On Sunday night I tucked into what I reckon must have been my 300th pie since my mission commenced* *Or pasty / bake / slice / roll as a substitute where pies were unavailable. It was a Dickinson & Morris Melton Mowbray individual pork pie and it felt apt to be eating such a notable pie for a landmark scoff.
Saturday was spent driving the missus up the wall (as usual) by driving to the heart of rural England to stuff my face. We were late setting off as she had a migraine. This was my fault however as I had been unloading the shopping above her while she put stuff in the fridge and a tin of soup fell out of the bag and landed on her head.
We firstly made the trek to deepest Rutland, a place I have only been to once before to take part in a football tournament. It appears to be 80% water like one massive Center Parcs full of identikit fluorescent helmet wearing families plodding along on bikes around the quite frankly huge Rutland Water. Yet after a bit of a wild goose chase but only a bit of one – is there such thing as a tame goose chase – we located the Hambleton Bakery, winner of Britain’s Best Bakery 2012.
Now like the eternal optimist I didn’t ring to check on what pies they had before turning up and it seems pies are not on the menu. What is on the menu however is the Rutland Pippin. Essentially a savoury snack in an apple shaped pastry. I suspect given the novelty value of this, it may have been a purchase I would have made anyway as this along with the self-contained Ploughman’s focaccia are their innovative signature savouries.
Served cold and costing £1.85, sometimes the simplest things can generate exhilaration. The mix of ham hock, stilton cheese and quince (pear) puree combined beautifully all encased in a tender apple shaped pastry, complete with pastry stalk.
After nearly 18 months on the road, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to differentiate the sheer volume of meat and potato, steak and pork pies I’ve ploughed through. I’ve loved each one but the more you try, the more generic they become. This was a real breath of fresh air and a splendid snack. Yes I know it’s not a pie before you start!!
However, just up the road lies a real pie big hitter in the form of Leicester town Melton Mowbray. “Welcome to Melton Mowbray – Rural Capital of Food” it’s signage proclaims. It’s pleasant and provincial without being spectacularly quaint and for our sins, please forgive us we end up in a Wetherspoons across the way from where we park our car as we need a comfort break and the baby needs feeding.
“Is everything OK with your m….” she’s turned around before she even finished the sentence the cheeky mare as we tuck into microwave paninis but it gives me an important twenty minutes to plot my bearings.
It doesn’t take much effort as Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe is prominent on every sign post in the town. A double fronted establishment with two separate shops, one for pies and treats and the other for meat and sausages. Across the pedestrianised street, in fact throughout most of Melton Mowbray town centre is a row of market stalls and directly opposite the shop is an Asian gentleman selling carpets, I know this as he was staring at me in a prolonged quizzical manner uttering the word “weirdo” under his breath as I took the above photo.
As you’d expect there are a myriad of pies on display with various sizes of their hallmark pork pie and also variations on it, for example pork pie topped with stilton, apple or gooseberry. They also had a few chicken pies at the end on special offer so as well as my pork pie (£1.15 for 140g) I got a creamy chicken pie for a quid as well.
Dickinson & Morris don’t just do pies, they have a range of fine meats at the other side and also do a stunning range of hampers geared up for the hunt. Yes let’s not go there eh but hunting is a stable part of life around these parts. Not that there were too many “tally-ho”’s being uttered in the Melton Wetherspoons earlier.
I picked up a leaflet of course to aid my failing memory and had a good scan through admiring the Hunstmans cakes, Stilton cheese, Melton Red wines and tried to visualise just how many people it would take to eat a 795g Pork Pie. Both pies were consumed within 24 hours, the chicken one later that evening which represented fine value and the pork pie on the next day which much like Heinz Beans, wasn’t the most innovative of flavours but had that certain authority and authenticity about it that you just knew it was setting the benchmark many a pie maker had aspired to. Not overly seasoned, or distinctively flavoured just an extremely solid and enjoyable pie.
Following my visit I wandered off around Melton and perhaps was a little disappointed to find not too many alternative purveyors. There was a butchers around the back streets but they only appeared to have a handful of meat plate pies on display. There was a meat wagon, literally a butchers’ trailer (going by the marvellous name of Cleavers Butchers) opposite an equally ominous Cash for Gold trailer but that was it, with the exception of the market.
My ears were bleeding as I walked through the noisy market first time around and clocked the Stilton Blue stall. Full of cheeses and pies and savouries, I clocked early on the gargantuan pork pies on display. As stilton is the other notable produce from this region, I felt duty obliged to partake and picked up a family sized Pork & Stilton pie. It was huge, the crust colouring resembled the fur of a cheetah but this pie was anything but sleek and heavy enough to knock out a middleweight boxer out.
I ate it the other day and was disappointed to find next to no stilton in it whatsoever, a real get Watchdog on the case moment. I might have got it wrong but they pointed out which one to buy!! Anyway, it was big but not necessarily beautiful and with hindsight some of his more bog standard pies may have been more appealing.
From there on we went off the Melton Country Park with a splendid playground for the kids and a tranquil lake to potter around, save for the family of ruffians sat on a bench quaffing their way through a 24 pack of Carlsberg and setting their dogs on the geese. Swans, geese and ducks were all fed with the semi-mouldy bread I had salvaged from our kitchen and one of the geese came at me, snarling and hissing, causing my daughter to run behind me and me to drop my bread.
“You wouldn’t drop that if it was a bloody pie”
And you know what, she’s right I wouldn’t
Coming soon: Life of Pies the book. One idiot’s quest to find the perfect pie. Food, geography, humour and borderline pastry based OCD. The pie eater’s bible.
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