Anna N

Wow! Who knew?

A Google search for Keef Cooks Fray Bentos should bring up a Youtube video of one of these pies being prepared and served!

I don’t mind spending a little on these things but on Amazon.ca two of these pies would be $28.15 +23.99 shipping. Not going to happen. Edited to add: I will ask @Kerry Bealto keep her eyes open and some of the British grocery stores around here. I

Should I ever spot one here, I will certainly give it a try. It does look vaguely familiar so I may have sinned in the past!

If you are on a bland diet this would be perfect. This is the Scottish meat pie from Opie’s. I forgot to take a before picture so this is it after beIng reheated in the oven. And the inside. Apart from there being too much pastry and too little seasoning there’s not much I can say about this. I was able to choke it down with a too generous squirt of HP sauce.

For breakfast this morning I thought I would commit to trying beef sausage rolls. Like military intelligence its an oxymoron in my book. These are from from my freezer. after being reheated. And the inside. Definitely not my favourite.

. For breakfast this morning I thought I would commit to trying beef sausage rolls. Like military intelligence its an oxymoron in my book. These are from Zarkys. from my freezer. after being reheated. And the inside. Definitely not my favourite roll. The pastry to filling ratio was definitely off but this time I would have to say it needed more pastry not more filling. I didn’t like the texture of the filling and the taste was tolerable but not particularly interesting. I need to develop some sort of database to keep track of these things.

Today I really felt how very different it is to have takeout versus dining in a restaurant. @Kerry Bealbrought lunch to my house today from our favourite Indian restaurant, Bombay Grill. The food was almost indistinguishable from what we get in the restaurant but I missed the warmth and the aromas and just the plain old ambiance of the restaurant - not to mention their selection of Indian beers! My plate. Kerry’s plate. Paneer pakoras with a minty sauce. Butter chicken. Lamb korma. Basmati rice. onion bhaji. Sorry it’s a bit blurry. Their amazing naan. Not shown is the beer from my fridge. It was wet and cold. Lots of leftovers.

That is just gorgeous.

cabbage rolls. Why not?

No worries. I will be trying the beef sausage roll. (As much as it offends my delicate sensibility.)

No no no no no. Please feed it to Kira!

Now for something a little different. @Kerry Beal made a trip to and came out with one of these. I will paraphrase the information that I was able to glean from the Internet. Similar in some ways to a Cornish pasty, a Scottish bridie is a meat and onion filled pastry. Generally made with shortcrust pastry, some versions especially outside of Scotland, use flaky pastry. It is a handheld pie if you wish. It originates from the town of Forfar. I am quite certain that @liuzhou will set me straight if I have misspoken. I reheated it for 20 minutes in a 350° oven. Once again I was prepared to dislike this. I have had some awful Cornish pasties in my life so I wasn’t feeling all that positive about a bridie. But this was quite delicious. You can see how flaky the pastry is in the filling was tasty, moist and.plentiful. But Opie’s lost brownie points for only making beef sausage rolls. Really? They make no pork products which made me wonder if perhaps it was a cultural/religious thing but they do in fact carry pork sausages made elsewhere. So there went that theory. I believe that Kerry slipped another one of these into my freezer. At least I surely hope she did!

@Kerry Beal wondered if that might be a mince pie.😂😂

Thank you for sharing. I’m awfully glad I am not the only one who starts out determined to dislike some thing and then discovers that it Is quite palatable. but even so I have to admit that the pizza hand pie is just not turning my crank. But neither am I a fan of the calzone.

Not all shopping trips are productive This place was recommended by an acquaintance of @Kerry Beal. He thought they had good sausage rolls. But as Kerry discovered, the sausage rolls are really just pigs in blankets and the beef rolls get disqualified on account of being beef and not pork! Still I do know that many of you enjoy windowshopping so I’m sharing these photographs that Kerry took. While Kerry was in the store I was browsing their website and mentioned that they had some good looking tarts of the non-savory variety. So she left the store munching on one of my favourite non-savory pastries. I will say no more than that or else we will take this off the rails again.

@Alleguedehe’s thinking of introducing sausage rolls to his selections at Goûter in Toronto. @Kerry Beal shared hers earlier. Brushed with egg yolk and I decided to get fancy and scored one of them. They were baked on a preheated tray in a preheated oven at 425°F with convection. Amazing how different they came out. I definitely think scoring has much to recommend it. The sausage seasoning needs some adjustment to take it a little further away from the French and towards the English!

Grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. Burnt my mouth on that first bite.

I suspect I was dealing with neckbones.

It was indeed. I would really have enjoyed it had there been enough sauce to dip my bahn mi. Out of curiosity,how did you handle the meat on the bones? What I had was certainly not falling-off-the-bone tender. I was with a good friend so had a little difficulty getting right in there with my fingers when needed to hold the rather large pieces of bone and knaw away. Not something I would be likely to do in public or among strangers.

To be honest when I thought about breakfast this morning I was more interested in getting these things out of my freezer then I was in pleasing my palate. I was almost certain I would not like these particular pastries. I just wanted to make room for something that I would actually want to eat. I suspected that they were nothing more than a sausage still in its casing wrapped in some sort of pastry. In other words not really a sausage roll. despite wanting to make room in my freezer I still decided that one of these would be enough for the day. Ready to go into the oven. Once again I forgot to lower the oven rack! I decided some pickled beets would go well with this. I was surprised all around. This was sausage meat not an actual sausage and the texture struck me as just about right. Even though the crust was a little darker than it should have been, there except for one small piece towards the very end, it was flaky and quite delicious. if I had not recently learned how to listen to my constitution which does much, much better on smaller meals, I would have baked the other one and wolfed it down.

I can’t tell you how incredibly jealous I am. @Kerry Bealand I had a very similar experience although not outdoors. Unfortunately it is not a cusine that lends itself to take-out and at the moment we are pretty much compelled to avoid indoor restaurant dining. Yesterday morning Kerry asked me to figure out what she should bring for lunch. After spending almost 2 hours trawling a Google list of Hamilton restaurants, I found nothing suitable.Either the hours were off or the restaurant was temporarily closed or the food didn’t lend itself well to travelling the half hour or so it would take Kerry to get from Hamilton (where she was working on Friday) to my house. So I turn to one of our favourite Oakville places, Vietnamese food in Oakville B’s Bahn Mi. They offered two Friday specials —beef pho or beef stew. I asked for the beef stew and Kerry chose something off the regular menu, the “Savory Saigon” Grilled Chicken banh mi. The Vietnamese beef stew and it’s carry out container. The Vietnamese beef stew and it’s carry out container. Served up with a banh mi bun. (Is that a little like saying naan bread?). The stew was redolent with the aroma of star anise and the beef was still on the bone! This would have made for a challenging experience in a restaurant! Due to a misunderstanding, I ended up with rice, potatoes and bread. The bread was meant for dipping but the rice had basically soaked up all of the gravy.. Kerry’s sandwich.

Only in Australia you say. Thank heavens for that!😂 (This is especially disturbing to me as I am currently reading a number of forensic pathology books we’re floater has a very specific meaning.)

Yes one is a much larger pie than the other if you look at total grams.

Curiously the Canadian version only has 4 g!