Dame Elisabeth Luard shares the perfect picnic dish for May Day, which marks the official opening of the agricultural year.
The first of May marks the official opening of the agricultural year in the northern hemisphere. In the olden days (my kind of time) Flora’s festival was dedicated to the practical matter of procreation: the seeding of the fields and the choosing of a mate. With this in mind, living quarters being somewhat cramped, unmarried sons and daughters packed a picnic and headed for the hills, unsupervised by the adults – with predictable (and acceptable, since sanctioned) results. Yes indeed. In Britain, we lost our Mayday habit under Lord Protector Cromwell, never a man for a party. And even though Victorian folklorists dusted down the maypole and daintied up the dancers, the festival never really recovered its joie-de-vivre. Not so in the countries formerly under communism, where Mayday mutated into the people’s festival, a national holiday for adults and schoolchildren, handy for admiring the tanks as they rolled past the Kremlin. Nor indeed throughout most of Europe, particularly Germany, Scandinavia and France, where Mayday still matters. Field-food for Flora’s feast day must be portable and the drink cheerful – say, the French version of the pork pie and a bottle of fizz.
Serves 2, heartily
Ingredients
250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
175g unsalted butter
For the filling
250g lean pork, sliced small
2-3 tablespoons dry white wine
1 egg
1 heaped tablespoon grated cheese
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Salt and pepper
Method
Put the sliced pork to marinate with the wine. Make sure everything, including all the implements, is cold. See that the butter is firm without being hard. Sieve the flour with the salt. Using a knife (or the food processor), cut in a third of the butter until you have a mixture like fine breadcrumbs. Mix in enough very cold water – 1-2 tablespoons – to make a paste. Work it a little until it doesn’t stick to your fingers. Set the dough aside for 20 minutes, with the rest of the butter beside it so that pastry and butter both reach the same temperature.
Roll out the pastry to a thickness of your little finger. Dot it with butter, cut into small pieces the size of hazelnuts. Then fold the pastry into three, like a napkin, and again into three in the opposite direction. Set aside for 20 minutes. Go through the last process twice more, adding the same amount of butter each time. Set the pastry aside for 20 minutes after each process. Then leave it for another 20 minutes before you continue. Divide the pastry in half. Roll it out again and use half to line a suitable pie-dish. Roll out the remaining piece to make a lid. Let the pastry rest for the last time while you make the filling.
Meanwhile, heat the oven to 375F/190C/Gas 5. Now whisk the egg with the grated cheese and season the meat with the nutmeg, salt and pepper. Spread the meat filling in the pie dish, topping it with the egg and cheese mixture. Dampen the pastry edges and cover the pie with the lid, pressing the edges closed with a fork. Make a steam-hole in the top. Bake the pie for 45-50 minutes, turning down the heat if it browns too fast. Wrap it in clean cloth and tuck it in the basket, and don’t forget the ice-bucket to chill the champagne.