Tuesday, 21 December 2010

The good, the bad, the ugly, and the downright inedible

I have given up on themed rounds because it was too hard to think of any more. Instead I will adopt an opportunistic approach to the great evaluation, and just eat any pie that I come across. This means that they are not strictly speaking head to head rounds, but rather an arbitrary comparison. So for this episode I will judge four pies eaten over the last week. With so many to discuss, there is no time for amusing introductory anecdotes, and I will press on with the comparison. The four contenders are: Tesco Iced Top Mince PieGreggs Mince Pie, Tesco Finest Deep Filled, and my very own special 6 Dudley Mews homemade pies.



 


The iced pies were a gift from a generous friend and fan of the evaluation. They were introduced to me as “something you won’t like”, so had not got off to a flying start in terms of anticipation. And to be honest I hadn’t really ever been tempted to buy iced top mince pies myself. The combination of fondant icing and the (already sickly sweet) mincemeat filling seems to me a too diabetogenic idea. This prejudice was soon confirmed on sinking my teeth into the soft and sticky snack. Strangely though, the ultra-sweet assault on my taste buds was not altogether unpleasant. In fact it was slightly nice. The ratio of ingredients was almost half and half ice to mince, which was possibly too great an icing hit. A definite one at a time only pie. It also looks like a cherry Bakewell missing its cherry. Overall I am not convinced.

I dared not heat this in the oven lest I created a sticky mess

Greggs was a tip-off from another friend and mince pie devotee who had sampled them in a meeting at work. I ate mine in Subway for pudding. A large poster in the window of Greggs proclaimed that these mince pies were “award winning”. I dared not enquire after the nature of said award inside, for fear of falling into a long and pointless argument with a member of staff, which might lead to me questioning my sanity as well as the dubious nature of claims made by high street bakeries. So I tucked in to decide myself whether it was indeed worthy of winning an award. It was a very sweet pie, both pastry and filling being amply seasoned with sucrose. This was at first delicious, but soon became I bit overpowering, much as the iced top pie had. Greggs had my favoured thin format, and an attractive dusting of (you guessed it) icing sugar on top.

Reminds me of those flying saucer sweets

Both the final two pies were eaten after a sumptuous xmas dinner at my friends’ house. This was also after several glasses of wine and port, so my recollections of what they actually tasted like are slim. The Tesco Finest pie was another boozy number. It seems a theme of mince pies that the more ‘upmarket’ they attempt to be, the greater the brandy content. This particular one boosted on the box of containing Courvoisier Cognac. I can’t tell this apart from any other combination of spirit and mincemeat that I have tried so far. The pastry was good, crisp and firm, and had not gone soggy on heating. The decoration on top was rather minimal compared to other pies – it looked like it had been stabbed with a fork. I presume that they were trying to look elegant or refined, but I prefer a holly leaf or star myself. As a further addition to the pie tasting experience, I had whipped cream (into which I had added a splash of spiced rum for some reason) on the side. Delicious.

Note the healthy golden brown coloured pastry

And so on to the undoubted star of the show – 6 Dudley Mews special. Baked by mine own fair hands, with expert assistance (and mockery) from my new glamorous sidekick. The problem we had was that there was only two and a half hours in which to make mincemeat that required a 12-hour rest before a three-hour cook. This I solved by putting the mixture in the oven at twice the temperature it needed to expedite the process. Thus I also succeeded in caramelising/burning the mincemeat. There wasn’t enough time to let the pastry sit either, so it didn’t roll out well. Despite these minor problems we turned out a good batch and fed them to our kind hosts. Again we tasted with a whipped cream and rum accompaniment. Unfortunately they were not an unfettered culinary triumph. The filling deliciously fruity, when you avoided the lumps of hard black bitter toffee that the sugar had become. The pastry held together well and was a good texture. But it was too crumbly and also rather tasteless. Overall more sugar would have helped, especially of the non-burnt variety. I distributed the remainder at work where they were not particularly well received. Top marks for the star decoration on top though.

I really do recommend eating mince pies with whipped cream (rum optional)

So on to the judging! A quartet of fine festive fare, but only one can be crowned as winner of this round (or should that be given an award?). From one extreme of sweetness in the iced pie through to almost savoury in mine, there were a whole host of flavours (predominately sweet) to tempt me this week. I could be particularly narcissistic and plump for the 6 Dudley Mews creation, but having already said that quite frankly they weren’t very good this would be too blatantly a lie. The thing is none of the other three were brilliant either. But the best of a bad bunch still takes honours in this evaluation, and here it is Tesco Finest, mainly because I had the best time eating it. 


1 comment:

  1. I have found this mince pie blog very insightful in helping me make the difficult decision which haunts me every year... which mince pies to buy! I think homemade is always best (given enough time) maybe you should post your recipe. Perhaps next year you could do a blog testing out different recipes, my mother swears by Delia but I feel a more modern take on the humble mince pie could be more appropriate, how about Nigella to sex it up a bit?
    Yours faithfully
    A mince pie fan

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