Archers Two Pounder

A 2lb monster pie from Archers was our penultimate pie of the month, this was still warm when purchased on Friday and with the high meat to crust ratio, I had high hopes of this pie. We headed to Ludham to sample this pie, first visiting Ludham church then walking away from the water tower, a stroll along a lane with baby ducks by a pond, very pleasant. However, Ricky has a surprise for us – he’d pulled another extreme walk out of the bag! We were to walk along the riverbank to St. Benet’s Abbey – the footpath was on the other side of the river! Our route was two and a half miles through waste-high grass and stinging nettles on very rough ground in a gale force wind. After almost a mile of this, an alternative route that went along the side of a field was followed. It had been hard going, so much so that Giada had to go swimming several times to cool off. From St. Benet’s Abbey we followed footpaths to the King’s Arms for a well-earned pre pie pint. A short drive to Ludham village hall to sample the pie, but first instead of Canapés, Charles presented a Pancetta & Gruyère Flamé and a Polenta Cake. Then this weeks huge pie, similar in appearance to Mrs. King’s. This pie had a very tasty and crisp pie crust, but unfortunately lacked jelly and flavour, needing more seasoning, so this pie came in with a respectable, but not prize winning 7.1666 with quite a high standard deviation of 0.71774. So that’s a normalised score of 7 for Archers, a repeat of their scores from Reedham on 21/10/07 and West Harling Heath on 17/2/08 for their smaller pies. Just in case we were still hungry, Ricky brought out some Shortbread!

The mighty two pounder from Archers

The coplete feast: Pancetta & Gruyère Flamé, Polenta Cake, Pie and Shortbread

Archers (Est. 1929)

A wonderful walk on Sunday the 17th, through West Harling Heath and around Riddlesworth with moderate aluminium can collecting, was the precursor to the second outing of Archers pork pies: We all agreed the pastry was really good but the meat filling was lacking in flavour, resulting in a score of a spot on 7 and a standard deviation of 0.70711, so that’s another normalised 7 for Archers. Previously it scored 7.1 with a fairly high standard deviation of 0.89443. This was on Trafalgar day 2006 at Reedham.

Trafalgar day - Archers (Est. 1929)

Trafalgar day saw us taking the train from Reedham Railway station to Berney Arms and walking back to the Railway Station. We called in for a pint at the Ship – unfortunately, the Lord Nelson wasn’t on the route. The good news was that we did have enough pie munchers to form a quorum and we had two medium pork pies from Archers the butchers (since 1929) recent winners of the best Norfolk Banger competition for the second time in a row. The pies had a good external appearance and released a lovely bouquet when cut. The piecrust was very good, perhaps due to the fact it was fresh – pies were still slightly warm when purchased on Saturday. The filling lacked oomph… and it wasn’t helped as the mustard had disappeared! I think mustard would have helped this pie achieve a higher score than the 7.1 on this occasion; the standard deviation was high at 0.89443. So quite an average normalised score of 7 for Archers