That's some damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks...

What is more American than pie? As in "motherhood and". From Dale Cooper's damn fine cherry pie to Fox Mulder's gorging on sweet potato pie in episode 20 of series 3 (am I confirming your stereotypes of bloggers yet?), from politicians to preachers, aligning yourself with a fruit filled baked good always put you on the side of the good guys on that side of the pond.


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In Britain, however, we do things differently. Pies are generally savoury. What's more, we can spell savoury. And being a lavish consumer of pies doesn't necessarily make you popular with the electorate. In all seriousness, one is assuming that in a couple of months' time we shall be addressing the current, beleaguered Deputy Prime Minister as Lord Prescott of Melton Mowbray.


Like John, I have spent a fair amount of time living among Americans, enjoying their hospitality, and my first Christmas with a kitchen of my own seemed a good time to repay their generosity. In the interests of preserving my dear friends' concept of what is British (we all own horses, say, and love the Queen) I threw a Christmas tea party. Being but a poor student, people were invited to bring their own baked goods, riffs upon our transatlantic culinary traditions, to share.

Where one runs into problems with such a strategy is that you are somewhat hostage to another's self-assessment of his or her cooking ability. Like a visitor at an Abstract Expressionism exhibition who has never seen the still life and landscape tableaux the artists created before leaving figurative art behind, the "intuitive" cook looks at Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith and thinks "I can do that" without ever learning to follow a recipe.

One guest had made shepherd's pie before, tasted pork pie and even heard of what those poor benighted souls insist on terming "steak and kidney pie"*. She was therefore accustomed to the British habit of calling meat filled pastry "pie". However, she had also heard of our traditional Christmas foodstuff: mince pies.

While these two facts combined to create something containing enough minced beef to adhere to the historical purity of mincemeat pie, the real issue lay in the fact that suet is unavailable in North Carolina. If you should find yourself in the old north state any time soon around the holiday season, I have one word of advice on the subject of suet: Crisco is no substitute.

*Warning, do not confuse Americans, even well-travelled ones, with words like "pudding". No matter how cringeworthy you find the term, stick with "dessert." In the US, pudding is not the sweet course at the end of a meal, but the gloopy custard-like banana or chocolate flavoured stuff you get at school. To introduce the concept of a whole course devoted to pudding, especially a savoury one like "steak and kidney pudding" would cause a minor international incident. Corollary to this: my fellow Britons, note that it may say "entree" but they mean main course.