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chaos0xomega wrote:
blackberry in general is an under-appreciated berry. Would love an apple and blackberry pie.

Picking blackberries is also great foraging practice as a kid. Its easy to find the right berry (nothing else in a hedgerow looks like a blackberry), very plentiful, and still a bit of a game because the blasted things grow on nature's barbed wire, often in a hedge with actual barbed wire plus assorted other thorny plants and nettles. Then your hard work translates into a delicious pie or crumble. I love a good blackberry foraging session up the fields, good to do whilst walking the dog.

Winberries/bilberries* are also very fun to forage, but I didn't live close enough to moorland for this to grow and we rarely went on a winberry picking trip. Taste better than blueberries though. They are great to smear on your skin to draw stuff in blue-purple.

*Regional variants of the same berry. I prefer winberry myself. They look like tiny, slightly more purple versions of American blueberries.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
No lid?

Not a pie.

Flan. That’s a flan. A tasty flan. But a flan. Maybe a tart.

You dare mock my nation's celebratory Thanksgiving dessert???

Good day to you, sir. I say, good day to you!

I'm content to walk away on the basis that we're arguing culinary matters with Brits. Pumpkin pie is a flan?



Just walk away and leave them to their "meat pies".

 Haighus wrote:


Winberries/bilberries/quote]

I swear you guys are making up berries in this thread lol.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Haighus wrote:


Winberries/bilberries

I swear you guys are making up berries in this thread lol.

They're basically mini blueberries (but tastier...)



Pretty little bush, grows in moorland on hills. This example is taken from a Reddit post and was apparently growing on Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) in Wales.

It's the internet.

These "so-called" Brits are probably undercover FBI agents trying to get to us.

Be fair. No FBI agent could possibly be a ridiculous, fatuous and outright annoying as I am?

You're scottish, you're one of the good 'uns.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I swear you guys are making up berries in this thread lol.

Europeans live in very local places. As in: you're in a village that is a ten minute drive from the next village, but the locals will tell you that the beer, food and basically everything in that other village is wrong. And it has been for generations.

Hence the joke: Americans think 100 years is a long time; Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance.

I think part of this has to do with the micro-climates in Europe, where you can get wild variations simply from being on the other side of a hill.

North America just doesn't have as many of these abrupt transitions, and they also don't have centuries of ethnic separation to cement them. Like the whole cider/wine/beer thing is a riddle in an enigma wrapped around a bunch of drunks.

This thread has me very hungry for pie, though. Pumpkin pie, which is a pie.

Britain also has a near inexplicable variety of accents.

Scotland has distinct regional accents. England has loads and probably the greatest distinctions. Wales I’m honestly not sure on, as I’ve not spent a great deal of time with Welsh folk or in Wales.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I swear you guys are making up berries in this thread lol.



This thread has me very hungry for pie, though. Pumpkin pie, which is a pie.

Tempted to make a savory pumpkin pie. Just to piss of the yanks.

That's always a noble goal.

 Easy E wrote:
It's the internet.

These "so-called" Brits are probably undercover FBI agents trying to get to us.

Ye gads! We've been rumbled.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Britain also has a near inexplicable variety of accents.

Scotland has distinct regional accents. England has loads and probably the greatest distinctions. Wales I’m honestly not sure on, as I’ve not spent a great deal of time with Welsh folk or in Wales.

North and South Wales have very distinct accents (in general) and different dialects (in Welsh). Angelsey accents are also noticeably different from Gwynedd and Powys is a bit weird because it is a large county that has different accents in the north (close to Gwynedd), south, and along the English Marches where the accent starts to blend into the English accents.

Funnily enough, watching a show on iPlayer right now called “Paranormal; The Girl, the Ghost and the Gravestone”.

Presenter is Welsh, but there’s a definite Liverpool twang to some of her pronounciations. Wiki shows she was born in Caernarfon and studied in Leeds, so I guess it’s just her real accent, and not one particularly changed by where she’s been since growing up.

chaos0xomega wrote:
ive never heard of crossberry before, sounds like something you can only really get in south africa?

No, it's European. It's one of the more unique (and hence distinguishably local) flavours of Limburgse Vlaai or Limburg pie.
Though I have seen crossberry marmelade (jam for non-British) in the UK.

Bran Dawri wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
ive never heard of crossberry before, sounds like something you can only really get in south africa?

No, it's European. It's one of the more unique (and hence distinguishably local) flavours of Limburgse Vlaai or Limburg pie.
Though I have seen crossberry marmelade (jam for non-British) in the UK.

Ah! Gooseberries!

I was thinking something didn't add up, as I've never heard of crossberries either and was also only finding a South African plant. I put the pie name in your link into translate and it comes out with gooseberry foam pie. I think this is one of those things that doesn't translate directly as kruisbessen is definitely crossberry.

I like gooseberry fool more than pie, although my partner is partial to gooseberry jelly. The vlaai looks good though... *Drools*

Huh weird. I distinctly recall it saying crossberry marmelade on the package. Maybe I just recognised the berries and my mind made a leap to crossberries. Or maybe I'm just getting old.
Then again kruisbessen is the Dutch word. In Limburgs they're called steekbaere or kroeselbaere depending on what part of the province you're from. Languages are weird.

Regardless, yes it is good. Best pie in the world.

Languages are indeed weird, as are regional variants for things like berries. See winberry/bilberry above for a similar regional difference for a type of berry.

I'm wondering if anyone makes elderberry pie now, seeing as those are also really easy to forage. Edit: a Google search says yes, you can. Looks tasty.

 Haighus wrote:
I'm wondering if anyone makes elderberry pie now, seeing as those are also really easy to forage. Edit: a Google search says yes, you can. Looks tasty.

Highly popular among those whose mothers were hamsters.

(Or is that Hampstead? So confusing.)

I've mentioned that German culture is pervasive and therefore largely taken for granted in the US, and in my case, it resulted in the curious circumstance that my great-great-grandfather spoke fluent German, despite having the surname of Lloyd and having been in the country for several generations.

The reason was that the Lloyds tended to marry German girls, who in the 19th century were (figuratively) washing ashore. The result was a complete loss of any connection to Wales, but solid German baking traditions, including springerle cookies at Christmas.

And being midwesterners, jello with fruit in it.

I've not had Rook Pie myself,

but my Mum had it semi-regularly when she was a girl. Her parents both worked on a farm and rooks (and rabbits) were shot as pest control and eaten by the farm workers.

and to further confuse the Shepard's/Cottage pie story i have seen and eaten Shepard's Pie Pies which were a standard Shepard's pie sealed in a hot water pastry case like a Scot's Pie. I'm pretty sure it's a recent innovation like maccaroni pies that crop up at a fair number of Scottish butchers (some of which are pies, having a top, and some of which aren't really as they only have the lower pastry case)

Oh Macaroni Pies are so much better than they sound!

They're not bad, but you really need to eat them hot, reheated they tend to be disappointing

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh Macaroni Pies are so much better than they sound!

I imagine the macaroni are smaller targets than rooks, but also less mobile. Birdshot should work for both.

Would that be regarded as an invasive species?

I am still incredibly offended and upset over the consumption of Corvids.

As for things that are much better than they sound - wheat pie, also known as Easter Grain pie or pastiera napoletana. Not sure how prevalent it is in the UK or even the US outside of the NYC/NJ region, but its pretty common around this part of the US come springtime, and incredibly delicious.

So….pie casing.

For me, on a Steak related pie? I love a Puff Pastry lid, even to the point where if it’s just pub style “pot of stew and a separate disc of puff pastry” I’ll forgive and forget.

I don’t dislike shortcrust, but I find the quality swings too wildly from delicious to cardboard, and everything in between.

But, for fruit based pies? Shortcrust all the way.

Just…don’t wuss out. Make it with actual proper butter (as in Kerrygold for our US Chums, who’s native butter is apparently more pallid and sad than a goth kid at a pop concert in winter)

Shortcrust for me. Not a fan of puff pastry.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So….pie casing.

For me, on a Steak related pie? I love a Puff Pastry lid, even to the point where if it’s just pub style “pot of stew and a separate disc of puff pastry” I’ll forgive and forget.

I don’t dislike shortcrust, but I find the quality swings too wildly from delicious to cardboard, and everything in between.

But, for fruit based pies? Shortcrust all the way.

Just…don’t wuss out. Make it with actual proper butter (as in Kerrygold for our US Chums, who’s native butter is apparently more pallid and sad than a goth kid at a pop concert in winter)

Old fashioned American butter has its place, but I generally prefer Kerrygold myself.

...what is different about American butter?

From the various cookery channels on YouTube? Apparently USA Butter just isn’t the same.

I *think* it’s to do with the breed of cattle and grain feeding vs grass feeding.

But, food being food? Could all be cunning advertising propaganda.

Certainly USA Butter looks pastier and whiter than yours truly, which is saying something. No golden butter yellow.

 gorgon wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
No lid?

Not a pie.

Flan. That’s a flan. A tasty flan. But a flan. Maybe a tart.

You dare mock my nation's celebratory Thanksgiving dessert???

Good day to you, sir. I say, good day to you!

I'm content to walk away on the basis that we're arguing culinary matters with Brits. Pumpkin pie is a flan?



Just walk away and leave them to their "meat pies".

Technically it's more of a tart i think. Also the filling is a custard, a weird pumpkin custard cause it's got a mix of dairy, eggs and thickener.