 Hello and welcome to this British Library food season event sponsored by KitchenAid. My name is Polly Russell. I'm the food season's founder and curator and I work very closely with Angela Clutton, who is the season's guest director. This year, as for the previous three food seasons, we have some wonderful events running all the way through April and May celebrating the politics, the passions and the pleasures of food. Do find out about other events by looking at the British Library web pages for the food season. Also on those pages, you will find details about a competition that we're running with you being able to have an opportunity to win a KitchenAid cordless appliance, a day on a virtual cookery course and wonderfully signed copies of Callum Franklin's pie book. Before we get to this event, a couple of housekeeping points. On the menu on your screen, you will find a feedback button. Please do let us know what you think about our events. It's really important to us to have your feedback. There's also a donate button, the British Library is a charity and we rely upon support to be able to bring you the world's knowledge and inspiration. There's also a tab for questions. We would love to have questions from you. I know that Callum is looking forward to answering them. And there's also a tab for books, so books from guests across the season, but including Callum's books as well. Callum Franklin, anyone who's watching who loves pies will know about Callum, but here's a few details about him and his life. He started out working in food as a kitchen porter in Kent and then went on to train at Chapter One, a Michelin-style restaurant also in Kent. He subsequently worked in some of the top restaurants in the UK, including the Ivy, number one Aldrich and Roast in Borough Market. It was in 2015 that his passion for pies started and since then he has established himself as the pie maestro of the nation. He has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram and when he publishes some of his porn pie, his pie porn, it goes viral. He is an amazing chef, an amazing pie man and he is here with us today live. Callum, so lovely to be here. Where are we? Can you tell me where we are in this wonderful room? So we are in the heart of Holborn dining room. We're in the pie room. This is the pie kitchen where we produce all the savory pastry for the restaurant for retail as well. It's where a large part of my heart resides. How did this room come about? What was the idea behind it? If we go back to the beginning, this building is old. I think it's 110, maybe a few more years than that old. It has in the basement this large store which over years has been used for different things. As chefs we would go to the Aladdin's cake. We would go down there and find things like silver service trollies. We would take them to the silversmiths and let them get them refurbished and use them in the restaurant. One day I was down there and I found this pie tin which had interlocking parts, keys for it. I knew what it was but I didn't know how to use it. You'd never made a pie using a piece of equipment like this? No, exactly that. I want to learn how to do it. I took it out to the kitchen and showed it to my number two at the time, a guy called David Burke. He opened some of the biggest restaurants in the UK and super experienced and he was scratching his head. I've never used one. There was this moment where I was like, wow, this is a very traditional technique that we don't know. It turned out that none of the 35 chefs in my kitchen knew. That's really interesting. There's this pie making as a tradition. When you look at historical cookery books from the 19th century and before from medieval times, pies are such a central feature and so important in that tradition of professional chefs. Then what you're saying is there's this generation of chefs that knew being professionally trained, had not had experience of making pies. That's right. Exactly, at that technical level none of us knew. That is extraordinary. What was the first pie that you then made or tried to make? Can you remember? I think the first one that we really wanted to understand and conquer was a corset pie, which is actually the one that we're going to do today. It's incredibly traditional. You see it in history books going way back. I looked at it and I was like, goodness, how do you do this? One of the beauties of the pie room was that because none of us had that training and that knowledge, actually we had to find our own techniques quite often. Sometimes it makes things quite drawn out, but sometimes it meant that we found maybe faster ways of doing things because no one told us this official way. How do you go from 2015 finding that pie mould and starting on this journey of learning these techniques to ending up with this bespoke room for pies in the centre of London? What happened? As we did more and more and more in the kitchen, we were doing the main kitchen, which is hot and busy. We got to a point where I felt that I'd kind of maxed the capability of doing it in that room, so I said to the team, we either stop here and just keep it like that, or if we really want to push it forward, we need to build a space. We had this space on the side of the restaurant and I approached the owners of the building and said, look, I want to build a pie room. I pitched it to them slightly better than that, but I sort of empty room, sat there, drew one wall, drew the other wall, drew that wall, put the drawings down, took it to them and said, look, I want to link this room to history and tradition and surround chefs in detail and make it the ultimate room for pie making. As the ultimate room for pie making has this amazing piece of marble here, which is obviously always kept at a cool temperature, there's all these old traditional pieces of equipment around, and yet there's also state-of-the-art equipment as well. So this relationship between the traditional, the craft, but also innovation and modern, is that what you're trying to do in this room and with your pies? Yeah, absolutely. So with pie making, we always reference back to history and look back at traditional technique and then see how we can apply that using the knowledge that we have today, not just with equipment, like when you say about technology, we have induction hubs built into worktops that you don't see, because we want to keep it looking traditional, but in farming. So when we talk to our farmers about how we want our beef and things like that, so we use all of those modern techniques, married with the traditional technique, to try and make pies that they're best. So to what extent are you using and drawing from historical sources? I mean, I know we had that fabulous day a few years back when you came to the British Library and we looked at historical recipe books from the 1300s through to the 1920s. Do you remember, what struck you, I guess, about those historical sources or how do you use historical sources in your work? So, for example, one thing that we would look at with a pie, which we can see in historical references, would be not only how a whole animal would be used and put into a pie in different techniques and styles, but how a certain protein of meat was treated in different techniques as well. So, for example, pie we're going to do today, that references goose pie recipe from London's most famous pie maker, who I think you know. Edward Kidder. Edward Kidder. So, in his cold goose pie recipe, he talks about how some of the meat is roasted over open fire before it goes in there. So, we're going to look at that with the pie that I've done today using slightly different techniques, but it means that there's different flavours and textures in there and people were doing that way back then. Yeah, I think that was one of the things that struck us, wasn't it, how when we were looking at some of these historical cookery books, lots of the techniques and lots of the equipment were exactly the same as what you're using now. Perhaps it's worth just saying something about Edward Kidder, because he was your neighbour in a sense, wasn't he? So, his cookery book was published in 1720, I think, and he had a pie shop and a cookery school just down the road here. And according to his obituary, I think it was in 1760, he had taught 6,000 ladies how to make pies. And I see... I think he's exaggerating. You feel like you're jealous of that, aren't you? A little bit. I think you're fond of Edward Kidder, but you are jealous of that legacy. So, 6,000 ladies knew how to make pies because of Kidder, and he wasn't apparently this incredible pastry chef. So, the pie you're making is a goose pie. And the recipe he gives is quite simple, isn't it, as in it doesn't have a lot of detail, but you weren't put off by that, were you, when we looked at the recipe? No, because I think, you know, we can be quite long-winded with recipes nowadays. He leaves a little bit more to the imagination, for sure, but what it means is that we can do an interpretation of what he would have done, right? So, shall we do one? Shall we do one? I'm very much hoping that the audience are able to see the pictures of Kidder's book and indeed of Kidder with his twinkly sparkly eyes looking rather roguish and pleased that he's annoying you some 300 years later. Let's have a go at making this pie then. Right. So, what are you going to do? OK. So, we've got a pie mix here, first. Is that the goose, is it? Mm-hmm. And then... Is this effectively the pie mould that you came across, this version of this? Yeah, there's a version of this. So, this is a modern version of that. So, it's a non-stick one. Actually, this is made in France, this one. We need to get a British company to start making these. I happen to know, for rather odd reasons, that these are fantastically expensive. They cost £129. I recently looked it up. Yeah. If someone is starting out making pies, they don't need to have this, do they? This is when you become an obsessive, right? Yeah, absolutely. OK, but yeah, we do need to get someone to start making mass-manufacturing them. Yeah, exactly. Perhaps that could be your next project. Yeah, maybe. I think you're onto something. We should do it together. So, this is corset pie mould, right? OK. It gives you that incredible shape, that sort of rib side. What we're going to do is we're going to line this with a pastry that I made from the goose fat. It's from the actual bird. OK, and what sort of quality to the pastry will that fat give it? So, yeah, I mean, one of my favourite types of short crust pastry which I make is a split of lard and butter, right? OK. Which gives a bit of a crispness to the pastry with the lard. Also a better flavour, I feel as well. You know, if it's not just all butters. So, I thought, you know, you have so much fat on a goose. I was like, how am I going to use all this up? So, I'll render it down. You know, what would Kitter do? I'll render it down. And then I'll work on a pastry recipe. So, I developed a pastry recipe for this pie. And, yeah, I mean, it gives it a different flavour. It gives it a shine to the pastry. It makes it slightly temperamental. Right. OK, more because it's more subject to melting more quickly. The fat is very... Exactly that. So, you know... Do you have to work it quite quickly? A beef lard, something like that, is much firmer. OK. But the goose, yeah, goose can be quite soft. A bit like duck fat. OK. And... And so, again, for people watching who perhaps aren't going to render down their own goose fat. Bort pastry. Talk us through. You know what, I... What do you think? A bort shortcrust, a bort puff pastry? I am not 100% against shot bort pastry. For the simple reason that people's lives are so busy nowadays, right? Yeah. You don't necessarily have a whole day to do pastry making, rest of the pastry dough. So, actually, in my cookbook, I say that in there. I say, look, here's the pastry recipes. But if you don't have time, buy a really good shortcrust puff pastry. But for this, we've made it. We've got the whole hock fantastic. But actually, that makes me think, Callum, I want to just come back to this point about you. So, realising that you have never been trained in formal pastry work. Why is it that a generation of chefs stopped learning classical pastry work? Why do you think that happened? I think because it can be so time-consuming, it's very labour-intensive pie-making. So, for restaurants, actually, it's quite difficult. And I think that's why you saw over the last century the move towards the sort of pot pie, like a pastry lid on something. And it was because people didn't have time to line pies properly in restaurants. But as with pie-making throughout history, it's peaks and troughs where you see it's kind of, the pie suddenly becomes fashionable again. And I was reading about, there was a period in the 18th century where chefs were genuinely sort of having these battles with each other about who could make the most elaborate pie for banquets, right? It was like they'd open a pie lid on a table, a huge pie, and they'd be abandoned inside it, playing music, right? Obviously, they weren't in there. I'm feeling disappointed now. They weren't in there when it was cooked, but you know. Yeah, there's kind of absolute the pie as spectacle being this kind of, yeah, I can see that. And I feel that right now across the country, and also around the world you see it a lot now, that's happening. It's kind of thanks to social media a little bit because... They're so visual. Yeah, and chefs are seeing each other's work, and you see this who can do the most elaborate thing. And it's sparked off pie-making again around this country. It makes me very happy. It makes me very happy. So with this, what are we going to do? So I've just rolled out this pastry. And I feel it. Yeah, so this is very cold at the moment, but it's about half a centimetre thick, very yellow, because I use really nice eggs. I use really good butter when I make pastry dough because... Because you can. Yeah, why not, right? You might as well use the best that you can. So for this technique, what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut out a base atop and then a strip down the middle that's going to line it. So for the base, we're just going to use the actual mould itself. Like so. When we're not in COVID times and when the restaurant out there, because beyond this room here is a large dining room, how many covers does that do? So we have indoors, we have 220, I think, inside. It's a sizeable dining room. So there's 200 seats out there. When you're in full swing, how much pastry are you making and or how many pies are you making in a given day, a busy day? It's hundreds in here, right? So we have a team generally of about sort of four or five chefs in here working all day from quite early on in the day to make sure we've got enough pies. And also on top of that, we sell pies through the windows as well for retail. So it's quite a lot going on in the pie room. And are those chefs, do they work in other parts of the kitchen or do they tend to specialise in the pies? So what we do here, because there's quite a demand to work in here now. In the pie room. So we have a lot of chefs from over and around the world who want to come here and learn traditional British technique. So loads of chefs from America want to come here. I think it's that sort of idea of seeing a really, really British kitchen. So what we realised was that people only wanted to come and work in here. So we decided that you have to work in the main kitchen here first. You have to earn your position in here. So actually all of my chefs come through here, they'll spend three months in here learning technique before the next person gets to come in and have a go. And yeah, it's lovely. I mean it's run by, we have Nox who runs this kitchen. She's one of my sous chefs. And she oversees this day to day, cracks the whip in here. She's very, very good. An extremely talented pie maker. And yeah, it's a good place to come and learn some interesting knowledge. Fantastic. Why don't you tell me what you're doing? I've got some questions. So that base is slightly smaller than the top because the top's going to have to meet the crimping. So I'm just going to pop that straight in there. And I hope you can see that on your screen. So it just goes in and overlaps the corners slightly in the sides. So that's going to allow me to join this to it afterwards. So I'm just going to fold that straight in there and then kind of open it up. This is definitely one of those things where you've just made that look fantastically easy. But there's a kind of confidence I suppose you have to have to just go at it. Is that right? I mean there's a nervousness around pie making because I think people have disasters sometimes with pastry at home because it's got too hot or it's cracked when they're cooking it. But I say this all the time. If you can drive a car in a row you can sort of maneuver a one ton vehicle without other ones driving around you. You do pie making, right? It's flour and water. So all I've done there is sort of popped it in there, overlapped it and then I'm just going to start kind of squashing that down. So that it gets those indentations. Exactly that, right? It's kind of pushed the sides against. So you just said a moment ago that people want to come here to learn traditional British pie making techniques. Can you sort of have a go at defining what that means as compared to French pie making techniques? What's the sort of distinction that you're making? So for me the easiest thing to sort of define that by would be sort of traditional pie doughs that we have in this country that you don't see really anywhere else. So things like a suet pastry, a hot water pastry and kind of... A hot water pastry would be like for a pork pie, right? A cold part of cold, yeah. Exactly. And you know what we do here with a hot water pastry maybe is slightly different to other people's techniques but you know we look to, you know, why is it with a hot water pastry you have to work with it when it's warm, right? Because it goes brittle. So, you know, we added egg to ours to sort of slightly adjust that and work that out over a long period of time so we could actually work with it cold and sort of get much more detail on pies. So things like that, this sort of weird knowledge that we've all learnt here over trial and error that's what people want to come and learn. And I guess over time, you know, if that's passed on that becomes part of British pie making. The tradition, right? Is there a sort of golden period that you would like to be able to travel back in time to to experience? When would that have been? I think the 18th century was when it was kicking off when people would do wild stuff. That's when you look in the books and you see incredibly elaborate stuff. In the kidder book there's that amazing balls head. He doesn't make a complete balls head out of pastry, doesn't he? Which is stuffed with balls head. Tusks and everything. What I find so interesting about that stuff is that still at that point a lot of that pastry was inedible. So to get that super elaborate design and height on things, salt pastry was quite often used because that gives you structure and it holds in an oven as well. So what I want to do with pie making is to replicate that. In terms of just the visual display and the kind of beauty of them. But to make it all edible. Eat the pastry. Yeah, yeah. I think that's how that's then when we apply technique and knowledge and technology to do those things. I think this is this really interesting thing about pies. They are about spectacle. Even a kind of simple pie is incredibly pleasing visually, isn't it? They do look beautiful but they can also look incredibly dramatic. But I suppose what you've done with your pies is also make sure that they deliver in terms of originality, flavour. They're never just straightforward and they're never boring. They're never going to disappoint on the flavour. All the look. I suppose that's what you're always working with, isn't it? The two things. Absolutely. One thing that keeps me always and keeps me happy about pie making is that it's not one technique, right? It's all of these things rolled together. So it's buttery, it's pastry work, it's charcuterie work, it's all of these things. So like in here, we've got a sort of an emulsified minced mix. Is that what they would be called force meat in the recipe? Exactly. So with the fat that we've got in there we've added water and using very traditional, almost like sausage making technique, emulsified water into that so it's juicy. And then where Kidder was roasting goose and then using the shredded meat, what I did instead was I brined some of the breast and then smoked it over oak. So we've got... So that for the flavour and the texture to get fantastic. To replicate that open fire flavour that he would have. And then I've left some of the breast raw. I've put mace in here, which was used a lot in pie making. And if you look at the recipes that do have measurements back then, it was like heavy amounts of mace. Much heavier than we would use. Mace and all spice. All spice. And what else is in there? Is it parsley or thyme? I put lots of fresh parsley and I put some rosemary in there as well. Because, again, I think a lot of herbs would have been used as well as spices. But then quite often to mask the flavour of the meat, which wasn't always refrigerated. So that's why a lot of heavy spicing was used. I use it more to add another level of flavour, another depth of flavour. There's a bit of mustard seed in there, which I love in pie making. Because what it does is that mustard seed, aside from the flavour that it gives you, if you put it in dry, it'll absorb some of the moisture in cooking and sort of swell up. And then when you're eating it, they just pop in your mouth with the sort of roasted pie juices. Roasted pie juices is something I wish I could just produce on a mass scale. I think I'd be a billionaire. Or that with the pie tin that we'll be launching soon. You're really pressing that down. Because what happens if you don't do that? Well, I want that pastry to really press against the side of the tin. So when we cook it, it gets the definition on the sides. So we're really packing that in there. And also that will give us a lovely cut-through at the end, because it'll just be a nice slice of meat. So all I'm going to do now is just trim up that. So I've got about an inch of colour going around. It's a lot of meat in there, isn't it? It is. I mean for a sort of quite small package. It's actually all that feeds. So that's about one and a quarter kilo, I think, something like that. So now all we're going to do is seal that lid on. OK. And your wash, because I've read your book, what do you use for your wash? Because it's not just egg, is it? It's just pure egg yolk. Just egg yolk, right? So that's the key for me, if you use egg white, especially when you're like, washing on the top of something, that's the last thing that goes on. It's the finish. And egg white will always leave a streak. So the only thing that it would be beneficial for is the shine that it gives. So you can recreate that by adding a touch of dairy. So you could add a touch of cream, a touch of milk to it. It's what the French do with, Fiannoiserie, they put a little bit of cream in there. The only thing you have to be careful with that is if it's something that's huge and is going to cook for a long time, it might be too dark. So I wouldn't do it if I'm cooking something that's going to take an hour in the oven. If it's a smaller pie that's going to take about 15 minutes or something, I'd add a touch of cream. So we're just sealing that lid on there now. It's actually quite a workable dough. It's been sat out here. It's still not too soft. And then all we're going to do is crimp this onto the lid. This is when it's going to get its first egg wash. So a light brushing of that whole egg over the surface. Like so. And then flick it over the edges. So for people getting inspired now and thinking I'm going to give all of this a go, what equipment do they have to have? What do you need to have to be able to make pies? For me a nice rolling pin by yourself a nice big heavy rolling pin because what that does is one thing people find difficult always is rolling out pastry evenly. So if you're using a tiny little rolling pin that's half of the problem. Get a heavy one and that heavy rolling pin will do most of the work for you. So you get a nice even roll. The other thing is to always work on a flat surface so you can buy yourself a nice big wooden chopping board if you don't have a flat surface at home. And then really... That's it. Yeah, pastry brush. It's pretty easy. You don't need too much to set up for pie making. Okay, this is the bit. This is crimpy. I'm going to let the audience into a secret here and that's the poly is actually really good at crimpy. That is patently not true. It is. I remember we did it together before. We did it once and it was... Oh wow, you're really good at this. So this is like my favourite technique for crimping. So it's sort of two hands. You just use your index finger on your opposite hand for a guide and you just sort of roll it over almost like a wave. One thing that's really important when you do this style of pie is that the crimp doesn't overhang too much because... Overhang on the other edge. Because when you cook it, that side will start drooping. Oh same, okay. So it needs the support on the ends. So the thing that always makes me nervous about making a pie like this is ensuring that the pastry on the inside or the bottom is not going to be raw and that's going to be the heat of the oven so really hot and then how do you stop it burning? This is really interesting because we always used to go super hot oven quick cook as fast as possible when we first started and actually I was working with a chef in Hong Kong he was an old friend of mine a couple of years ago I went out there to do some pastry work with him at his restaurant just to help him out and he said to me, oh when I worked in California we did a certain type of pastry and we used to cook it at a lower temperature for much longer so we started to sort of play around with that so now my technique is a mix of both so we start off pies at a very high temperature around sort of 200 degrees and what that does is that will set the pastry so any shape or design you wanted you don't lose the definition of it instantly sort of keeps that and then we drop the temperature down to generally about 180 or 175 depending on what it is and then cook it slowly and the pastry will always be cooked if you do that and so a pie like this would take how long? about between 45 minutes and 55 minutes Really? Is that all? Yeah, something like that they cook quite quickly I'm surprised I think because this one is slightly... Is that concave? Yes and presumably that's why they're concave in order that it allows the heat distribution but bigger pies sometimes that we make can take anywhere up to sort of two hours if we're making a wedding pie we do those kind of huge tiered pies sometimes for people you have to be very sort of careful about those ones because you don't want the pastry overcooked either right? For me I love like a mahogany sort of colour to pastry Yeah quite dark but not burnt obviously There's flavour when it's got a bit of caramelisation I mean there's nothing worse than flaccid pastry is there? Nothing, nobody likes that That's kind of a technique for it so what I would do to finish that would be give that a little time to dry in the fridge give it a second coat and do egg wash these as well and then I would cut a chimney into that Chimmy is super important because it's roasted fat inside It needs to escape Somewhere if you don't put a chimney it'll either burst out from the side or down here you'll lose it and that's liquid gold So we put a chimney in and a chimney will allow some steam to escape but also give somewhere for that fat to go and when it cools down it will go back in and it's flavour, loads of flavour So put that one away You've made one earlier which is fantastic For people who are wanting to start out making a pie perhaps we'll look at your cookery book later and you can advise what people should start with After this I'll show you one in the cookbook We can definitely eat it This is it cooked Remember I was saying about Can I just say this is a pie to eat cold for sure, it's a cold eating pie So this is a cold goose pie Actually you could eat it hot The only thing for me is that when we put all of those techniques into something I really want to see that when I slice it through and when we're talking about using the whole goose as well the jelly that we've put in there is the most goose jelly as well so we've really used every part of that bird in there so I hope this works I'm going to cut it There it is That looks beautiful I'll put that like that so you can see that you've got just enough space for the jelly and then you've got those different cuts in there so you've got smoked breast you've got just salted breast thigh meat from the bird That looks amazing It does smell, yes I'd love to What is the difference between that pastry and the sort of pastry you get on a pork pie What would the textural difference be? Probably it'll be slightly more crisp on a pork pie but that's the other thing with me traditional pork pies I love them but I prefer to have a slightly less pastry on a pie the ratio of it but it's a contentious point because some people are like no I want 50-50 pastry to a pie but I like to have a nice mix of the jelly, the pastry Isn't that beautiful This really feels like it's part of that tradition of the sort of side table of pies in a Victorian house when people would have a pie pies are there and available for guests over the Christmas period It's a pie that lasts quite a while for entertaining I think that's why so many people buy large pork pies at Christmas It is that thing of the Christmas table It's just there you can go up and tuck into it at any point during Christmas table boxing day It smells complete It feels rather mean doing this when there's people watching who can't enjoy it You get the smokiness, right? I like that I'm pretty happy with that It's absolutely beautiful Also that kind of mix of textures It's lovely and you do get that smokiness and the lovely pieces of goose It's beautiful In the jelly Apologies I just finished it with a tiny bit of raw cognac So I've made a really beautiful stock I spent two days making a roasted stock The very last thing that went in there was a tiny sprig of fresh rosemary and then a couple of drops of raw cognac and it just cuts through the sort of fatness in that mouth feel I don't really want you to take it away but I'll come back to that later Can you just quickly explain about the what did you call it, the hole at the top Did you just make that? Did you just cut it? Or you didn't put anything? Did you put a funnel in it? I put a funnel Is it like a metal funnel that you put in there? We have those If I wanted to do one that's a slightly bigger size or a smaller size What I'll do is I'll cut that out with a little pastry cutter, circular cutter and then I'll wrap tinfoil around that cutter and then I know that's going to fit back in that hole and I'll pop it in there So can someone use tinfoil if they don't have a specific that you could just use tinfoil That's also something that's like throughout British history is actually pie funnels Somebody contacted me one day and said I've written a book on pie funnels I've got it now I love it, I have to see that So someone starting out making their first pie or first foray into pies what sort of pie would you suggest that they make Have you got something in your book that you can look at because I think And then perhaps what is the most complicated pie in that book that you make So in here we have one of the sort of more simple ones would be I think something really traditional Also I mean it's great if you've never made a traditional British pie to do something which is steeped in history So I would do steak and kidney pudding I'm not sure if I'm going to find it now It is definitely in this cookbook But you go for a suet pudding Suet pastry, steamed incredible technique Don't really see it anywhere else It's really suited to British cooking and sort of cold winter nights and understanding about what the suet is there for in the pastry the anticipation of taking the mould off at the table I love it, I absolutely love it It's something that we always have in the restaurant on the menu Slightly more complex When you say slightly more complex I'd say before anyone else thinks Shall I make the suet pudding or this, that's a lot more complex It's a lot more complex Can you describe what that is because it's really inventive What that was based on classic cheese, potato and onion pie How do we recreate that in a restaurant experience I just wanted to elevate it slightly So we thought Dofen whilst potato I love it, could eat it all day long So we thought, what if we layer that inside a pie with a great cheese caramelised onion This is the carb on carb with some cheese Delicious But this recipe in the book gives you a sort of canvas to then make it look extremely pretty and beautiful because it's a large surface area You make the Dofen whilst the day before put it in the fridge at this time and surface area to just go ham and do whatever you want and I love that A Christmas I was just inundated all day with people sending me pictures of their Dofen whilst pies making at home for Christmas and I love that I love the individuality and the designs and the style How do you account for the kind of enduring popularity of pies whether it's incredibly elaborate pies like that one but also pies at a football match people are a Cornish pasties pie people love pies What is it about them? It has there's no pretence to a pie when you go to Wait, bear with me When you go to a football ground and you get a pie store it's hot food and you can carry it which is why pies came about It's full of meaty goodness the pastry is tasty it reminds you of childhood because mum used to do pies on the table if you were lucky I was very lucky and mum used to do it and it just I think that you can do what I do and go the other way but we also do pies that are extremely simple here they are designed to throw you back to sitting around with your family and sort of eating pies as a youngster I think they're always it's always like a gift isn't it you unwrap a gift of a pie it's like a present it's always a delight, it's always a treat they are the best I can see that we've got loads of questions that have come in the wonders of technology I can read some of these questions here so Callum mentioned about the old pie pastry being inedible why was that and when did that change and why did it change I think if we look back it was quite a long period of time that pastry was inedible and I think originally it was because the pastry was never there to be eaten it was there for a couple of different reasons one of them would be preservation and the other one would be protection and I guess storage as well storage yeah exactly so pastry dough was there when the Romans started building roads and if you're going it's not like driving on the M25 it's a long journey in the horse and cart so the pastry dough would preserve the meat because they would cook the pie empty out the juices and then they would put in a jelly which would preserve it or butter and then the pastry would just be torn away and the inside would be... so this is kind of portable food isn't it? it is the first convenient and also I guess when people started using coal burning ovens or wood burning ovens quite often the pastry would be there just to protect the meat so again it would be charred on the outside and it would be thrown away and that's the point where somebody was like hold on we need to eat this pastry that's probably one of my ancestors and then so by the time that Kidder is making pastry in the 1720s and 1750s is that salt pastry at that point? depending on what he was making because he has different recipes doesn't he some for puff paste and some for short crust type but then there is also salt pastry too so he's super elaborate ones generally a salt paste but yeah his other recipes are edible okay here's a nice question Callum is famous for Welly Wednesday can you tell us a bit about your beef Wellington and the history of beef Wellington sure so Welly Wednesday is the Wednesday night of the week here at the restaurant that we serve our beef Wellington and we always wanted to keep it to a special night of the week but also it's like practical reasons because it takes us about four days to make the beef Wellington can you go through that? making the pastry chopping the mushrooms by hand that's something that I've always done and will always continue to do and tell us why you can people do people put them through meat grinders different textures of mushroom you don't get a uniform texture and I think that when you cut it that's generally when the mushroom falls out could I ask you I don't want you to stop because I want you to carry on telling us about beef Wellington but I just want to ask you about your relationship to detail are you quite obsessive slash slightly a weirdo about detail yeah I think so in the best possible way when it comes to food I really enjoy following technique and being strict about it and discipline and it does make a huge difference it does doesn't it if you just throw something into a blender what it allows is that allows creativity might sound kind of odd but it does because by being disciplined and using technique in things then we get into the sort of creative art side of things because you have you've got a base and structure to do that and that's why I draw that's why I design things and take time doing it but the history of Wellington you've only just done the mushrooms can you tell us you've hand chopped all the mushrooms yeah so we split the work up into different I mean the chopping mushrooms it takes about a day for the whole the whole kitchen does it over a day so you hear on that it's generally a Sunday or a Monday you'll hear in the kitchen is and everyone is doing it the other thing that does is it makes the whole team have a part to play in the production of that Wellington so when we serve it everybody is kind of wanting it to be it's best right yeah I mean doing the spinach sheets that we do pressing those out rolling them, drawing them the brosola that we wrap so we use brosola to wrap we don't use pancakes we did before now we use cured beef because there is a sort of famous shouty Scottish chef who has always used parma ham on his Wellington and I've never understood that I'm like why have this dominant smoky ham flavour on a beef Wellington doesn't make sense to me so we use a really beautifully cured beef fill it instead sliced and wrapped around and then obviously then there's the pastry work that goes into it which in itself is a lot of work so we try and do very detailed lattices on there and things like that and they're huge right so one Wellington can feed about 16 to 18 people and how many will you make for Welly Wednesday yeah I mean it depends it's generally around sort of four something like that we'll do four or five and they're so big that we can just cook them in service and we literally just slice them and they stay hot oh that's amazing and I should say there's a brilliant recipe for beef Wellington in your book which doesn't quite take four days but quite near it takes two days but you do say don't try this just when you get home from work and you're trying to get something ready for the kids no it's an amazing recipe but you've got to surrender to the process in the best possible sense that's where people go wrong with beef wellingtons is that they try and do it all in an afternoon and you can't right you need to split the work up so that's why the recipe is two days split the work so the history of beef wellington yeah I mean this is a sort of contentious point there are different stories about it being based on an admiral's boot being you know to do with Wellington himself I'm not going to lay down my claim to any of those and say that's that's the history of it I just know that again like pie making it's sort of been there through a large part of our history and it's one of those dishes we should be super proud of yeah absolutely and it is what people absolutely love isn't it I mean people love it here's a question practical pastry question what is worse under or overneading your pastry overneading 100% because what happens because you create long gluten strands if we're going to talk about it really technically right so I was trying to equate this to pasta dough so pasta dough you want elasticity so what you do is you work it and you need it and need it and what that does is it creates these long gluten strands which give it that sort of stretch and elasticity if we do that with pastry dough for pies you're never going to have that flaky crust right because it will be like chewy so with pastry dough what you always want to do is keep it as short as possible so that means almost underworking it and then like so for example if I did a short crust pastry dough when I mix the butter and flour just before I kind of bring it together I want to see tiny little nuggets of butter still right okay what that does is and the incredible benefit that gives is when that's then inside pastry dough and it's cooking those little nuggets of butter will melt leave a little air pocket my neat air pocket and then the water in the dough and the water in the butter will create steam and that will puff that hole and that's how you get flakes and if you don't do that it's all compressed it's like cakey dough so if you make a really good short crust by just getting it the right texture it's almost like a puff pastry because it's a lamination I love it but is there a difference between when you're working the pastry to bring it together because I often get quite nervous about overworking it when I for instance when I'm crimping handling it too much do you need to be really as little as possible in the handling of pastry after it's come together or then can you be a bit more you can work a bit more with it because you were pushing it quite hard but because I know that there's that nugget of butter in there all that will do if I squeeze that that will just flatten it but it will still be there a flat layer of butter so it'll be dough butter dough and that will do that puff pastry effect and sort of puff up if you're worried about overworking especially if people worry about heat going into stuff and melting the butter then I would suggest using gloves so get yourself some of those sort of vinyl gloves and if you wear gloves like somewhere oh this is a glove that type of glove that will stop the heat going from your hand on to the pastry so that's what we do when it's really hot in the summer brilliant weren't cold pies made for boxing day to give the staff a day off that's a question I don't know that's a great story I think that is right that partly they were made for that but actually it would depend of course on the household but in larger households more wealthy households having that sideboard of food of Christmas food just available because of course people didn't have central heating so rooms were colder so you could have food standing out meant that there's always food available for visitors dropping in guests coming around and so those big Christmas pies would sort of sit on the sideboard across the Christmas period available for people to come and come and eat actually I want to live back in that era just when there's just pies just hanging around thank you whoever asked that I didn't know that it's really good why is self-raising flour never seemed to catch on in the US? it's so interesting isn't it I don't know actually I don't know why that I've always found that really interesting because it doesn't make sense to me why you would not have those things kind of together ready to use but maybe it's just because you think about what we use self-raising flour for maybe it's not as prevalent in cooking over there what sort of a baking culture maybe but I don't know but there are some fantastic histories of baking powder and the invention of that and how it's a transformed cooking and baking and home cooking and I wonder what was happening in terms of which companies and manufacturers were producing things but also I don't know it's a really good question I don't know the answer to that I'm going to find out do you use anything other than flour in your pastry for example potato? we probably have I'm going to say I can't think of a time of an example of my head at the moment we're always trying to use different things right that's how we innovate and how we come up with new techniques so I remember once we were working in Coombs Head Farm down in Cornwall there's this chef's weekend where you go and learn about butchery and things like that Tom Adams who owns Coombs Head Farm said to me tonight about 30 chefs you all cook for each other every night we just do a big banquet each night after all the work he said to me can you make a milfoil but I've got this leaf lard from this Mangalitha pig and I made puff pastry using leaf lard from the fat around the kidney on the pig and it was like incredible the milfoil tasted of pork but the whole weekend was based around pig but it gave this incredible crispness to the pastry so I love things like that like people using potato and dough trying to understand it might not work every time but it gives you a foothold into finding something cool well actually sort of in that thread what about food and free pastry for like celiacs what can you do for them and what's the texture of that pastry and what's it like to work the oddest thing with that is finding something that sort of binds the dough what is the gluten so we worked really hard over the last lockdown on creating a gluten free recipe for pastry that matched our other pie doughs and we came up with one and it was really I mean it was just about understanding xanthan gum xanthan gum for us that acted as the gluten in the dough and we've got a dough now I'm sort of quite happy sharing information I love sort of people having our recipes I will put it up online soon that acts exactly like a short crust pastry like it's not that sort of cakey texture you quite often get gluten free doughs I mean you're not going to get flakes like you would with a normal pie but pretty close to it sometimes a flavour it's good so much advances in gluten free flour over the last few years lots of millers working on that because of the demand for it but here we do use for most of our dough heritage grains that dough there has got rice flour in it because that was what the kidder used to use rice flour and dough so we sort of mix that in but we use heritage grains for our flour makes our recipes slightly temperamental because depending on sort of because the flour is not standardised so my chefs need to understand that that the water absorption rate is going to be different every time so they have to visually look at a dough when it's making they need to add a touch more water a touch less and what's the advantage to you in using that rather than using a standardised flour was flavour and nutrients right so yeah I mean bleaching flour removes both of those really so it was always for us going to be the flavour first so actually our pork pie here is super dark in colour but that's because we use this one bleached extremely natural flour that's fresh like it's super fresh it's just been milled but it gives you a dark colour on the pastry and I was like well I don't really care I'd rather it's tasty anyway okay I think we've got time for one final question which is talking about Cornish pasties which we were could you make one with a hot water pastry yeah absolutely 100% um I don't know if you would get in trouble with the Cornish pasty association I think maybe you would if you called it a Cornish pasty you might have to call it something else but I've done that and I think it's delicious I think it works really well as a dough really crisp and lovely and actually when you crimp those edges I don't know what it is with hot water pastry but it's just sort of concertinas when you bake that delicious okay that is a fantastic way to end Callum thank you so much my take-homes from this I mean there are lots but there's a lot more history to explore and learn pies are about tradition and innovation and technology everybody needs a good rolling pin a pastry brush is very helpful too it's okay to buy ready made pastry but it's fun making pastry too so give it a go and if you want to render down a goose and make fat and make pastry with that you can but that's quite hardcore Callum thank you so much really fantastic thank you everyone who's been watching I hope that you've enjoyed this event please do look at the British Library's website to see what other events we have coming up please remember about our competition as well it will be wonderful if as many people as possible try to win one of those wonderful prizes you can find out more about British Library events on the British Library website we have a brilliant event next week on food and class with Penvogla and Ruby Tando thank you very much to Callum and to the Hall and Dining Rooms for letting us come here to this magical place to film and thank you so much to KitchenAid for sponsoring the food season thank you