Mince pies

Took me a long time to actually like mince pies. As I kid, I just didn’t like the indeterminate qualities of the mincemeat. Funny really, as these days it is fairly determinate – fruit, suet, peel, sugar – not like in days of yore when they’d bung their gristly meat remnants in there too.

These pies were made with an old Delia mincemeat recipe, from the days when she actually believed in real cooking with real ingredients. I used vegetarian suet, to cater to the requirements of vegetarian friends and probably something of a hangover from my many years of vegetarianism. I still don’t really want to eat anything cow-related, as they’re the worst offenders environmentally, with our huge demands for beef resulting in highly intensified farming, large herds and tonnes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times worse than CO2. Never mind the fact that every calorie of beef requires umpteen calories to produce: we grow grain and soya to feed to beef cattle, when calorifically it’s much more viable to be used to feed humans directly. In this book, academic Peter Dauvergne says “On an industrial ranch, it takes 11-17 calories of feed to produce a calorie of beef. Typically it takes one third more fossil fuel energy to produce a calorie of beef than, say, a calorie of potatoes.” Now, it’d be impossible to convince everyone to turn veggie, but people really ought to consider cutting down on their meat consumption if they’re interested in a future for human civilisation as we know it. But I digress.

Hm. Not sure I can come back to talking about mince pies after that heavy message. But I will… the pastry I used is one I borrowed from this book. It involves a bit of ground almonds, which helps give a rich texture. The author’s recipe calls for just using egg yolk, but I’m sick of ending up with a bowl of whites in the fridge, so I just used whole egg and it was fine. (So slightly revised: 200g plain flour, 30g ground almonds, 30g caster sugar, 100g butter, 1 egg, 2-3 T cold water.)

As I had leftover marzipan from my stollen, I put small pieces in some of the mince pies, a suggestion I’d found online. It actually made for very nice pies.