Recipe: Woolton Pie and Eggless Sponge Cake (From Bromsgrove Advertiser)

Recipe: Woolton Pie and Eggless Sponge Cake

11:47am Friday 15th January 2010

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REVISITING the days of food rationing was a logical step for Valentine Warner. After all, the unabashedly posh cook has already preached the benefits of eating with the seasons in his cookery programme What To Eat Now. He balks at the idea of throwing away any part of an animal, declaring he’s the “only person I know who eats tripe”, and even admits to eating leftover fat from other people’s plates. Unsurprisingly, he was at ease with recreating dishes from 1940s recipe books for a satellite TV programme to mark 70 years since the start of wartime rationing in Britain. Warner said: “What was so surprising about the cooking though was it was all quite tasty.” Ration Book Britain is on Yesterday, today at 5pm. Here are a couple of recipes to try.

Recipe: Woolton Pie

Serves 4

Ingredients

450g King Edward potatoes
900g carrots
225g mushrooms
1 small leek
60g chicken fat
2 spring onions
Salt and pepper
Nutmeg
Chopped parsley
Bunch of herbs made of one small bay leaf, one small sprig of thyme, parsley and celery

Method

Peel the potatoes and carrots, cut them into slices of the thickness of a penny. Wash them well and dry in a tea-cloth. Fry them separately in a pan with a little chicken fat or margarine. Do the same for the mushrooms, adding the finely chopped onions and leek. Mix them together and season with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg and roughly chopped fresh parsley. Fill a pie dish with this mixture, placing the bundle of herbs in the middle. Moisten with a little giblet stock or water. Allow to cool then cover with a pastry crust made from half beef suet or chicken fat and half margarine. Bake in a moderate oven for an hour-and-a-half.

Recipe: Eggless Sponge Cake

Ingredients

170g self-raising flour
1 level tsp baking powder
70g margarine
57g sugar
1 level tbsp golden syrup
150ml milk or milk and water
Jam for filling

Method

Sift the flour and baking powder. Cream the margarine, sugar and golden syrup until soft and light, add a little flour then a little liquid. Continue like this until a smooth mixture. Grease and flour two seven-inch sandwich tins and divide the mixture between the tins. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until firm to the touch just above the centre of a moderately hot oven. Turn out and sandwich with jam.

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