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Food & Drink: A pie's a pie for a' that
Independent, The (London), Dec 31, 2000 by Michael Bateman
Only on a day such as today do you realise how different the Scots are. (I say this as an Englishman, and will have to ask our Scottish readers to indulge me on this one.) They have sat glum-faced and unforgiving throughout Christmas - no cause for celebration, they say - but tonight this country of 5 million souls will party. At a conservative estimate, the centre of Edinburgh will be host to half a million revellers, the largest street party in Europe. Glasgow's George Square will not be far behind.
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Hogmanay is enjoying something of a revival. For many years, Scotland's New Year's Eve celebrations were appropriated by the White Heather Club school of television. "People stopped going out in the streets," says Catherine Brown, the Scottish food writer and historian. "They were getting shut out of their own wee world. Something had to be done if we weren't to lose the communal feeling."
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Step forward Peter Irvine. His company, Unique Events, has regenerated the festival, organising Edinburgh's New Year celebrations on a massive scale. So much so that, last month, the Scottish Tourist Board gave him their top award, the Silver Thistle, in their annual award ceremony.
You need to be Scottish to appreciate the religious and historical significance of Hogmanay. It goes back to the pre-Reformation days when Catholic Scotland enjoyed strong ties with France. Encouraged by the Church, the people enjoyed Christmas as a time for both sensual and spiritual fulfilment. The period from Christmas to Twelfth Night was known as the Daft Days, a translation from the French Fete des Fous, a time of revelry, satirical plays and gatherings in the streets.
But as the Protestant church began to exert its hold, Christmas went into a decline in Scotland, and Catherine Brown remembers that in her own father's lifetime Christmas was not even a day off. Far from celebrating, they worked through it as a normal day. "But prohibition is a powerful incentive to rebel," she reflects. Festivities moved to the New Year, which the church didn't mind since there were no connections with Catholicism.
Catherine's daughters (who are 20 and 24) will probably be celebrating in Glasgow's George Square. She herself takes off to Wester Ross in the west of Scotland, where she has spent Hogmanay for the past 40 years. Here the night begins on the stroke of midnight, when people set off to visit all the local families. Presents of coal and peat are taken and placed on the fire, as well as a bottle of whisky to fill a communal glass.
Food at this time, says Brown, is not sophisticated, but everyone will have a festive board with oat bannocks, pancakes, soda rolls, cheese, cold venison and mutton, and often black bun - otherwise known as cloutie pudding. (The cloutie being the cloth it is steamed in, as a Christmas pudding is.) Sometimes they serve Scotch broth and pot stovies (stewed potatoes).
Revellers will sleep through much of tomorrow, but they will be ready for the essential meal of the day, the traditional steak pie. You don't always make it yourself. "Every butcher in Scotland makes them for this day," says Brown. "My one does a Desperate Dan, guaranteed to serve 10 people."
Catherine remembers her Glasgow grandmother making the steak filling at home, stewing the meat with sausage to eke it out, then taking it to the butcher in a white enamel dish. He would put puff pastry on top and bake it off for her. Here is her 21st-century version of that very pie.
New Year steak pie
Serves 4-6
2 tablespoons beef dripping, or oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
500g/1lb rump steak
250g/8oz ox kidney or beef sausages
1 tablespoon plain flour, seasoned
Water or stock
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon each parsley and marjoram, chopped
Bay leaf
250g/8oz medium-sized mushrooms
1 litre/2 pint pie-dish
200g/6oz puff pastry
1 beaten egg
Heat oil and brown onions until dark. Brown the sausages. Skin, split, core and cut up the kidney. Using a rolling-pin beat the steak until thin. Cut into long strips. Coat the meat with the flour. Cut sausage in half. Roll meat round either sausages or kidney.
Put into base of pie-dish, end on. Cover with onions. Pile whole mushrooms on top, so that they come up high above the rim to hold up the pastry. Pour over enough water to come three-quarters of the way up the filling.
Pre-heat oven to 230C/450F/Gas 8. Roll out pastry about an inch larger than pie, cut round pie to fit. Wet rim of pie-dish. Cut a thin strip from leftover pastry and place round rim, wet edge, and place on pastry lid. Seal down well. Brush top with egg. Make two steam holes. Bake for about 30 minutes until pastry is risen and browned. Reduce heat to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and bake for an hour until the meat is cooked. Fill pie with hot water or stock before serving.
Copyright 2000 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
