Butcher, baker ... pork-pie maker

Press, 3 August 1976, Page 21

Butcher, baker ... pork-pie maker

Take 50001 b of lean pork, 25001 b of flour, 12501 b of lard, 1250 teaspoons of powdered sage, 88 gallons of water, salt and cayenne pepper to taste, and unlimited ingenuity. The result is a 4-ton traditional British pork pie — or, in more edible terms, 20,000 7oz. pork pies — the weekly summer production peak of the Sumner-based Paizan Pork Pie Bakery. Pork pies are something of a rarity in New Zealand. Until recently they have not been manufactured ir> a regular manner, or of a consistently edible composition, in spite of New Zealand’s strong historical ties with Britain and British eating habits. The pork pie is one of the truly original British

Story and photographs by COLIN SIMPSON.

achievements in realms of culinary art. The seventeenth and eighteenth century middle classes ate enormous quantities of huge pies filled not only with pork but with ham, tongue, beef, oysters, pigeons, venison, and forms of game. These mouthwatering pieces of pastry have largely died a natural death, surviving only in certain parts of Britian, mainly in Leicestershire.

The English village of picture-book repute had its main thoroughfare, with three or four pubs close to each other. Each would provide a different pie, its ingredients usually coming from the different

butcher shops in the same street and each having a uniquely subtle flavour. The Paizan Bakery at Sumner was the brainchild of an Irishman, Bill Gray, and a New Zealander, Dawn Short — the partnership growing out of a haphazard, stop-start, makeshift infatuation with the pie-making process. Bill Gray, a seasoned butcher of international experience, began his career at the age of 13 in Dublin where he did a long, seven-year apprenticeship on an initial* wage of 5s a week. The promise of better conditions in England prompted Bill to move, and one of his places of employment was the famous Kings Head Pub, Harrow on the Hill, frequented by many public

notaries and members of the aristocracy. Lord Rank of the Rank Organisation was a regular customer of Bill’s pork pies. He also spent some time at sea, as a butcher and baker on passenger boats before he started a mobile butcher’s business in Yorkshire. For five years he travelled the undulating dales and moors of the Nonh Riding, based in Ripon. Then in June, 1966, Bill Gray emigrated to New Zealand, and after a good look at the whole country he decided Sumner was the place to settle. Dawn Short began her working career as a shorthand typist and has never

had any special liking for ordinary household cooking. However, the cooking of pies was something different. She has a natural talent for pie-making and it led to the partnership of Bdi Gray, the butcher, and Dawn Short, the baker. Dawn would buy Bill’s meat offcuts for her parttime pie-making hobby, and later began helping in Bill’s butcher shop in Nayland Street during peak hours. Her pies began appearing in the shop window and, as business boomed, she supplied a permanent range of various meat pies. Demand exceeded supply so, after serious consideration, they, decided to set up a separate bakery across the road special-

ising in pies of all varieties and sizes: pumpkin, custard, steak and kidney, lemon and meringue, bacon and egg, apricot, apple, blackberry. The list grew and grew — and, of course, included the indomitable pork pie. This was the supreme pie-making challenge to Dawn. Its subtle, yet demanding, requirements became an obsession. Referring to a floury and wellthumbed exercise book of recipes, she shows page by page, how the pork pie denied her the culinary satisfaction that her other pies gave her. Dozens of experiments were made, rnanv variations were

tried and tested, but still she was not happy with the final production. Each recipe has added at the bottom of the page such stoical remarks as, “Too greasy”, “Not enough salt”, “Wouldn’t absorb water”, “Tasted okay, too crumbly”. And this was only the pastry. The meat-filling was another problem, just as demanding. Remarks after these recipes include, “Too much salt”, “Not enough seasoning”, “Too much jelly”, “Not enough salt”, “Not enough meat”. Month after month the permutations of pastry and r.teat ingredients were tried' out, but always she found there was too much of this, or too little of that.

Slowly, though, Dawn found that her pork pie was approaching the perfection she had set for it. She ano Bill also found

that, commercially, it had a mist attractive future, and they decided to specialise, turning the business into an exclusive pork-pie production. The big monetary incentive lay in the extent that the whole pig played in the pork-pie process and that, despite its complexities, the business was amazingly self-contained. Bill buys the pigs as large as possible, normally Landrace in excess of 3001 b: the fatter the pig, the better. The fat is extracted for the lard which plays a major role in the pastry manufacture. The skins, bones, and trotters are used as a basis for the savoury aspic jelly stock.

The lean meat, finely chopped, is the only part of the pig used in the filling. The meat is mixed

with herbs, salt, pepper, and spices, and is then ready for filling the pastry shells.

The pastry manufacture is the unique, and difficult, side to the pork pie. From the start the mixture has to be maintained at a warm temperature because of the high content of lard. At first, Dawn could handle only 41b of dough at a time when kneading by hand. The instalment of special porkpie making machines from England made the business faster and less frustrating. The lard extracted by Bill, the butcher, is taken by Dawn and her bakery helpers, and creamed with boiling water, adding flour and salt until the consistency is correct. All the time the pastry is kept warm as cooking causes to to crack and “set,” thus becoming useless for pork pies.

The pastry shells are then “blocked,” or moulded out from a small piece of pastry dough by a very hot die press which again lets the high content of lard 1 flow more easily to form the shape of the pie shell. This blocking machine is one of the special English machines imported after Bill and Dawn realised the manufacturing problems they faced in dealing with the pork pie pastry.

The raw meat mix is then added to the pastry shells, the lids being crimped on by the blocking machine, with its heated shell mould exchanged for an equally hot lid mould. The lid pastry is made from the pie base trimmings. More flour and water is added to give a light consistency and

more pliability. "Once again, if left to cool, it cracks and has to be thrown away,” says Dawn. The finished raw pie is then glazed with egg, and can, if necessary, be stored at this stage in a deep freeze. Bill re-enters the production scene with his 6Jton rotating oven which cooks in a strong current of hot air — again well suited to the pork pie pastry. Its rigid nature stands up well to the movement of air that many other pie pastries could not suffer. These pies are first placed in at a high heat of 240 deg. C and stay there at this temperature for 15 minutes. Then follows 25 minutes at 210 deg. C and the final 15 minutes at 190 deg. C. As the pies are left to cool, the savoury aspic jelly is added through the pie lid. The traditional method was to punch a small hole and let the jelly slide in through a funnel spout, but good Kiwi ingenuity overcame this somewhat slow and messy step by the use of a sheep-drenching gun.

This gave a quick and clean insertion of the jelly through the pie lid, making the meat inside airtight and therefore acting as a preservative.

The pork pies are then finished and ready for distribution, and as the Sumner bakery is the only plant in the South Island, the pies are sent as far south as Invercargill and as far north as Nelson. The main customers are supermarkets, hotels, restaurants, and delicatessens. Bill and Dawn have hopes of their pork pie becoming a more accept-

able light meal for New Zealanders: in the summer, a slice of cold pie with salad and a pint of ale; in the winter, a slice of cold or hot pie, a pint of ale, raw rock oysters, pate, beef stew, and a ploughman’s lunch. This is currently being offered at the Royal Albert Hotel in Auckland by Tom Hilton, the only other pork-pie

producer in the country. The small business of Paizan Pork Pies, with its two owners and five staff, and in spite of many teething problems, is now well on the way to achieving a larger bite into the country’s eating habits, providing a novel, yet traditional, relief to the humdrum salad days of the average Kiwi.