Pies, Pasties and Pancakes
Posted: Tuesday 08 March, 2011
Keredy Andrews
Public Relations professionals are always on the hunt for creative ideas and story hooks in which to get their teeth into. One type of hook is the many national/world celebratory or awareness days or weeks that fill our calendars. Today is International Women’s Day and the online and print media is full of stories relating to the fairer sex; to mention but a few, there is this Telegraph blog, this Guardian article and Smarta have dedicated their home page to female entrepreneurs. PRs need to work in advance of these special days and weeks, ensuring their client is remembered when the media outlet comes to writing about the topic.
It’s not just women in the news this week, yesterday market the start of British Pie Week and bakers, oven manufacturers, cookware businesses and restaurants up and down the country will almost certainly be taking advantage of the Pie Week label. As a true pie loving northerner I couldn’t pass up the chance of discussing the pastry based foodstuff of dreams. The first pies appeared sometime in the Egyptian Neolithic period (9500 BC) and consisted of ground wheat or oats wrapped around honey. These early sweet pastries were known as galettes, which coincidentally is what we now call buckwheat flour pancakes. I say coincidentally because today is Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday when lent begins), and my colleague, Erica, who sits opposite me has planned to make ham, cheese and egg galettes (galette complète) for her family dinner tonight instead of the usual plain batter pancakes with lemon and sugar, which I will be making.
But I digress... so it seems pies have been a favourite for thousands of years, especially with the working man and Cornish pasties were taken down the mines. The crimped edge was perfect to hold with filthy hands, leaving the rest of the pie to be eaten, cleanly. Half savoury and half sweet pasties, such as the Bedfordshire clanger or Parys Pastie, were popular in the nineteenth century with copper miners and I think it is unfortunate they are not widely available today. My last interesting fact for the day is that just three weeks ago the Cornish Pasty was awarded Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status in Europe. This means a Cornish Pasty cannot be called one unless it is produced in the area to a specific recipe, joining other products, such as the Melton Mowbray pork pie, with the same status.
I heard on the radio yesterday that Britain’s favourite pie is Steak and Kidney (yuk) followed by Chicken and Mushroom but mine has to be good old Meat and Potato; preferably from Greenwood’s or Buckley’s bakers in my home villages of Greenfield and Uppermill, and my Mum’s pie with a suet top crust is famous amongst some of my friends (I’m hungry now). But what are the Punch’s favourites, I hear you ask? Here are some of the team’s most loved - let us know what yours is...
Phil – Steak and Ale
Erica – Key Lime
Ben – Steak and Kidney
Alex – Sausage and Onion
Emilie – Chicken, Ham and Leek
George – Apple
Holly – Cherry
Will – Chicken and Mushroom
Janey – Chicken and Mushroom
