OK this post is two days later than I had intended because it took me quite a long time to locate and buy any quails' eggs, especially since I had been away for a week just before I was going to make them and because I had no idea where quails' eggs can be purchased seeing as I had never eaten them before. Eventually I did manage to come across some, after much searching, and bought a dozen, finding when I got home that my mother had also bought me a dozen from a nearby farm shop and, having only needed six, I then had twenty-four, typical.
Anyway to get onto the making of the pork pies. I had thought, after watching the fifth episode of the Great British Bake Off, that the pork pies looked like the hardest task so far as they used hot water crust pastry which I have always been afraid to make since I thought that it would burn my hands when I rolled it out straight after adding boiling water. This did not actually happen though the pastry was very strange to deal with, it did not at all have the same consistency as normal pastry; it was very greasy and soft to begin with and got hard as soon as it cooled down. The pastry was, however, fairly easy to make and I found no difficulties with that.
After making the pastry I chopped up all of the pork, bacon, onion and parsley (I found out then that I was supposed to have done this before making the pastry but it doesn't seem to have made any difference). This was quite uncomfortable because it took quite a long time to cut them all as finely as I wanted them and the bending over gave me back-ache for the rest of the day. The things you do for baking eh... Anyway I got all of the ingredients finely chopped and I boiled the quails' eggs and put all of the filling in the pastry cases that I had prepared, making sure that the eggs were directly in the centre.
The baking of the pies all went fine and they smelled delicious as they were cooking. They did look a little messy when I got them out of the oven, with streaks where the filling had bubbled out whilst they cooked but, since I had seen this happen to the contestants in the Great British Bake Off, I was not worried. After taking the pies out of the oven the only thing left to do was to pour the jelly in through the hole in the lid of the pies and then leave them to cool in the fridge over night. This I did and was very excited to see what the pies looked like inside the next day.
This is a photo showing both the inside and outside of my pork pies.
Personally I think they went pretty well, the egg is right in the middle and the jelly got all the way through to the bottom; the pastry is quite thin and the pork pieces inside are really small and tightly packed. The pies were also delicious which is the main thing, they were the nicest pork pies I have ever eaten (and that is saying something because I love pork pies) and I haven't eaten any recently since I found out how much saturated fat was in them so making my own was a very good excuse to eat some.
If you feel like you want to make your own this is the link to Paul Hollywood's recipe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/small_pork_pies_with_11074
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