Sunday 11 October 2009

"Naked" pork pie from Bray’s Cottage

A new pie for us this week, from Bray’s Cottage, their “Naked pork pie”, first tasted in small format by the Pie Master at Norfolk Dog Day. The Walk Master had chosen Clippesby as the tasting location and had devised a 6-mile walk to work up an appetite. On arrival at the car park, the walk master spotted a concessionary footpath and a map detailing the route. In his masterly way, he produced a more interesting 6-mile walk in a couple of minutes! So the pie munchers set off south, down the concessionary path seeing both a Marsh Harrier and a Kestrel. The path then swung west and took us to the River Bure. Here we joined Weavers’ Way, walking north by river, we observed a couple of swans landing then, passing Upton Dyke, a pair of Cormorants flew west above us. We passed Wiseman’s Oby Drainage Mill in poor condition, and came by a field with a fine mix of beautiful bovine examples - especially a woolly white bullock. We headed further north and then northeast by Oby South Dyke, after getting great views of the river with the low sun reflecting on the water. We followed Weavers’ Way to Thurne Church of St. Edmund the King Martyr. Here we consumed our sandwiches and found a scratch dial. From here we headed to the Lion Inn and were supplied with Old Speckled Hen and Wherry. On the return leg, our route back along the river was diverted due to vegetation clearage. The diversion took us by a house with grotesques on the wall, and a concrete porker in the garden. We eventually returned to the waters edge before heading east back to the cars. Prawns with mayonnaise were this week’s starter course. The Naked pie, obviously baked in a foil container, looked good with a glossy top. Cutting the pie released a little aroma, not much, but boy did it smell good! The filling was pink and nicely textured though not much evidence of jelly. The taste was very good prompting the comments "Hit the spot" and "Best pie for a long while”. This pie was much better than the small naked previously tried. The recent small recipe amendment, helped this pie to romp home with a score of 8.875 with a standard deviation of 0.64087 – so a normalised score of 9 for Bray’s Cottage “Naked”. Shortbread returned as the final course this week.