Ethnic Food Binge 2 - The Holy Land (which for me is ENGLAND! )

 Glory Be For Pork Pie.

Description

A pork pie is a traditional British meat pie, usually served at room temperature. It consists of a filling of roughly chopped pork and pork fat, surrounded by a layer of jellied pork stock in a hot water crust pastry. It is normally eaten as a snack or with a salad.

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I am claiming Pork Pie as an English Ethnic Food.
The description above ( Wikipedia)  hardly does them justice,  (and I would never think of them as snack food).  We Brits often  eat them as an early evening meal, alongside good tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, spring onions, pickled red cabbage etc.,  and maybe even a hard boiled egg. 

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A sight, or a smell, or a taste can easily trigger the memory.  I tasted Pork Pie in my memory the other day.  That memory taste sent me in search for the real thing.  ( There is a English owned and operated pie store in Sarasota  (it's called Four and Twenty but they do not make Blackbird Pies).   Their pasties and hot meat pies are very good. They also make and sell pork pies, which  are O.K. but not great.

Mail order came to the rescue via a British Foods vendor named Parker's U.K. High St.  I used them to buy  a couple of pork pies.

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There is a rivalry in England between ***Melton Mowbray Pork Pies, and Yorkshire Pork pies, so I bought two -  one for me, and one for my anglophile friends Jack and Donna.

I'll leave you to decide which one I kept for myself.

Hint, hint!

I am told that Yorkshire Pork Pies are often served hot, with good gravy and vegetables.

I like my Pork Pies cold, always with the great British condiment/relish known as

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Yorkshire is a great County, but heated pork pies with gravy are an abomination for my south west English taste!
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P.S. 

***  It is all but certain that Pork Pies were first made by a baker in the Leicestershire (n.b. Americans, the word is pronounced Lestershur!) town of Melton Mowbray, so......

Thanks to the good work (or knavery) of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association, in 1999 a group of seven local manufacturers, applied to the EU to have their products categorised as having Protected Geographical Indication, to ensure that only pies made in an area around Melton Mowbray could use the Melton Mowbray name.

The PGI application was finally granted on 4 April 2008  and the PGI status came into effect in July 2009.

The name Melton Mowbray can now only be applied to uncured pork-filled pies cooked without supporting hoops and made within a 10.8 square mile (28 square kilometre) zone around the town. Permissible ingredients are fresh pork (pies must be at least 30% meat), shortening (usually lard), pork gelatine or stock, wheat flour, water, salt and spices (predominantly pepper). Artificial colours, flavours and preservatives are not allowed.

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Oh, so much happiness for the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association!