Only once have I watched a cooking programme in the company of my wife. It was Nigella making, building, constructing a Girdle Buster Pie. I was left in awe, everything I liked in one bowl stirred up and ready to devour. She knew my thoughts and the flat refusal to even consider making such a thing was tantamount to a unliateral declaration of intent. For then and forever. I may mention it now and again but all I get is the glare. How on earth does she know it would be too rich for me, after all she has no idea how rich I can cope with? She remains totally Girdle Buster Pie averse.
That remains the only TV cooking programme we have watched yet it seems that mid evening daily a pair of old blokes bawl and wear cheesy grins as poor unfortunates are harangued into drizzling this, reducing that and dirtying a plate with enough food to partially fill one a quarter of the size or less. Pointless, eh? Or is that something else she watches?
However, it matters not and although I'd still like a Girdle Buster Pie or part thereof, I forgive her anything.
This morning the aroma filled the house. The aroma that could only be one thing, one very specific thing. So specific that there's absolutely nothing else like it. The smell draws you like the sound of twin 40's and a large exhaust on a BDA Escort pulls you through a forest. Utterly irresistible.
How long?
Look.
That long?
If that's what it says.
But I'm starving.
No, you're not you're hungry.
I know what I am and I'm starving.
That's a minute less.
A glass of red is suggested sat in the sunshine outside the kitchen window where the all prevasive aroma makes the minutes seem like hours, waiting for the ping which takes forever.
Eventually it is heard, salivation starts and one begins to move the bulk toward the kitchen. They'll need another 10 minutes.
That sees the end of the red.
The next ping and my masterchef opens the oven to reveal the greatest of all culinary delights.
You can do what you like in a kitchen, you can dress the finest ingredients in whatever you choose, you can drizzle, reduce, thicken, stir, beat, shred, or whatver else you like but there is nothing, absolutely nothing at all as good as smelling these cook, lingering in anticipation as they are allowed to cool slightly before your plate presses slighly further into the table mat than it did as it receives a fitty pasty.
You can buy them in shops but they aren't fitty ones and never will be, even Annies down The Lizard as good as you can buy they may well be, Hamsons in Hayle aren't bad, Philps's will do at a push but fitty ones only come out of the oven in your kitchen when the whole house is filled with the odour of pure culinary delight.
These are perfect, this is a fitty pasty. It's just like my mum made them which is hardly surprising as my mum taught my wife how to make fitty pasties. She has carried on the tradition as only an expert MasterChef can.
It's a shame that such glorious sculpture only lasts mere seconds but without a fitty pasty to look forward to what has a kitchen to offer?
Indeed it is only the passage of time, the expanse of girth and probably global warming that has stopped fitty pasties being taken for granted every Saturday lunchtime and Wednesday evenings in the winter.
The current crop may not quite overlap the plate by 2" at each end but they're not far off and I'd never complain, nor has anyone else who's had one, at least, not to my knowlege.
There is absolutely nothing like a fitty pasty. Nothing at all. A bit of mum's hevvacake? P'raps. It doesn't even matter that it's a Monday, not usually a pasty day but who cares?
Maybe a Girdle Buster Pie for afters would be nice but I'm too afraid to ask as it may disappoint!
MasterChef on telly have nothing on the real MasterChef who's currently tending cabbages .......
