Sunday Dinner 1974

Tyne Brand steak and mushroom pie filling – tinned – and woe betide Mum if she'd bought steak and kidney by mistake as I detested steak and kidney to the point of retching. Loved steak and mushroom, though, though the mushrooms were so unplentiful, finding one in your pie-slice was as lucky as finding the king in a Galette des Rois or the sixpence in a Christmas pudding.
 
We weren’t royalty for the day if we found one, however. I’d like to say that role went to Dad, it being his name and what have you, but he spent much of his precious time off work cleaning our red-brick council house and walking the legs off us children to get us out of Mum’s way, which I can hardly imagine Prince Phillip having to do on a Sunday.
 
Two tins of pie filling, not one. With a household of eight of us, half of them active, hungry males, Mum made two pies on a Sunday, though as I got older – 11 or 12 - I took on the job. ‘You’re rather a messy cook, aren’t you?’ Mum once said, surveying the light dusting of flour all around the kitchen, but she always praised my ‘lovely’ pastry. Said it had a light touch her own didn't have, though I'm pretty sure she just said that to trick me into cooking.
 
Thick, plain flour pastry, edges pressed with a fork and brushed over with milk, not egg, each pie decorated with a couple of pastry leaves we’d all hope would be part of our slice. A stab of the knife through the crust to let the air out – hitting the bottom of the enamel pie dish with a clink – and then cooked in the gas oven on high.
 
Then served up with roast potatoes, crisped edges caught to the point of burning and cooked in lard which dripped out as liquid as you bit into them. Mashed spuds – Dad’s job to mash them within an inch of their lives - and for me (since finding a boiled caterpillar on my dinner), no cabbage and just Co-op tinned peas or carrots alone.
 
Topped with the Yorkie puds of my father’s childhood and not the London batters of my mother’s, liberally covered in thick Bisto gravy, ‘one slice or two?’ the longstanding joke my brother reprised at Mum’s funeral.
 
And no sign of the Daddy’s tomato sauce bottle – ‘Not on a Sunday!’, our dad had declared, which was a shame as it was delicious mixed into the mash.
 
I wouldn’t taste a roast beef Sunday dinner till almost an adult, and even then I ate it elsewhere. But I loved those childhood Sunday dinners, and homemade short crust pastry remains the thing I miss most about my enforced gluten free life.

Alison Mott

Image in the public domain on Youtube here.