I've never really warmed to the bought mince pies you get everywhere at this time of year. For my palate they're too sweet, yet somehow insubstantial. The nasty soft, sweet pastry that blandly engulfs a few raisins and sugar leaves me cold. So I've always preferred to knock up a batch of puff paste and make them myself, making light and delicious puff pastry pies.
Then a few years ago I was reading up on the old fashioned (by which I mean Tudor onwards) versions of sweet mince pie, and it turns out they used to be really quite different. The name 'mince pies' often seems strange, but historically speaking recipes had meat in them until the end o the 18th Century, starting out as mostly meat with some sugar, spice and dried fruit (possibly to hide the fact that by the feasts after Christmas your meat might not be so fresh any more), but as imports became cheaper and cheaper the meat became an ever smaller component.
Modern sweet mince is now typically entirely vegetarian, with the last dubious relic of what they were now being vegetable suet - usually palm oil. Its ok, but again, its not especially substantial and it is cloyingly sweet.
So here's my recipe. Its adapted from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstalls 'River Cottage Year'.
Ingredients
500g Lean Mince (beef, venison or mutton)
250g suet (if you can get it from the butcher, get it fresh and chop it yourself)
500g currants/raisins and sultanas (whichever you like best, but small berries are essential)
500g apples (eating apples), green and hard are good here
100g preserved ginger
4 tablespoons syrup from the ginger preserve
200g dark brown sugar
150g fine chopped almonds
Juice and zest from 1 lemon, and 1 large orange
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mace
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
250 ml brandy
Method
Clean and sterilise some airtight containers. Jars, tubs, whatever you like as long as the air is kept out.
Chop everything up - currants and raisins probably don't need it but sultanas might, as does the ginger amd the peel. Peel, core, and chop the apples.
Mix everything together, and put it in jars or tubs. I like to add another dash of brandy on top to be sure of keeping it moist. Seal it and wait for two or three days - and thats it. The flavour will improve over the next couple if weeks but don't sweat if you've made it late, it'll be fine. And with the booze, sugar and tannin from the dried fruit, as long as you keep the air out it'll keep. I've been known to make a really big batch at Christmas and store jars until the next year.
To turn them into pies, roll out your puff pastry, and cut rounds whatever size you like. These are your tops. Roll your scraps of paste from in between out thinly, and cut more rounds. They're your pie bottoms. Put a teaspoon or so of mincemeat on the bases, and some egg wash (egg beaten with a dash of water) around the outside, before pressing the tops on. The egg will glue them. Brush more egg wash on top, and pole a couple of holes with the end of a knife in the middle of the top layer. Bake at 180C for about 17 minutes, or until they're puffed up and nicely browned.
Serve hot out of the oven with brandy butter (you know how to make brandy butter, right?), or if they've cooled pop them in the microwave.
These pies are deliciously light, sweet, and rich, without being as overpoweringly sugary as bought ones.
