Instead of our usual Harvest Fair, which includes a big church dinner, our church is having a virtual Harvest Fair this year. My contribution has been “A Turkey Dinner in a Pie.” So, I have been making British-style “raised pies,” using a hot water crust and filling them with layers of turkey, stuffing, spinach and onions, pureed squash and orange-cranberry relish. I finish them off by injecting gravy with some gelatin added to fill up the gap left under the crust when the filling shrinks as it cools.
It tastes good in the way a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce tastes good—but I wouldn’t enter it in any contest. However, somehow this effort has struck a lot of people as sort of funny, and I can’t keep up with the demand. And now a number of people, stuck with only two people for Thanksgiving, have ordered them to serve instead of a whole turkey! So, what started out as a kind of gag, has turned into almost a full time job. (I never want to cut up another turkey!)
The crust is the classic, British, “hot water crust” made with lard. (You can read Paul Hollywood’s recipe for Boxing Day Pie to see something similar.) But this is based on lard, which is getting hard to find these days and is not too healthy for those of us who are no longer 15 years old. A friend of mine told me that at Easter his Italian family makes something called Pizza Gaina, which is another high, self supporting pie, but which is made with yeasted dough similar to regular pizza dough. I hesitate to switch horses in the middle of the stream, as it were. The Hot Water Crust is working and people like it, but does anybody have experience with Pizza Gaina?
(NB: the two pictures are of my first attempt and only have turkey and stuffing in them. This filling was tasty, but way too heavy.)
If you want to see our Virtual Harvest Fair online go to: http://www.stjohns02129.org/fair/
