Chawettys: Pork and Blue Cheese Pies

I was in a quandry a few nights ago.  I had to use the pork I had pulled from the freezer.  I didn’t have enough for a full meal of sweet and sour (blackberry vinegar and brown sugar) pork or Roman pork with apricots.  So I hit the books for a quick idea.  Luckily I had everything on hand!

Chawettys:

Pork and Blue Cheese Pies

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Translation:

Small pies. Take pork seethed & minced dates, and grind them small together; take yolks of eggs & put thereto a good heap & green cheese put thereto; & when it is small enough take Ginger, Cinnamon & mix weel they mixture therewith & put in thine coffins; then take olks of Eggs hard seethed and cut them in two, & lay above & backe them & so not closed, serve forth. (Renfrow, pg 130)

Ingredients:

2 lbs ground pork

5-10 well chopped dates (remove pits)

2 tsp each ground ginger and ground cinnamon

2 raw egg yolks

5 cooked egg yolks

1 C. blue cheese

 

Redaction:

I took two pounds of pork and ground it fine. Possibly to fine as I used my Cuisinart. (No slave labor or kitchen serf to do the hand grinding.) I chopped up the dates very fine.  The eggs are from my English Speckled Sussex chickens. The hens are laying very well during the spring and summer months.

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Once you have everything gathered this goes pretty fast.  Add the blue cheese and dates to the meat.

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Then add the spices. Mix well together.

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I added the eggs (raw) to the meat and mixed again.

150322 007The finished mix is pretty much looking like a pork meatloaf.

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The crust is a butter crust from Scappi. I used Scappi instead of more English crust because as the cook, I like the Italian crust a bit better. Cook’s choice and all that.

 

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Two pounds could probably get 4 pies but I only have 3 pie forms…hence the three pies.   The savory pie is supposed to be served open, without a top crust, however I had enough dough to make a small top hat that just looks cute (and a little more polished) for presentation.  The boiled egg yolks were cut in half and placed decoratively around the pie crust top hat. Cook at 350 for 45 minutes.

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I might have overfilled the open face pies a little (a lot).

The finished pie(s).

150322 021This is damn good.  My husband is asking for this on a regular basis after the first bite (and pie).  I would do a couple of things slightly different but these are a taste thing.  The dates were far more subtle than I liked. I really like the dichotomy between savory pork and sweet dates. If you prefer more savory and only a hint of the sweet stick with 5 dates, if you want a little more sweet in your savory add a few more dates.

 

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