TanlanI started off so rigid and uncompromising. I would ONLY eat 200 pies, that they would be meat and potato pies ONLY, and ONLY purchased from local and independent bakers. The meat and potato fetish dried up as soon as I went south of Crewe and the more I travelled, the more discoveries I made which after living in Wigan for most of my 39 years I was blissfully unaware of.

Smile it’s a pie….from the Tan Lan Bakery in Conwy

 

Like they don’t sell pies in most bakeries in the country. Or if they do they serve them cold. You can get a hot steak bake or sausage roll mind you. But walking down a street munching a pie with your hands in certain parts of the country is likely to give you the same sort of reaction as if you were walking down a street with your pants around your ankles whilst wearing a fluorescent green wig.

No you go to a butchers if you want a pie and again often they are cold. Except in Yorkshire where you can bag yourself a hot pork pie. And St Helens curiously. Yorkshire is also farm shop central. The hills around Huddersfield are alive with the sound of mooo-sic with a farm shop on every hill top serving pork pies as big as your head along with the occasional steak and ale number.

Travel through the Midlands and it’s all steak and kidney. I used to work with a bloke from Wolverhampton who insisted he would only eat a pie with a dark filling in it, mocking the two meat and potato scoffing Wiganers sat amongst him. Yet in the East Midlands you hit pork pie country again, this time coarse, uncured and always eaten cold. I only made the mistake of bunging one in the oven straight from the freezer the once. They swear by them in Melton Mowbray.

Cockneys as you’ll no doubt be aware like their pie and mash. The pie itself is a flimsy little beast and contrary to popular belief, liquor doesn’t taste that bad. And pies are generally not the best in the West Country either with one or two notable exceptions, mainly because pasties are so shit hot.

As I went about the long and drawn out process of “Life of Pies” I started to realise just how much I banged on about being Northern and refusing to even entertain anything other than the fact that the best pies come from the North. The North West. Wigan even.

I suspect there’s not much doubt that we take the subject very seriously around these parts but what I’ve discovered is the people love their pies all over the nation. It’s hardly revelatory I know.

I can take a thousand images from my travels but the one I keep coming back to is when I was stuck in some pseudo Wetherspoons in a caravan park in Dorset while a storm raged outside and I saw a bloke having his tea with his two kids slowly putting a mouthful of pie into his gob (with a fork not his hands the Southern jessie). He had a big bowl head like a middle aged Monkee member and had his lips pursed in anticipation, smiling gently at his wife and family. Could life ever get more perfect than to be sat in some chavvy entertainment complex savouring a mouthful of pie? He truly was the king of the land at that precise moment, I could see it in his eyes.

Pies make people feel like champions you see. Like that sneaky pint after work on a Friday night or a fiver found intact in your just washed jeans. A pie is something amazingly simple which we all derive a lot of pleasure from.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have an understanding wife who’s let me go off gallivanting around the country trying to find the perfect pie. Sometimes she’s even accompanied me and on those occasions I’ve REALLY done her head in with my obsessive ways. It’s been a fascinating ride through the UK with moments I’ve laughed and moments I’ve cried. I’ve met people with great passion for their job and a vigour for baking. And I’ve eaten a serious number of pies. 328 of them at the last count – yeah so much for 200!

I’ve had pork pies, steak pies, butter pies, lamb pies, meat and potato pies, chicken pies and balti pies. Small pies, big pies, round pies and square pies. Pies with no top crust and pies with no bottom crust – just like my fellow aficionados at PieRateers I prefer my pies fully encased. Puff pastry, hot water based, shortcrust it’s just not a pie without that pastry like a present which hasn’t been wrapped.

And yes I’ve had some pretty lousy and expensive pies from down South but I’ve had some pretty grim ones up North too. I was in Suffolk a few weeks back and met the lady who baked the best pies at the British Pie Awards and you’ll not eat a better pie at the Windmill in Mayfair either. The pride of a porker is no more evident in Melton Mowbray as every signpost in the town centre will direct you not only to the bus station or the nearest toilets but also to Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe. Meanwhile keep heading North down the longest cul de sac in the world and you’ll find Barrow, the home of such amazing pies you’ll be glad there’s no way out.

I have a trip to the North East and Scotland to negotiate in the coming weeks and then that really is that – even though typically now the Life of Pies has a twitter account, people keep suggesting more and more places to try.

I’ve logged and recorded the scores on my phone (which I’ve managed to lose/break three times during the making of Life of Pies) and I have a feeling in my head as to which my favourites were but I won’t be re-visiting until the end. I am hoping there will be some golden information in there coming about as part of my research, it won’t just be mildly amusing tales of me getting chased around a park by geese or driving headlong into a tram in Blackpool.

By the end of next month I will be done with the painstaking and bellyaching research and on with the editing process and will be updating this blog much more regularly. I will make a formal announcement about publication dates and a special pre-order offer in the next few weeks. If it’s gone a bit quiet at my end it’s because I’m writing; or eating and I was always told not to talk when you’ve got your mouthful.

In the meantime, thanks for your support and interest my fellow pie eaters