If , like me you are a man of a certain age, you grew up with a collection of Haynes Manuals. Maybe to get your first car through its MOT and later on to give your lawn mower a service before its first cut of the season. These's books were written with step by step instructions and photographs to important steps in the processes. So, what has this got to do with cooking? well, the people from Haynes have teamed up with food journalist and author Andrew Webb to produce a manual to Men's Pies.
Just like the traditional manuals, the book is broken down into useful chapters.
· Tools of the trade - an overview of all the strange things you find in the kitchen but were afraid to ask what they did.
· Making Pastry - covering such topics as different flours and fats and how to make seven!! different types of pastry. Watch this space GBBO next year !
· Stocks and sauces - we all like the juicy gravy and jellies in pies.
· Meat Pies - following a short section on food Hygiene we are treated to step by step instructions on how to make 20 different meat related pies.
· The next five chapters cover other pie fillings such as fish, vegetables and fruit. Also, a chapter on pasties, sausage rolls etc.
As this is a book about Men's baking Mrs LF decided that I should make a from the book. Being a Lancashire lad, born and bred in Chorley, I grew up on a traditional pork pies made by Thornleys pork butchers, so it had to be a pork pie. Looking through the book, I decided that a cross between a Melton Mowbray and a Gala pie resembled most the pie of my childhood.
The Haynes Men’s Pie Manual is available from www.haynes.co.uk priced £21.99 and would make a smashing thoughtful christmas present for the man in your life.
My only disappointment being a Lancashire lad that missing from the book was the iconic Lancashire speciality - the butter pie, otherwise its a great book. This blog fortunately does have a recipe which you can find here.
I'm going to hand back over now to Linzi for her to blog my actual bake from the book. Here is the first image of my bake.