There are a handful of elements that make me nervous about tackling particular classic recipes. First, if it’s a dish that I didn’t grow up with and can’t speak to personally; secondly, if it’s a dish that a lot of other people did grow up with, and feel very strongly about. Thirdly, if it requires an ingredient that we don’t have in Britain, which I then have to imitate, or simply ignore.
That can be pretty restrictive. I didn’t encounter a Staffordshire oatcake until I was 28, so they’d be out. Risotto, which I’m fairly sure doesn’t hail from the north-east coast of England, would be untouchable. Gorgeous vintage puddings like bananas Foster or pecan pie would be out of the question, too. And, yes, the impossibility of accurately replicating graham crackers for cheesecakes, s’mores and key lime pie does keep me awake at night. More importantly, if I were to stick only to those recipes and dishes that I have a long connection with, that I’ve been eating and cooking for years, I’d become even more tediously self-involved than I already am, and we’d never travel further than Hadrian’s Wall.
You can see I’m getting my excuses and disclaimers in early, so nervous am I of incurring the wrath of those for whom bacon and egg pie is a part of their DNA. Because this Vintage Chef recipe hits all of the above criteria. Bacon and egg pie is a beloved dish from New Zealand that seems to straddle every demographic. I confess that I wasn’t familiar with it until quite recently. But once I’d heard of it, it felt as if I encountered it at every turn – and the love was universal. Nevertheless, the execution was slightly more controversial.
For the uninitiated, it is (and I ask every Kiwi reading to look away now and rejoin us at the next paragraph) a lot like a quiche Lorraine encased in puff pastry. Popular additions include raw onion, cooked onion, leeks, grated cheese and tomato chutney or relish. At its most essential, however, it is made of just three ingredients: bacon, eggs and flaky pastry, even if within these defined parameters, there are both rules and potential slip-ups. The bacon should be smoked, lean and thick-cut – use rashers at your peril. And sure, there are egg factions, too: to prick or not to prick the yolks of the eggs? Or, throw caution to the wind and just scramble the whole lot? Ever the peacemaker and fence-sitter, I opt for a combination, with a base of beaten egg, topped with carefully placed whole eggs, which hard-cook in the oven as the pie bakes, creating a pleasing cross-section of bright white and round yolk when this pie is sliced.
This is a throw-it-together, please-the-whole-family, weeknight-dinner dish
I have yet to find a recipe for this pie that calls for the cook to make their own pastry. Perhaps this is in part due to the original recipe, or at least the most famous one, hailing from Edmonds, the New Zealand manufacturer of baking products, including a ready-to-cook pastry. This presents a small problem: not only is Edmonds not available in the United Kingdom but, from what I can tell, Edmonds puff pastry is flakier than ours – perhaps even slightly less, well, puffy. It’s closer, I think, to rough puff, than our shop-bought version. Despite this, it doesn’t seem terribly in the spirit of the dish for me to suggest that you make your own. This reminds me of when I found a recipe for Pop Tarts which required literally hours of pastry folding and chilling; that would fly in the face of the experience of eating a Pop Tart. What you may gain in verisimilitude, you lose in character.
This is a throw-it-together, please-the-whole-family, weeknight-dinner dish. It’s not a project dish, and I’m loath to turn it into one. So I have made the unilateral decision to urge you simply to use the puff pastry that is easily accessible to you. I think, instead, we accept that we are translating rather than transliterating here, and I hope that the experience of both cooking and eating this New Zealand classic is an authentic one.
Serves: 6
Hands-on time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes
- 2 sheets of rolled puff pastry
- 15g butter
- 1 onion
- 250g thick-cut smoked bacon
- 8 eggs + 1 yolk for glazing
- Preheat the oven to 210°C/200°C fan. Lay one sheet of puff pastry in an 8in cake tin or a 20x30cm pie dish.
- Peel and slice the onion. Heat the butter in a frying pan, add the onion, and cook over a low heat until softened but not coloured. Scatter across the puff pastry-lined baking dish. Using enough rashers of bacon to cover the pastry base, spread them evenly over the onions.
- Whisk three eggs and pour these on top of the bacon. Carefully crack the remaining five eggs, keep them whole, and space these out evenly across the pie. Slice the rest of the bacon and scatter this on top of the eggs.
- Lay the second piece of puff pastry gently across the filled pie and seal the edges by crimping or pressing them together with the tines of a fork. Trim off any excess pastry.
- Glaze the top of the pie with the final egg yolk, and then cut a hole or vent in the centre of the pie to release the steam. Cook for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180°C and cook for a further 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to stand for ten minutes before serving, or leave to cool entirely and enjoy the pie cold.
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