In our first ever TV appearance, Michel Roux Jr rated the Pierateer's Crocodile Pie on NATIONAL TELEVISION!!!

In what is one of, if not the most, surreal moments in Pierate history, Pierateer Rob and The Ship’s Cook Emily were complimented for the quality of their pie pastry during an appearance on BBC Two’s Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice. Having sampled the Crocodile Pie that Pierateer Rob made, Michel Roux Jr (the acclaimed Michelin Star Chef at Le Gavroche and judge on Masterchef: The Professionals) complemented the quality of the pastry – even if the filling let us down when he found the crocodile meat a little dry. Don't think we'd have got 7/7 on our 7 Cs of pie rating!

The Crocodile Pie and Pastry Crocodile on the Extra Slice set

Thanks for favouriting our tweets Michel Roux Jr and Shappi!

But considering we just make and rate pies for "The love of pie", this was a massive coup for Pierateer Rob, who was in fact making his first ever pie pastry completely by hand, rather than using shop bought (it must be remembered that we are primarily Pierateers – raters of other people’s pies – rather than pie makers!) and you can read about how the Crocodile Pie was made in our reci-pie article.

Crocodile

The hit BBC Two show “An Extra Slice” is a spin-off of the hugely popular baking series “Great British Bake Off”, which had just been celebrating their own Pies and Tarts week. In the episode, host Jo Brand showed a range of clips from the tent, interwoven with photos from members of the public who had sent in their baked efforts and a taste of a few pies and tarts brought into the studio.

While we are of course completely biased, it came as no sur-pies that Jo and the celebrity panel were very intrigued by the Crocodile Pie that the Pierateers brought in. No strangers to exotic pie baking on their Pierate pie blog, they had previously made Zebra and Horse Pies, along with Wildebeest and Springbok Pies and a hugely unsuccessful Python Pie (or Pie-thon, as we called it!)

The panel had a mixed reaction to the Crocodile Pie, with the afore mentioned Michel Roux Jr thoroughly enjoying the pastry but Alan Johnson MP and comedian Shappi Khorsandi both refusing to eat the pie, the latter in fact claiming she had turned vegetarian in between finishing the previous meat pie being sampled and the sampling of the Crocodile pie! (Perhaps Shappi should check out our Vegetarian pie reviews page instead!)

The Crocodile Pie made for the Extra Slice

Needless to say though, despite the mixed reaction of the panel to eating Crocodile Pie, this was one of – if not the most – exciting days out in Pierate’s near 5 year history! Of course, the bread and butter of what we do on Pierate is rating pies up and down the country and across the world – so that you know what the best pies are near you. With over 425 pies rated in our Pie Rankings we hope there’s a pie there for everybody.

But it sure is nice to get a com-pie-lement from a world renowned celebrity chef of the calibre of Michel Roux Jr every now and then! And who knows - perhaps after sampling our pie Michel will invite us round to his place for a pastry sampling at Le Gavroche sometime?!

Pierateer Rob and the Pierate Ship's Cook, Emily

"Show us your pies!" - during the TV coverage (Screenshot from BBC, taken by Shereen)

RAS

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The crocodile pie is coming! Check it out tonight on BBC2's

Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice at 9pm!

Crocodile

If you missed it live, you can watch our TV debut now on BBC Pie-player:

Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice (Episode 5)

However, due to time pressure, a lot of what we said in the studio was edited out of the show. So once you have watched the programme, don't forget to get the full picture by reading our article on the show!

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Crocodile Pie Recipe Attempt and Review!

I have to admit, when I woke up a few days ago, I was not expecting to be attempting to make a Crocodile pie this Saturday! But - follow a number of very exciting emails - I have been tasked with making an "exotic pie - like the Pie-thon pie you made before". Now, we all know how badly the Pie-thon (Python meat pie) turned out... so my challenge is to attempt to create a crocodile pie reciPIE that is both presentable and edible - a bit like the homemade Horse and Zebra pies we made last year!

Our not so successful Pie-thon (Python Pie)

Regulars to our pie blog will know that we have eaten a whole menagerie of exotic animals in commercially available pies during our time on the Pierate Ship - including Camel, Ostrich, Bison, Kangaroo, Zebra, Horse, Wild Squirrel and a Crocodile Pie! And the last one is kind of the issue... The Nice Pie Crocodile pie was so well rated that I don't think I'll ever be able to match it! At 6.39/7, that is an incredible score for an exotic pie (or pie in general) on our 7 Cs of pie rating! But I'm willing to sink my teeth into the challenge and see if I can make a half-decent crocodile pie for my special guest pie raters!

So here we go then...

The crocodile meat was already purchased from www.exoticmeats.co.uk and came in a frozen state as part of their "African Selection Box" - hence already making a Zebra pie, Springbok pie and Wildebeest pie.

Having defrosted the crocodile meat, the first step I took was to find a suitable recipe to vaguely follow, but as there were no obvious choices of crocodile pie recipes, I decided to head for the BBC Good Food's website and follow this "Creamy chicken, ham and leek pie" recipe - but ditch the ham and substitute the chicken for crocodile meat! Apologies in advance to the Hairy Bikers if I end up ruining their lovely recipe in attempting to adapt chicken to crocodile...

I nipped to my local supermarket to get the items I didn't already have in the house. Sadly when I asked for some crocodile meat juices, they didn't have any in stock... (Sorry, couldn't resist!)

But back at home with my ingredients at hand, I was ready to attempt a first on the Pierate Ship - Crocodile Pie!

Crocodile Steak

Step 1 - Heat the chicken stock in a lidded saucepan and then add the chicken crocodile meat for 10 minutes.

Step 2 - Create the creamy sauce, containing leeks.

Step 3 - Cut up the cooked crocodile meat and add to the sauce. Here's where I then went a bit AWOL and decided to slow cook the pie filling for four hours, just to add a bit more tenderness to the meat.

Step 4 - Make the pastry using flour, butter and egg. Make sure you line the whole dish - we are DEFINITELY not making a top-crust here!

Crocodile Pie Filling

Step 5 - Input the filling into the pastry casing. You will notice that I actually added some additional peas into the mix, just to baulk out the filling slightly (crocodile steaks aren't exactly the biggest!) and add a bit of extra texture plus one of your 5-a-day!

Step 6 - Add the pastry lid and, if you're feeling creative, a pastry crocodile to the top! (Just in case you forget what's inside the pie!) An egg glaze will help improve the colour of the pie.

Step 7 - Cook in the oven for 35-40 minutes on Gas Mark 6.

Step 8 - Serve an extra slice to your guests!

The finished Crocodile Pie!

RAS

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Nice Pie - Crocodile Leek & Potato Pie Review

I had heard great things about Nice Pie from my Pierateer colleagues. We have reviewed many of their exotic pie flavours with most of them achieving ‘Pierate Recommended’ or ‘Pierate Highly Recommended’ status. This is pretty impressive when they are taking such a unusual meat as squirrel, bison, camel, zebra etc and making them into a pie. On the pierate ship we have tried making some exotic meat pies ourselves but the question always is, what flavours do you add to the meat?! We had some success with our Zebra pie, however, our Python pie for British Pie Week was revolting!



So on the first day of British Pie Week I was very pleased to be able to include a Nice Pie, Crocodile, Leek & Potato, as part of my #pie4everymeal challenge. I was a bit apprehensive. Would leek and potato really go with crocodile meat? You associate leeks, potatoes and pie as very British things and Crocodile is about as British as the Great Wall of China.

I had the pie for dinner but there was another aspect that made me a little apprehensive, as part of the challenge I had to eat the whole pie. This was certainly not an individual sized pie coming in at around 1200 calories. Have a look at the video from 8:00 minutes to see what I thought.




Well hopefully you got the idea that I liked it! But I will now reveal how I scored it! This pie was great, not just for an exotic meat pie but even compared to more regular pie flavours. I would most closely compare it to a chicken pie, indeed chicken would have worked in place of the crocodile in the filling. However, the texture of the crocodile made it much more interesting than a normal chicken version and it was not dry at all like chicken can be. It was flaky, almost like fish, it didn't have much flavour that I could detect but took on the flavour of the sauce. The sauce was creamy and delicious. The balance of flavours was perfect and the contrast in texture throughout the pie kept me wanting more. I know that it was truly a pie which should gain ‘Highly Recommended’ status because even after eating so much of it I still thought it tasted amazing. The presentation was also wonderful with firm pastry which meant this pie stayed in one piece despite having been transported quite far in my back pack (and in Pierateer RAS’s suitcase before that). The pastry tasted nice but perhaps it was a little too thick in places, this perhaps was a trade off to get such sturdiness to the pastry. However it wasn’t hard or dry in any way. The Capacity was large, as with many of these Nice Pies. This would have happily served two or three people. There isn't much they could do to make the pie score even higher. Overall, the highest score we have yet given to a Nice Pie and the highest scoring 'exotic meat' pie in our overall pie rankings!

This pie was very similar in size and shape to the Bison and Camel pies we have reviewed recently and at £5.50 they are excellent value for pies of this size, plus they contain 'exotic meat' which is normally more expensive. Nice work guys!

Crocodile, Leek & Potato (Nice Pie)
6.39/7

SJL

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