a pub grub-style pot pie with a puff pastry lid which captures your imagination? The Webster’s Dictionary defines a pie as “a baked dish made with fruit, meat, etc., and having either an under crust, an upper crust, or both”, so both descriptions fit the bill.
Now, what about a bowl of stew served with a triangle of puff pastry on the side?
This last option is what my dining-partner- in-crime Scott and I were served not once but twice over the weekend and at the risk of being accused of being a pedant, I’m just not sure that it fulfils the brief. Given that it’s unlikely that anyone would eat the pastry on its own, the idea presumably is that you dip the pastry into the stew, mopping up the sauce, before eating them together. Well, yes, fine, but part of the beauty of a well-made pie for me is that the inside of the pastry case or lid softens and takes on the flavour of the filling, while remaining crispy on the outside.
Both “pies”, a lamb and rosemary dish that Scott ordered for lunch on Friday and a beef, mushroom and red wine variety I had on Saturday, were tasty and satisfying enough but would we have ordered them if they had been described as stew? I can’t speak for Scott but my answer is probably not.
What do you think? Does a pie need a pastry case, lid or both to be the real deal?
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