Eyes on the pies

I heard her, under her breath, murmuring something about school food. Though not exactly idolatrous, my wife is, generally speaking, appreciative of my culinary endeavours but on this occasion there was a distinct holding back.

The trouble was that it had the ring of truth and highlighted the awkward fact that there is a part of me that has always liked school food. However, I don’t ever remember being given strawberry and rhubarb pie at my school – certainly not one as fragrant and delectable as the one I placed before my wife last weekend, and I am sceptical that it featured much on the menu at the Convent School of St Mary in Shaftesbury, which she attended.

A pie at my own school meant a large aluminium catering tray of indeterminate matter with pastry on top. A fruit pie meant stewed plums or apples and, in conjunction with copious quantities of rather suspicious-looking custard, was highly enjoyable. Real aficionados seeking variety on the pie front would buy Lyons Individual Fruit Pies, available in no less than 14 different flavours (apple, apricot, raspberry, rhubarb, gooseberry, mince, blackberry and apple, blackcurrant, cherry, orange, peach, pineapple, mixberry, and lemon curd – according to its faithful website, which reports that production ceased in 1968). The only fruit conspicuously absent is the strawberry.

I shared this aversion to the idea of cooked strawberries until Simon Hopkinson gave me a hot strawberry pie. He wrote about it, too, (in Gammon and Spinach, a 2001 collection of brilliant newspaper pieces) and few could not warm to the idea of the hot strawberry pie waiting on the stove when the young Hopkinson came home from school for the holidays. Since that moment I too have salivated at the sight of warm strawberry liquor oozing out of the sides of a pie. This is not high-toned food but it is deeply homely and comforting.

I confess to being slightly alarmed, however: it is bad enough pining for the food of one’s boyhood but to pine for that of somebody else’s is really rather disturbing.

Rowley Leigh is the chef at Le Café Anglais

rowley.leigh@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/leigh

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Strawberry and rhubarb pie

The bottom layer of pastry has to be quite robust in view of the liquor produced by the strawberries so prolonged cooking is necessary to prevent it being a soggy, doughy and rather leaky mess. The rhubarb can be dispensed with but provides a nice foil to the sweetness of the strawberries.

Ingredients

400g self-raising flour

Pinch of salt

250g butter, cold but chopped into small cubes

3-5 tbs very cold water

500g rhubarb

400g strawberries

1 egg

1 tbs of milk

100g light brown caster sugar

Method

● Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl and add the butter. Either using the tips of the fingers, the paddle of an electric mixer or the pulse function of a food processor, very lightly rub the flour and butter together until you achieve a fine sandy texture. Add the water, not too much at first, and slowly gather together the pastry, working it gently with the hands until it just forms a malleable dough. Divide into two parts, one slightly larger than the other, and form them into balls that you then slightly flatten into fat discs. Place them in a plastic bag and allow to rest for two hours in the fridge.

● Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Top and tail the rhubarb, pulling the skin off in the process if it is stringy and fibrous. Cut into 2cm lengths and place on an oven tray with two tablespoons of sugar and a tablespoon of water. Bake until tender, say 10 minutes, and then drain in a colander and allow to cool. Hull and wash the strawberries and lay on a cloth to dry.

● Roll out the larger piece of pastry dough into a circle 3mm thick (just over the thickness of a pound coin). Collect the pastry on the rolling pin and unroll out into a 9in (23cm) pie dish with sloping sides. Beat the egg with a tablespoon of milk and brush the pastry all over with this mixture and then sprinkle over two tablespoons of sugar, shaking the dish to distribute it evenly. In a bowl, mix together the drained rhubarb, the strawberries and another two tablespoons of sugar. Tip the fruit into the pie dish, mounding it up slightly in the centre.

● Roll out the remaining, smaller piece of pastry slightly thinner than the bottom piece. Roll this piece over the pie and crimp together the two edges of the pie and make a pattern with the tines of a fork before trimming off the excess dough with a small knife. Brush the surface with some of the egg and milk mixture and sprinkle over one last tablespoon of sugar.

● Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes at 180°C and then cook for a further 30 minutes at 150°C. Allow to settle for 20 minutes and serve warm with thick running cream.