Treasure Pie

[PopsicleToze]

A friend asked me to make her a Treasure Pie. She said it was a British meat pie with whole boiled eggs as the treasure and explained that the bottom was a regular pie pastry but the top was phyllo. I've googled and all of the treasure pies I found were dessert pies with fruit and such. Can any one provide a recipe for this dish? She's having a birthday next week and this was what she asked me to cook for her.

Thanks

Rhonda

[MikeJ]

This reminded me of a passage in Roald Dahhl's "Danny the Champion of the World," in which a friend of Danny's father brings him a pie:

Very carefully, I now began to unwrap the greaseproof paper from around the doctor's present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world. It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with a rich golden pastry. I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge. I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up. It was a cold meat pie. The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard-boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places. The taste was absolutely fabulous. When I had finished the first slice, I cut another and ate that too. God bless Doctor Spencer, I thought. And God bless Mrs. Spencer as well.

I would search for a recipe for something like chicken and gammon pie, and modify it to include whole boiled eggs and a phyllo top crust.

[Blether]

Hi, Rhonda. As a UK native I think that the pork pie is the most common vehicle for this. In fact there is a long, square-in-section version of it sold, in which (IIRC) egg yolks and then whites are pre-cooked in long, cylindrical moulds so as to get egg-clices-all-the-way-through.

I made a first attempt at pork pie this year. Surely you could use shortcrust or filo with the same forcemeat - either add pre-cooked eggs, or have fun making different-shaped holes in the filling as you fill the pie, and breaking in a raw egg. As I noted in the earlier thread I've linked to, the meat filling came out nicely authentic.

Edited November 10, 2009 by Blether (log)

[Harters]

The pork pie with eggs is normally known as "gala pie".

[eatenmess]

yeh i was going to say Gala Pie, sounds about right. i dont know where this filo comes from though, filo is turkish it wouldnt belong on a british pie. could be somewhere along the line someone modified a gala pie to make it a bit more of a looker.

Edited November 11, 2009 by eatenmess (log)

[ZenTaurus]

Thank you Mike for seeing this before me and saving me the trouble of digging through my book collection. I knew I had read about something like that in a roald dahl book, but i couldn't remember which one. On a side note, this sounds absolutely delicious.

[PopsicleToze]

Thank you, everyone! What great information, and after reading about the pie, I'm definitely making one for myself. I think the advice is right on target. Off to research Gala Pies and come up with a recipe, and I'll definitely post my results.

Thanks again for the help!

Rhonda

[eatenmess]

look forward to seeing it. i used to love gala pie as kid at village fetes and what not.

[PopsicleToze]

I talked to her on the phone and she was somewhat excited. She thought this might be it but thought for some reason it was some type of fowl, pheasant maybe. And then... I had sent her the book quote, and that confirmed it. This is what she wrote me:

OMG this is IT!!!!

Because the favorite books for us at that age was the children’s collection from Roald Dahl. The reason I have pheasants in my head is the story you mentioned below is about this Boy and his Father who lived in a trailer over a gas station and they ended up poaching pheasants from this rich but really arrogant guy…..this is IT !!! And we would ask our parents to make foods that were depicted in the books we read. British books from ‘Famous Five’ series by Enid Blyton and Dahl’s have great relationship between food and their characters. Again, the reason why I probably LOVE food so much?! 

Amazing!

Anyway -- another big thanks to all of the experts at E-gullet. There is nothing you don't know or can't find out!

Rhonda

[judiu]

yeh i was going to say Gala Pie, sounds about right. i dont know where this filo comes from though, filo is turkish it wouldnt belong on a british pie. could be somewhere along the line someone modified a gala pie to make it a bit more of a looker.

Sounds like someone was trying to work in a 'bistilla' approach to a good British pie!