And that's cutting my own throat!

Anyone get that one? You need to have been a bit of a nerd at school probably. So looking at the pictures on the left - what went wrong? The pie still tastes great (possibly even better cold) but what's with the uneven colour and texture on the top of the pastry? Well, I was going to say it's the result of assuming (wrongly) that you're smarter than the recipe, but I did that tonight (details tomorrow) and it worked beautifully. 

In the case of the pie I think it was more to do with not thinking through the ramifications of my alterations. The recipe called for all the ingredients in the filling to be mixed together and just left to sit for an hour. Together with the veal and pork mince, cashew nuts, spices, thyme, garlic, bacon, sherry, eggs, cream and white wine the recipe specified dried mushrooms and half a cup of hot water. So muggins over there thinks "hmmm.... I don't believe that will work. The mushrooms should really be soaked beforehand to make them all soft and squishy and flavoursome." An hour later.... "ok - nicely squishy mushrooms - let's chuck them in. Ooo! Let's chuck them in together with a half cup of that great mushroom juice instead of the water in the recipe!" End result: twice as much fluid as was necessary. It bubbled up through the steam holes and spilled onto the floor of my post-chestnut clean oven. Serves me right. Slight aesthetic issues but a great little pie - my food hasn't been very pretty recently but it's got a really nice personality. And great hair. 

 I'm routinely paranoid about pastry while it's a work in progress but this one really seemed worrying; it looked too dry, was hard to roll out and there really didn't seem to be enough of it. After some determined rolling and baking, however, it was buttery and brown and delicious. Now if I can only work out how to make pies with the flaky layer of pastry on top and another thin layer of soft pastry directly on top of the meat like they did at my infants school canteen. For the full effect I'll need to send an order out on a paper bag with some money inside it in a red plastic basket and get someone to take the money and send me back the pie in the paper bag and the basket... 

I may not have quite that kind of relationship with my neighbours.