Crocodile choux

Jun 20 2008 by Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

THE crimped edge, the buttery aroma, the varied hues of brown, the trickle of caramelised gravy, the lazily rising bubbles. Mission accomplished, a lifetime’s quest is concluded.

Polishing off the perfect pie in cahoots with the finest ales has been a self-imposed crusade. The long-term investigation has munched its way through chicken pie and lager, bitten into steak pie and bitter, and pecked at pork pie and porter, but now that we’ve matched crocodile pie with a Northumberland beer and reindeer with a dark Cumbrian beauty, the research is ready to be written up for academic analysis.

Michael Maughan gave up a career in the pharmaceuticals industry in April to concentrate on making the perfect pie. Along with his partner, biology teacher Rachel Styles, he formed Northern Pie, cleared the decks in their terraced house in Wallsend, crammed it with freezers and stainless units and equipped themselves for eventual expansion out of their regular Sunday-morning stall on Newcastle Quayside. Not only has the quality of their weighty products made a big impression but the range of “alternative” meats encased in exquisite shortcrust butter pastry has customers returning week after week. Crocodile pie with cream and tarragon; springbok with kiwi fruit, cashews and dates, and kudu (an African bush antelope) with pear and mushroom seem a million miles from the couple’s “ordinary” offerings, such as smoked saveloy and pease pudding.

“I love my food, I like cooking and I’m always interested in learning new things,” says Michael. “Every time we went to a farmers’ market or somewhere like that I’d see a nice looking pie and I’d try it. Often they’re disgusting and full of hydrogenated fat and E-numbers. I got interested in trying alternative meats and a good way of presenting them is in a crust – in a pie – it’s something people can pick up and walk along with and experience the difference.”

Michael is also an accomplished home-brewer and wine-maker and even on a trip to Germany, while the other members of the stag party filed into McDonald’s then to an Irish bar, he and a friend sought out local delicatessens and regional beer specialists. The rest eventually joined – and enjoyed.

“I haven’t been quite brave enough to drop coriander or tarragon into my home-brew yet,” he says. “I’ve used beer in pastry as well.”

The Northern Pie chicken and coconut can be described as nothing other than delicious. The freshness of the coconut envelops the meat in a sweet, exotic comfort zone and complements the butter-infused pastry perfectly. A Belgian witbier – wheat beer – such as Hoegaarden (5.0% alcohol by volume) with its refreshingly tantalising flavours of coriander, bitter orange and slight grassy hop would accompany this beautifully, particularly on a summer picnic. “Beef and ale pie is a big seller,” says Michael. “We use Newcastle Brown Ale in them at the moment and I’d like to try other beers but haven’t had the time to experiment.” The obvious one here would be the beer that’s in the pie – full-bodied and silky-textured with a caramel and fruit individuality and classic sweet, nutty aftertaste – but any robust, typically English bitter with hints of malt would amuse and entertain. High House Farm Auld Hemp (3.8% ABV) wallows in malt and fruit flavours, while Hadrian & Border Farne Island Bitter (4.0% ABV) is a finely-tuned, well-balanced ale which develops a tobacco-like bitter-sweetness. And, like Michael’s pie, it’s the brewery’s best-seller. Crocodile looks like monkfish but doesn’t taste a bit fishy. It’s very light in colour and surprisingly delicate with a creamy character. A beer accompaniment should ideally be not in the least aggressive with no overpowering flavours to subsume the meat’s sensitivity. Wylam Locomotion No1 (5.0% ABV) could be the ideal partner with its delicate herb-like hop and yeast aromas overlaying a biscuit malt flavour to reappear for a grassy finish.

The simple mince pie has loads of beer matching possibilities. “We use beef skirt at the moment and make our mince from it,” says Michael. “We add pureed carrot and caramelised onion to give a little bit of sweetness.” The temptation is to match a solid “brown beer” with it, but let’s be brave and opt for Jarrow Rivet Catcher (4.0% ABV – seek out the bottle-conditioned version). A subtleness of hop and light malt veil persist which will allow pie and pint to tap their toes in sensory rhythm.

Reindeer is fairly sweet and beefily meaty and not as gamey as one would expect. It brings a different quality to the pie which would fall in love with Geltsdale Black Dub (3.8% ABV) from Cumbria, an intriguing malty mild ale.

Others in the Northern Pie repertoire include wildebeest, which is fibrous in texture and mildly beefy. Camel is as light-coloured as you’d expect but disappointingly bland which probably needs something else to lift its flavour. Thyme for experimentation, perhaps? Bison makes a great steak, according to Michael, who admits his bison burgers are hugely popular with friends at barbecues.

“I’ve tried rattlesnake and it tasted a bit like chicken,” he says, “but you’d have to be very hungry to eat it. Zebra I just can’t get the hang of either; it’s aromatic almost as if it had fermented, like horse manure. I haven’t been back to it. Ostrich is very lean and very dry. It stews well but you have to cook it carefully as it can go tough. Getting flavours to work together in a pie isn’t easy when you’re not using additives and flavour enhancers like monosodium glutamate; that’s not my idea of cooking. I like to keep it simple and actually keep referring to Mrs Beeton.

“We use African game from managed herds in reservations which have strict controls and involve no endangered species. The crocodile comes from Argentina and Zimbabwe, our ostrich comes from a farmer in Berwick.”

Though Michael spent five years in pharmaceuticals and studied for a PhD at Durham University which invested a further seven years of his life, he says he doesn’t miss the industry too much as his work with food is very similar to chemistry. The hum-drum cookery he’s not so sure about.

He says: “It’s much the same – the research and development and manufacturing processes, batch sizes, legislation, scalability and temperature control. At the moment I’m setting down procedures to form recipes that anyone can follow.

“We started off making 100 pies, then it went to 130 and 150 – we can’t make any more than that with the equipment we have. But we did 550 pies for the market at the recent NewcastleGateshead Eat! Festival with 11 or 12 different fillings, which was quite a challenge. We didn’t get much sleep that weekend. I was living the life of a baker, up at five and in bed at three.”

The business is creating lots of interest – UKTV Food ordered pies for a feature – and expansion into a custom-designed unit is on the cards, with “pies by post” being developed on the company website. And, to prove that the world of the pie and pint might yet need further investigation, when the reporter on a television news programme took some pies out into the streets for the public to try, one elderly chap asked what was in them. “Crocodile, leek and tarragon,” he was told. “What’s tarragon?” he asked.

www.northernpie.co.uk

alastair.gilmour@ncjmedia.co.uk