Chicken Curry Pie, The Square Pie Company

I learned a valuable lesson from this pie my friends.

I learned that you shouldn’t pour gravy over a curry pie.

Actually the curry / gravy taste clash wasn’t as bad as you might imagine.  But it did stop me enjoying my square pie in all it’s glory.

And for a while there glory was very much the word for the Square Pie mob, as they ushered in the current wave of upmarket, kinda cool, desirable pies. 

Nowadays everyone’s at it, and the nation’s bakeries and supermarkets heave under the weight of lovingly constructed, uber tasty monuments to the possibilities of pie.  So is there still room for the self-styled “squarest pies in the land”?

Yes.  There is.  For their pies are square, and come in posh little boxes, as shown.

Just, like I say, maybe try and show a little restraint with the gravy jug if you’re getting the chicken curry variety.

The new 2010 What Pie Wall Calendar, celebrating the International Year of the Pie, is on sale now.

It looks like this:

Each month is illustrated by a thematicallly appropriate mouthwatering pie, and a suitably inspiring message: click here to see a preview of what each month has in store.  (You can actually select each month in turn at the bottom there….)

Or click here to order yours now.   It’s a snip at £12 (UK), $17.99 (US).

British Beef, Stilton and Ale Pie, Higgidy Pies

Like the notorious and controversial Stilton, Feta and Pine Nut model discussed earlier, this offering from Higgidy is a lovingly rendered take home and bake number available from supermarkets and the like.  (I almost said from ‘the Higgidy stable’, but I didn’t like the way this phrase seemed to suggest their pies may contain horse.  Do you get horse pie in France, I wonder?  Do let me know, if you do.)

So anyway, yes.  Beef pie.  That’s what this is, essentially.  You could compare it to the West Cornwall Pasty Company’s Steak and Stilton Pasty, which has similar aspirations of gastro-pub.  And I’d have to say I prefer the Higgidy variety: it wins on both chewyness and cheese attack, less being, in both cases, very much more, if you see what I mean, and if you can follow me through these many, many commas.

So, yes, a very nice pie, even though it looks like I burned the topping a bit there.

Spinach, Feta and Toasted Pine Nuts Pie, Higgidy Pies

Whenever I’ve seen one of the Sunday supplements do a pie feature, the lovely offerings from Higgidy have come in for a bit of a bashing.  Chiefly, it seems, because they’ve committed the apparently terrible crime of making their pies a bit posh. 

That and the fact that Sunday supplement pie features tend to be written by cretins.

So yes, Spinach, Feta and Pine Nuts is something of a non-traditional filling. Bit poncey even, I would accept.  But it also happens to be very, very nice.  Just look at it there, all that green stuff.  It’s a veritable forest of pie.  Wrapped in pleasingly human (as opposed to robotically uniform) pastry. 

Obviously a winner with the vegetarian pie eater, I would recommend it to anyone.  And it’s practically good for you, which is no bad thing in a food:  click here for the nutritional gubbins.

So ignore the blinkered hack, I say.  Pie diversity is a beautiful thing.  And there is room on my plate for all the many wonders of pie kind.

Spicy Butterbean Pie, Pure Pie

Pure Pie run the excellent organic and free range pie concessions at London Bridge station and the like (see also the Organic Chicken, Smoked Cheese and Mushroom Pie), and this Spicy Butterbean Pie with mixed vegetables and mature cheddar is an absolute belter.

Very tasty, very satisfying chewing consistency, suitable for vegetarians and most other people of a pie persuasion come to that.

You can buy them ready to eat there and then or ready to take home and warm up yourself. And they also do a pies by post service, so you could get a box of 8 of them delivered if you don’t find yourself near one of their stores in the near future. Bostin’!

Butterbean daft?  Share your thoughts with a comment.

Steak and Ale Pudding, Sainsbury’s

A ghostly apparation visited your What Pie servant in Sainsbury’s, implored me to try this pudding and then vanished into the air like the ghost of puddings future. I now suspect they may have worked for Sainsbury’s. It’s nice enough, in that doughy puddingy kinda way, but if this is a gastronomic thrill worth accosting strangers about then I’m a gormless hippy with too much time on his hands. Oh.

Anyway, the ale didn’t really give this pudding any extra taste, and I kind of missed the traditional pudding kidney. Disgusting though that sounds.

Put it away with He Doesn’t Know Why by Fleet Foxes (on last.fm)

Puddings your thing?  Comment below.

We asked 100 dads: what are you hoping to receive for Father’s Day?

Here’s what they said.

Don’t forget, you can still order excellent gifts for pie loving dads from The What Pie Shop.  Although if you are in the UK you might want to get a wriggle on, as they are manufactured in the USA, and delivery can take a week or so.

May I recommend a T-shirt with an extremely lovely pie on it, and the legend “Make Pies Not War”, “Happiness is a Warm Pie”, “In Crust We Trust” or “Give Pies A Chance”.  Or a mug along similar lines.  There are even “Happiness is a Warm Pie” boxer shorts.  Man we spoil you.

Click here to check out our pie wares.

Oxfam have closed their Big Noise music download service.  So links on older pie reviews will no longer work.  Sorry.  Whatpie will attempt to redirect those hitherto easily accessed musical accompaniments at some point.

For now, new pie profiles will carry links to suitable (or, more likely, just pun-tastic) sonic offerings via www.last.fm.

Steak, Ale & Shallot Organic Pie, Marks & Spencer

Hurray, it’s an organic pie, and it’s quite big and hearty.

Boo, it’s a bit bland really. Could have done with much tastier gravy, maybe it needed a bit of red wine in it or something.

Even that dribbly voice-over woman from the adverts would be hard pressed to get too excited about this one.

Chow down to: Highway to Hell by AC/DC (on last.fm).

That’s shallot?  Post your comments below.

You can carry on voting if you like, but there’s just no fighting it.  Short crust has won the great “What topping would you choose as a topping on your pie if you could choose any kind of topping (from this list of three types of topping)” poll, enabling the humble flower-based favourite to sneer and go ”in your face” at both puff pastry and mash. 

I think the word is probably “historic”.