13. A Recipe for Damson Pie

for Linus Slug (to make up for all the mugwort)

This pie

we’ll need

to bake:

You’ve just

got to get in say 500 g or more of damsons

                  (or other stone fruit will do)

                  60 g of butter

                  250 g caster sugar

                  + a little more as well

                  puff pastry

                  1 egg white

   – all gone

Our oven stands on mark 8 or 220º

                   – nothing more

Take a big pie dish, right

& butter it

then put it to

The poetry is a balance

the pastry is a balance

– 2 large pieces

  1 smaller bit

roll out one piece as bottom

put it just here within the dish

then the small bit as strips ready

to put up around the rim

   – just here

Leave it like this

roll out the last piece now

like this as top

Noise of

busy cooking now – melt the butter in a wide pan

   stir in the sugar at a low heat

   let it all melt

   & roll in the damsons

   coat them in the sticky mixture

   then let the juice exude & build up

   tasty & adding more sugar if you need

Cram the damsons in the pie

& pour on the juice

but not too much!

then cover with the pastry

crimp & pierce

to heal & bleed

     – maybe something like a wave

       or the marks of rain

& brush with egg white

then a little sugar like a stain

You find it in the oven

20 minutes until the pastry rises & browns

but check carefully & cover it w/ foil

if it caramelises too rapidly!

then lower heat to mark 3 or 180º

 20-30 minutes

now take it out

Easy easy

do it

& eat with cream

[I got this recipe from Jane Grigson’s book on English Cookery (English Food, Macmillan, 1979), who got it from Carême, who was describing an English pie (early C19). A blessing to her (& her gallant husband!) – by which you’ll note I’m with Asa Benveniste here, and not for once with Andrew Crozier. But, Linus dear friend, do be careful over the stones – small, hard & stealthily designed to break the teeth even of slugs.]