Top ten places to buy Wild Garlic Pork Pies

Update... there's more than ten now!

Photo Alun Callender for Country Living Magazine

It's been an unusually late start to the Wild Garlic season this year, but, now that it's got going, the plants are looking lush and gorgeous and it's going to be a bumper crop. If you forage for your own Wild Garlic please ask permission from the landowner and pick sustainably, so not too much from any area and never the bulbs.

As seen in Country Living Magazine

So here's the top ten places to buy our famous Wild Garlic Pork Pies (the ones with a six page article in Country Living, such a thrill!). As we've only just listed the pies the current places to buy them are mostly local but more UK-wide stockists will have them in the coming weeks, so I'll add to the list as we go along.

Where to buy our Wild Garlic Pork Pies this week

1. Creake Abbey Food Hall - a few minutes from Burnham Market and home to the very famous monthly farmers market ( we'll have them there on the 5th of May)
2. Harveys Butchers. Norwich's best butcher, on Grove Road. NB the road from Queen's Road is closed at the moment, so if you are driving, head from St Stephens roundabout as if you were going to City College but turn left immediately after the traffic lights.
3. Christie and Son - the famously brilliant cheese stall on Fakenham Market on Thursdays, Dereham on Friday and Swaffham on Saturdays
4. The Green Grocers - on Earlham Road Norwich, our first ever wholesale stockist and still gorgeous.
5. The Norwich Providore - Row B of Norwich market and selling the fabulous Bread Source bread (as well as our pies and many other types of local food brilliance)
6. Earsham Street Deli - Bungay's finest (although the rest of Earsham Street sets a pretty high bar), run by the lovely Michelle.
7. Scrummy Pig at Wroxham Barns - our Broads stockist (soon to be opening another shop in busy Wroxham village)
8. Thyme Deli - one of our Northern stockists in Horwich, Bolton 
9. Ranbow Stores, East Rudham - already have an order in for Friday's delivery, look out for our A Frame on the A148
10. Spring Gardens Nursery, near Pulborough in West Sussex
11. Whelk Coppers in Sheringham - a cosy cafe overlooking the sea
12. Toft Shop, Cambridge. A fascinating local shop specialising in South African Food (and our pies!)
13. Picnic Fayre - the iconic deli in Cley
14. Franklin's Farmshop SE22 London - one of our brand new stockists
15. Jimmy's Farm - the most famous farmshop in Suffolk
16. Slate in Southwold - right next to the Adnams shop
17. La Fromagerie in Highbury, Islington
18. Harp Lane Deli, Ludlow, Shropshire. At the bustling heart of this most foodie of towns.
19. Walsingham Farmshop, Heacham 

The best pork pies - by mail order

Watch this space for more stockists, but if you can't get to any of the above they're also listed on our very own pies by post shop!

Meanwhile, I'll get out picking.

Photo Alun Callender for Country Living Magazine

Pork Pies? It's child's play

How to bake a pork pie

It probably hasn't escaped your attention that, in our Pies By Post shop, we don't only sell pork pies that are ready baked, for years we've also sold frozen ones for you to bake at home (with full instructions). We always say that it's really easy and here's the proof. This is Madeleine, the daughter of one of our customers baking their pie last Christmas. Isn't she brilliant?

Carefully does it

We've decided that this is the new staff uniform.

How to glaze a pork pie

Glazing like an expert

Anyway, the point is that they are terrifically convenient, you can take one out of the freezer (no need to defrost) and let the magic commence. We sell them in several sizes, this is a large one. If you've never smelt the deliciousness of a pork pie baking then you are really missing out on one of life's greatest joys. You definitely need to put that right. Click here immediately...

Dad Brendan sent us these photos when he sent us his Christmas's order today. And there's no greater recommendation than a repeat customer. Thanks Brendan (and Madeleine - you've got a job with us, as soon as Dad lets you).

The Wedding Letter

The wedding pork pie

I think I'll just wipe a tear from my eye and, with her kind permission to reproduce this, let Maureen tell the story...

For more information on our wedding pork pies click here

Hi Sarah,

We've just arrived back from honeymoon & we have a long list of suppliers to thank for making our wedding day so amazing, but I really had to put you top of that list! 

The wedding pie in situ at Manchester Town Hall

The pork pie cake you made for us was absolutely incredible. I worried about everything in the run up to the wedding & wondered at one point whether it would have been less risky to just go for a standard traditional wedding cake from a local supplier. We're so so so glad we didn't!

You have been hugely helpful in all our correspondence, understanding what we wanted & replying quickly (I'm afraid I did turn into a stressed out bride & you wouldn't believe how much we appreciate suppliers who reply quickly!)

The Fed Ex local office were also really helpful when we spoke to them on the Friday. Again, speaking to someone who understands how important this delivery was to us, really put our mind at ease.

The cake was delivered with no problems on the Saturday morning. I thought you might like to see what it looked like when we were done with it, so I've attached a few pics!

I had bought lots of boxes for our guests to take the pie home, I honestly thought there was way too much of it to be eaten on the day. 

I was wrong. People were actually queuing for a slice! Even when our evening food was served, everyone wanted a piece of your pie!

We had so many compliments from guests who had never seen a cake like it, & it really did become one of the talking points of our lovely day. I will post a review on Instagram when I get a minute, I'm not on Facebook but can get friends to post if you want to send me a link.

Thank you for everything & we wish you all the very best for your wonderful business.

Kind Regards,

Maureen

Gorgeous!

North Norfolk Food and Drink Festival

The first weekend in September means one thing at HQ: lots and lots and lots of baking for the wonderful North Norfolk Food and Drink Festival at Holkham Hall.

The walled gardens in full glory

Now in it's 8th year, the festival is by far the biggest and best food and drink in Norfolk.  It takes place in the spacious and stunning setting of the enormous 6 acre walled gardens; (which in themselves are a worth exploring for a few hours), bringing together all of our fellow producers for a veritable cornucopia of locally made, yummy edibles and drinkables. 

We'll be taking our usual selection of award winning small and medium sized pies: the oh so popular onion marmalade, the warming chilli, the smokey chorizo, our summer special 'Wiveton' (lemon, parsley and garlic) and the anything but traditional 'Naked'. Oh, and just a few of our delicious sausage rolls. 

The limited edition Piccalilli pie 

We're also have with us the rather sensational black pudding pork pie.  We've teamed up with Fruit Pig and included a generous slice of their very special, rare, black pudding.  But you'll have to be quick, we always sell out fast.

The festival is on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd at Holkham Hall and is open 10am - 4pm.  Entry is free and includes the chance to see the beautiful gardens.   Car parking (right next to the gardens), is £3.  Dogs are welcome too.  

If you can't make it, worry not.  We're always sending pies out to our many stockists all over the country.  You can find them all here and, we also have our very own online pie shop so you can have the quintessential taste of Norfolk delivered to your door.

The lady and gentlemen of Holkham estate selling venison

The walled garden vineyard

Local honey

Candi, from Candi's Chutney

Wild Garlic Pork Pies

““For those who like their garlic strong, ramsons will prove magnetic” ”

— Richard Mabey, Food For Free

In Praise of North Norfolk

I just love where we make the pork pies, we're in old flint barns, in an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty, so surrounded by some of the best countryside in Norfolk and the UK, The River Glaven runs through it and the sea is just over there.

The Making of The Wild garlic Pork Pies

Little speaks of our glorious surroundings better than our Wild Garlic pork pies. Starting in March I take a basket, walk down the hill to our neighbours on The Bayfield Estate, Natural Surroundings, though the gardens, and into the wooded bit, beside the river, to see how "my" patch of Wild Garlic is doing.

The Art Of Wild Garlic Foraging

Once I think the leaves are big enough, with special permission, I take a basket down and carefully pick. Not too much from each plant and being very careful not to disturb the roots. I've always got an eye on making sure the patch stays strong and healthy for the rest of the season and next year, and the year after that, so I don't want to over-pick or damage any of the plants. I think of it a bit like farming. If you forage your local patch, please be kind to the plants too.

Then I take my pickings back up the hill to HQ and we wash and dry it and make it into our Spring special, Wild Garlic Pork Pies. We can only make as many as the woods provides, so it's first come, first served for the shops and pubs who buy them from us, but they're always very popular. And we only make them into small pies because the Wild Garlic is so precious. They're also available from us online - whilst stocks last...

Wild Garlic Pork Pie Mail Order

So. Head over to our Pies By Post shop and, for a very short while, you'll see one of the options is Wild Garlic Pork Pies. Unique and deliciously delivered to your door.

Natural Surroundings, our Bayfield neighbours

The day Kate came to play with pastry

     We know what we like and the Great British Bake Off is one of those things, we adore the gentle fun of it, the way a nation has convened around it and the fact that it's got people into their kitchen, inspired to learn skills to feed themselves and their friends and family. And we do like the contestants, who seem to be particularly nice human beings.  
     We've really hit it off with Kate Barmby from this year's series, through our  shared interests in art, swallows and Norfolk, so we've enfolded her into the floury Bray's Cottage world and she's come up to HQ a couple of times, and what's more she's brought us (oh it was so good) cake!

Kate Barmby, with pastries

      So, a week or so ago we set aside a whole day and a corner of HQ (which was a-bustle with Thursday pie baking) for pastry play with Kate. She came bristling with ideas and a scrap book of inspiration.  It coincided with a day that Emma, a key member of our creative team and a craft star in her own right, was at HQ and hot water crust pastry sculpting synergy was unleashed.
      Because of her cake and art background, Kate is an expert in sugar craft so she brought multiple tool boxes of sugar-craft implements and, as Pastry Manager Erin kept them supplied with raw materials, the pair set to work pushing the boundaries of where hot water crust pastry meets sculpture.

      Emma crafted beautiful hawthorn berries and Kate created the most glorious feathers, which were actually inspired by a magazine picture of a feather fascinator worn by that other Norfolk Kate, HRH Duchess of Cambridge.
      There was also much laughter and gossip - which we couldn't possibly reveal (unless plied with very fine wines).
      The results were breathtakingly stunning. We're so thrilled with where a friendly chat over coffee in HQ has taken us, rediscovering British pie decorating traditions with a very modern slant.
      We've decided there will be more to this story - watch this space...

Join the great British craft pastry revival...

    If you'd like to learn how, we hold regular pork pie workshops in Norwich (they also make extremely welcome Christmas presents) and we incorporate pie decoration tips.    The courses are held at the Macarons & More Cookery School and you can book online.

    You can buy our frozen uncooked pork pies online and add beautiful decorations yourself (hot water crust pastry is very easy to make) at home.  If you do feel inspired, we'd love to see the results of your efforts - drop us an email or get in touch with us on Twitter.

We also make bespoke celebration pies with your own message written in pastry (though not with Kate Barmby feathers....yet).  
 

An Historical Pie

Why PIE?

First a small digression on Strangers. Or muse, if you will.

We're all feeling a bit jittery about the darker side of where 2016's politics has dragged us. I don't know if it should make me feel better or worse to know that nothing changes much, but one of Norwich's lovelier small medieval museums (full of food, textile and domestic history) is called Stranger's Hall. The name Strangers in Norwich dates back to the 16th century North European weavers who were invited over as persecuted refugees by an England which needed their wealth-creating skills, but still managed to make sure they were jolly well aware of their difference by calling them Strangers and sometimes giving them a very hard time. Those Strangers, bringing their canaries over here, eventually, as families and individuals, vanished into mainstream Norwich society whilst helping make the beautiful City the place it is today, still full of reference to those Strangers. Thus proving again that, wherever we live we'll never be free of immigrants because scratch the surface and, of course, we're all those immigrants. Us. Welcome Stranger.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO PIES. P.I.E.

P.I.E. and pie in Stranger's Hall

For long years I've been sitting in a particular traffic queue waiting for the lights to change, staring at Strangers Hall, one of Norwich's oldest buildings, and wondering why ever they had a little reproduction of a graphic saying PIE in the window. Why, why, why? Why not of course, but why? Apart from being an actual sign, it must be a sign. Was Stranger's Hall calling to me? Was Norwich trying to lure the piemaker after my own escape (back) to the country? The last few years of my city-living Norwich life had been on St Benedict's, in a 16th century house on a medieval street, a couple of dozen buildings away up the road so I was almost home.

And so it came about that, when we were doing a pie photoshoot, one rainy Friday, I remembered my siren PIE and we all trooped off to Strangers Hall to ask why. Why PIE? Why?

Actually, one of the first things you see in this fascinating building is a big table, groaning with large ornate pies, as part of a banquet from its Medieval and Tudor times. We felt quite at home, our pork pies have deliberate ingredient references to those times, especially at Christmas, when we include fruit such as figs and prunes and warming spices like cinnamon. But then the bombshell fell from the lips of the museum curator, who'd kindly invited us strangers in.

It wasn't PIE. Sorry? Not pie?

Yellow jumper courtesy of Working Title Clothing in Norwich

For all those years I'd been staring fondly at the picture of the little red, black and gold crest and it wasn't saying PIE to me. It was saying PJE. Or more specifically, Joseph and Emma Paine. 

What a thing. Joseph Paine was a hosier, he became wealthy on textiles (presumably with a bit of help from those refugee weavers), and lived in Strangers Hall, with Emma, from 1612 to 1628, popping his insignia over the fireplaces as he became wealthier, schmoozing his King with sacks of gold and becoming Mayor Paine. And cheekily making that insignia look a lot like PIE to catch out the innocent pie maker, centuries later. What a joker.

Anyway, I do strongly recommend spending a few fascinating hours in Stranger's Hall in Norwich, with its beautiful collections, food history, and garden and thank them very much for their friendly welcome, making a pie maker a little better informed and allowing us to take lovely pie photos there. 

To complete the PIE experience, you can buy our fine pork pies near to Stranger's Hall at Amaretto, The Rumsey Wells, Biddy's Tearoom, Clarke and Ravenscroft, or The Norwich Providor,

Or of course, from us online.

Photos by Jay Ner.

Top ten places to buy a piccalilli pork pie

Our brand new Piccalilli Pork Pies are extremely gorgeous and there's a bit of a clamour for them, so we thought you'd like to know the top ten (in no particular order!) places across the UK to get your hands on one (or two, or three...).

Back To The Garden (Letheringsett, Norfolk)

Algy's Farmshop (Bintree, Norfolk)

Eat17 - Walthamstow and Hackney shops (London)

The Green Grocers (Earlham Road, Norwich)

Harveys Butchers (Grove Road, Norwich)

NWT Cley Marshes Visitors Centre (Cley Norfolk)

Thyme Deli (Horwich, Lancashire)

Walsingham Farm Shop (Walsingham, Norfolk)

Vintage Deli Delights (Bourne, Lincolnshire)

Go buy!

The naming of the pie

If it didn't have pastry underneath, would it still be a pie?

“The differences between a tart, a pie and a quiche are a blur. Yotam Ottolenghi”

I'll keep this brief.

Once in a while I find myself involved in a conversation about what a pie actually is. 

Picture the scene. I invite you round for a bite to eat. I make a classic white sauce, season it, add some chopped parsley, perhaps some lemon juice. Then I fold in some white fish and probably some glorious smoked fish from Cley Smokehouse. I'll have made this in my blue Le Crueset casserole. I'll top the fish with mashed potato, run a fork over it in a hither and thither pattern to make some mini peaks and dot with butter in the hope that the mini peaks will go brown and crunchy. There may even be a decorative tomato or two on top. I love cooked tomatoes, especially if slightly browned. I'll pop the whole ensemble into the oven until it meets my satisfaction.

We sit down at my old wooden table, with a glass of crisp white and a bowl of green peas. What are we tucking into?

Go on...

A Fish Pie. We move on to enjoy our food and have wide ranging conversation, never for a moment questioning whether what we are eating is indeed a Fish Pie, unless we start wondering if it would be a Fish Pie if neither of us were in the room to observe it. We're probably on bottle two at this point.  

If I make you a steaming chicken and tarragon pie in a beautiful earthenware pie dish (I've a weakness for a nice pot), topped with buttery puff pastry, I'm not only spoiling you, I'm feeding you Chicken Pie.

Next time you come round I'll try not to give you Shepherd's Pie, but you get my drift.

I burden you with these images ( I don't actually have any images as this is a virtual meal, so you'll have to imagine) of tea at my house, because once in a while I'm asked about the definition of a pie, usually by someone who anticipates, as a pie maker that I'll have a very hard and fast approach to the matter. Well, I don't.  Really, as long as it tastes nice, I find it hard to get excited about the definition.

There is a school of thought that a pie should have pastry on top and below. It so happens that my pork pies fall very neatly into this category, but I don't feel compelled to exclude other less well encompassed pies.

I can see why it can be useful, practically, to categorise in certain circumstances - for example to limit the definition of pies for my friends The Pieraters, who, incidentally, hold a very different view to my own. But our supper at my house is neither the time nor place.

Pudding? 

Marry me

If not now, then when? And well... 
Who's honestly going to say no to you, with this?

Plus it's leap year.

You can order these better-than-diamonds pies (NB - diamonds are good too) by post or to collect from HQ, via our Celebration Pie page. We'll also be at the Norwich Farmer's Market at The Forum on Feb 13th and Burwash Larder, Cambridge on February 14th if you'd like to order and collect.

And because love isn't just for Valentine's Day, we'll have them available through the year. 

Or, if you'd prefer to express your love with the less committing pork pie, simply decorated with hearts, we'll have those with us too at Norwich and Cambridge in small and medium (whilst stocks last), or you can order a large one.