Sunday, 30 November 2008

Henry Walker & Son

The final pies to be sampled this month were Leicestershire pork pies from Henry Walker & Son ­ "the pride of Leicestershire since 1824" but new to us. To get us chomping at the bit, our walk Master took us down to Pulham Market and the heavy clay soil of south Norfolk. Finally, after a Spanish walker gave up his struggle to put on his waterproof trousers, we set off, first south from the car park at the village hall, then westwards to cross the A140. Continuing westwards to Tivetshall St. Margaret, across ploughed fields where our boots picked up a vast amount of clay, made it feel we were walking with lead boots. After scraping the detritus from our boots, we made it to the isolated church of St. Margaret for lunch. Failing to find a scratch dial, we pressed on to Tivetshall St. Mary, to visit the Old Ram. The lure was such that we did not detour to examine the ruined church of St. Mary. Cleaning our boots best we could, on route to the pub, Charles spotted a gentleman cleaning his car with a broom attached to a hose and requested he give his boots the once over. He duly obliged, but Charles had to finish off. Arriving in good order at the pub, we were served with a decent pint, or hot chocolate for some. Crossing the A140 we returned to Pulham Market, meeting "Dill" ­ the friendly Border Collie / Brown Labrador cross from the Crown. Today we sampled King Prawns with a Marie Rose sauce, before sampling our pies. Since we had ten munchers and only three pies, samples were small. The lattice pies released no aroma when cut and revealed a pale pink filling with a slight amount jelly. It's the munching that matters, the pastry was good and crisp, the filling pleasant with a good meaty texture. The flavour was OK rather than special, the addition of a little mustard bought out the flavour a little more and they scored a respectable 7.15 out of 10. Opinions varied widely so a high standard deviation of 1.22588 accompanies the normalised score of 7 for Henry Walker & Son. Shortcakes completed proceedings before we headed home in the dark.