Seth and I returned from England Tuesday night, along with a mean craving for meat pie. Well, I had a craving for meat pie, which seems to me quintessentially British, right up there with fish and chips. I wanted to make something of the steak & kidney or cheese onion variety, only tasty. I briefly searched the internet but was put off by recipes that called for boiling everything in some stock - with no pre-browning! - then covering it with a pastry made of flour and suet and boiling some more. Eck, no wonder British cuisine gets a bad rap. But it only took a couple of these "boil everything" recipes for me to realize that meat pie is just beef stew cooked in a pie crust - almost head-slapping obvious.
