Judges have embarked on the appetising task of selecting the winners in the World Championship Scotch Pie Awards in Dunfermline, Scotland.
The contest sets out to find the best scotch pie, along with football pies, macaroni pies, steak pies, sausage rolls, bridies, apple pies and five savoury products, including; haggis items, vegetarian options, and hot and cold savouries.
Had to go and look up some of those. Macaroni pie is, well, it’s Mac ‘N’ Cheese (a strong cheddar) in an open pie case. Hmm. Scotch pie is apparently – classically – minced mutton. The football pie is the same but minced beef. And the bridie is a minced beef in something like a pastie shape.
Weird what foreigners will eat, eh?
I don’t really like scotch pies. The texture is all wrong.
About 30 years ago, I went to a match in Jockland. I went to the pie stall and innocently asked for a burger.
The girl behind the counter angrily thrust open the oven door inside of which were hundreds of Scotch pies.
“Ah’ve got pies, dya fecking want one or no?”
At least I didn’t get third degree burns like I once did from a balti pie at Loftus Road.
I’ve actually eaten a Scottish pie during my one & only excursion to Jockland. I was being hosted at a house in East Kilbride when this thing was placed in front of me. One of these situations where one’s obliged to be suitably complementary about the offering. I can still remember the experience after 40 years. It was best described as a combination of damp cardboard & grease served with a brown fluid, mashed potatoes & a grey fibrous substance might once have been a cabbage. So I contemplated dealing with it with a sensation I’d a mouthful of ashes. All I can say about it is it had the curious property of no matter how much one had forked up & swallowed there seemed to be the same amount left on the plate.
Since then, on my personal map of the UK, anything north of Watford is boldly labelled AVOID
A good Scotch pie is a wonderful treat, BiS: a good bridie is a pleasure too. It all depends on buying the good stuff. Why anyone would expect good stuff at a football ground beats me. The ordinary pies at the Adelaide Oval aren’t much good but everyone injects them with ketchup to make them tolerable.
I can recommend the great treat from Adelaide – the pie floater. But you have to know which pie cart to go to.
No deep fried pie category?
I once shared a flat with an Aussie, dearieme. I’m quite aware of what they’re capable of eating.
Steady now, I’ll hear no dissing of the Scotch Pie its a culinary masterpiece.
“It was best described as a combination of damp cardboard & grease served with a brown fluid, mashed potatoes & a grey fibrous substance might once have been a cabbage”
Funny that, BiS.. That describes my experience anywhere in the UK.. I don’t think relative position qua Watford is the issue here.. 😛
Scotch pies are an acquired taste. My first was Day 1 on new job, new country (Jockland). Introduced to new colleagues at ungodly hour, still pitch black, driving for two hours through snow-covered landscape to begin work in a place named Tomintoul. Walked into the local bakery and, following their lead, purchased a cold mutton pie – which seemingly counted as breakfast. I discovered they grow on you over time, a highlight of their national cuisine – and let’s face it, you do have to eat.
Scotch pies purchased north of the border are delicious. Those I have sampled in England are shockingly bad.
Scotch Pie sounds like Frey Bentos without the hassle of opening the tin. I think I’ll give it a miss.
I am partial to the odd Scotch Egg though.
They’re better when hot and the lid is filled with baked beans. Aberdeen butteries/rowies are to die for, a superior more muscular croissant.
“It was best described as a combination of damp cardboard & grease served with a brown fluid, mashed potatoes & a grey fibrous substance might once have been a cabbage”
That sounds like the roast beef we had at the local pub last weekend. My companions thought it delicious but, just like BiS, it seemed to me that the quantity on my plate never seemed to reduce
Ah the scotch pie; a nodule of mutton gristle in a pastry case nearly transluscent with fat, spiced with God knows what and the whole thing tasting like the armpit of an unwashed shirt.
One of the things I fled to South America to avoid.
Leave it to the Scots to come up with a cuisine worse than what the British have.
“It was best described as a combination of damp cardboard & grease”
Probably from the City Bakeries (a now defunct Glasgow chain which resembled Greggs without the high-class culinary expertise). Their pies were notorious, yet somehow ubiquitous. The meat was always grey, for some reason. And I remain convinced to this day that their “bread” rolls were made of wood pulp.
As dearime says, a good Scotch Pie is a thing of beauty. Haggis, our “national dish”? Nah: pie, beans, and chips. My mouth’s watering as I type.
But a question Diogenes. Did you complain?
It’s a central problem with Brits. They don’t. They seem to feel awkward doing so. Like it spoils the event. So you can serve them anything & they’ll still pay the bill. You don’t have to.
A lawyer told me this one. The menu’s an offer to treat. You don’t have to accept the prices on it. If you’re not happy, counter-offer what you think it was worth. As long as you offer to pay something, you’re in the clear. They may threaten to call the police. Greet that a smile. It’s a civil matter, not criminal.
Nah: pie, beans, and chips.
Yep. That about sums up North British cuisine.
Do you know where beanz come from? They start as cassolette. A casserole of haricots blancs often containing pork, duck & sausage although regional french cooking has many variations. You can buy it canned in supermarkets, there. It’s delicious. By the time I was a kid, Heinz had reduced it to the beans, a faux tomato sauce loaded with sugar but there were small remnants of what could have been ham to be found in the tin. Those disappeared long ago & it’s now sold as “vegetarian” or possibly even “vegan”. The ultimate insults for any cuisine.
The British preference for frying chipped potatoes in sump oil we’ll leave unexamined.
Amazes me why our fine seafood is sent from Scotland to Dago-land just so they can stew the fvck out it in an oversized frying pan
BiS
We can still get beans and sausages in tins.
Oh don’t get me going on la cuisine espagnole, BF. Mostly yellow with boiled-to-death vegetables. Although it greatly improves up in the north. Less raghead influence one suspects.
I subsist on S & C American.
“Aberdeen butteries”: I always wondered whether the actress faking an orgasm in the cafe in the film wotsname was simply thinking of having an Aberdeen buttery for breakfast. Wunnerful tuck.
Can still get them with ham and molasses in a tin
Amazes me why our fine seafood is sent from Scotland to Dago-land just so they can stew the fvck out it in an oversized frying pan…
Because not enough locals buy it (or can afford it). Seafood isn’t cheap and shouldn’t be. Began my career in an office adjacent to the Aberdeen Fish Market surrounded by barrels of ice; worked for years among the trade in Lowestoft/Yarmouth; and now buy from Brixham Market. Fish has become a luxury food and something too finicky for the average domestic cook. When queueing at our local fishmonger I note everyone waiting to buy is in their 60s or older. I eat fish 3 days/week but am a dying breed.
fine seafood is sent from Scotland to Dago-land just so they can stew the fvck out it in an oversized frying pan…
The pan’s called a paella. The restaurants flog the stuff down here for about 40 quid for two people. Rice & mariscos. Yellow inevitably. Like most of these things it’s peasant stuff. Starch for filling stomachs with whatever can be slung into it to give it some flavour. It’s not even native to here. It’s a Valenciano thing, where they grow rice.
And I have had a real one. c/o poor people in a little coastal pueblo north of Valencia. The kids go searching for shellfish in the rock pools. The prawns come out of a trap. A chicken gets strangled. The men stand around cooking it over an open wood fire, drinking beer & talking about football. The women sit round in a circle making salad & talking about the men. Basically, the only things that cost are the rice & the beer. Inland, they’d do the same thing but with chicken & rabbit instead of the seafood. Either way, far better than restaurant shit.
The British preference for frying chipped potatoes in sump oil we’ll leave unexamined.
That isn’t even the worst of it. Brits can’t even scrambled eggs properly. Ask for scrambled eggs and you get semi-cooked eggs in liquid form. It was even more disgusting than the “authentic” haggis I was served in an expensive Edinburgh pub. And that’s saying something.
“Do you know where beanz come from? They start as cassolette. A casserole of haricots blancs often containing pork, duck & sausage although regional french cooking has many variations. You can buy it canned in supermarkets, there. ”
My pantry prepped for the end of civilization has around 50 tins of this stuff, from Spain, essentially tomato-free baked beans, each tin has a piece of sausage, belly pork, and blood sausage in it.
Coincidentally made a Spanish recipe cassolette last night, leek, pork/ham three ways (what do I have in the freezer that I can’t think what to do with), bietola (what called in English?) and beans. Gorgeous.
“The British preference for frying chipped potatoes in sump oil we’ll leave unexamined.”
Because while doing them in beef fat is delicious, it is messy, expensive, and a pain in the ass to handle.
Bernie G and Dearieme:
Spot on about the butteries. Pastry, fat and salt, toasted then buttered. To die for.
A rare treat, rather than a regular diet though. Apparently they were invented to get lots of nice warming calories into fishermen offshore.