If there’s one thing the British love, it’s a good pie. Steaming, golden-crusted, rich with filling – it’s food designed for weather like ours. So, as British Pie Week rolls in (3-9 March if you weren’t already marking it in your calendar), who better to talk to than Roberta Hall McCarron? The Edinburgh chef behind The Little Chartroom, Eleanore and newly opened Ardfern has become something of a pie authority, turning out top-tier pastry from her kitchens and even wowing the judges on Great British Menu with her now-legendary Johnston’s fluid beef pie – a dish so good that Tom Brown, a man not exactly known for faint praise, gave it a perfect 10.
But what makes a pie good? There are bad pies out there – stodgy, dry, collapsing under the weight of their own mediocrity – but not in Hall McCarron’s world. She believes in the holy trinity: great pastry, a saucy filling and (this is important) contrast. “I love the almost raw part of the top of the lid to a pie,” she says. “It’s such a nice contrast with crisp, crunchy pastry and then lots of sauce.” The key is balance – no one wants to excavate their way through layers of dry crust, but neither should a pie turn into a tragic, soupy mess.
