Monday 16 September 2013

Hunting down a Farndon Fields Huntsman Pork Pie

Huntsman Pork Pie Review by Farndon Fields Farm Shop

It's clear your friends know you well when they invite you out for a pie meal, buy you a pie book for your birthday or turn up at your door with a pie they’ve just bought for you! Or maybe that’s just me... Anyways, a Farndon Fields Huntsman Pork Pie was greatly received from housemate Jeremy on Saturday, following his scouting mission in the fields near Hothorpe Hall, Leicestershire, for our Church’s weekend away. Bought at nearby Farndon Fields Farm Shop, I was intrigued as to what this pie would have to offer. The thought of a chicken and pork pie excited me (I had previously had a chicken and ham pork pie which had good potential), and while reasonably costly at £4.25 it was a decent sized pork pie. The question though was how would it rate?

Cutting into the pie, it was clearly split into layers of pastry (base), pork (lower middle), chicken (upper middle) and stuffing (top). This, of course, leads any avid Pierateer fan to mention “you’ve forgotten to mention the pastry lid...” until you see the photo...
 
Farndon Fields Huntsman Chicken and Pork Pie
Farndon Fields Huntsman Chicken and Pork Pie


Yep, that’s right – it’s an onion and sage stuffing lid. Hmm... As we all know, Pierateers demand a pie to be filling fully encased in pastry with a clearly defined side, base and lid. Sure, the sides, base and lid were there, but lacking full encasement in pastry was disappointing as soon as the pie had been pulled from the packaging. Of course I avidly sliced through the pie to check, in case the stuffing was some sort of layer above the pastry lid... but to no avail. A lack of full encasement in pastry means a significant negative scoring unfortunately in our search for pie perfection.

Farndon Fields Huntsman Chicken and Pork PieBut let’s move on to the rest of the pie. The pastry that was there was quite thick and firm, but not overly chewy. It held the content in well and provided a definite firmness to each bite. The pork and chicken were both tasty and complimented each other well. Described as “succulent chicken breast”, the chicken was tender and tasty, but still a little dry compared to a standard meat pie. The meat was predominantly very good but a little gristly in places. The stuffing complemented the meat well but left disappointment due to it being in place of a pastry lid. And the jelly content was quite over-the-top, both being on the inside of the pastry (as expected) but also a rather thick layer between the chicken and stuffing lid, forming quite a strong, overpowering layer of jelly. This detracted from the more enjoyable meat content, and the whole pie suffered from a lack of pastry lid.

All in all, while this wasn’t a bad effort, and the chicken and pork pie filling does definitely work as a combination, I’d certainly want to hunt round for a stronger candidate.

Farndon Fields Farm Shop Huntsman Pork Pie (Chicken, pork and stuffing)
Score: 4/7

[Colour 4/7; Consistency 3/7; Cheapness 4/7; Chewiness 5/7; Condition 5/7; Content 3/7; Capacity 4/7; Total: 4/7]

RAS

See where these pies ended up in the Pierate Pie Rankings or find other pies of a similar flavour.

Make sure you 
and let us know your thoughts!


Posted by at
Labels: , ,

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous17 September 2013 at 19:16

    Stu Ward - "It tastes like Christmas"
    - eaten on Tuesday 17th September

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for getting in touch with the Pierateers!

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)