Gala pie: a dish that deserves an audience

Some dishes are just meant to be shared. I’m not talking about those items you buy on a hangover from the corner shop that sanctimoniously declare ‘meant for sharing’ or ‘share size’ on their passive aggressive packaging (I’ll be the judge of that, cheese and onion crisps and chocolate fingers). I mean something that you’ve invested energy and love into, something which demands to be passed around, praised and enjoyed; something impressive and delicious. A homemade cassoulet. A perfect chocolate cake. A batch of scones. A gala pie.

The moment of cutting into a gala pie, and revealing the perfect row of eggs suspended in meat minced by your own fair hands is one of serious culinary pride. It deserves an audience, and you deserve your moment in the sun.

A gala pie is a pork-based pie, with a row of hard-boiled eggs running straight through the centre. It traditionally uses hot water pastry, and can be round or rectangular. It comes out of the oven bronzed and beautiful, and you can decorate the top of the pie as much or as little as your heart desires. It will cut into handsome slices, each showing off the egg cross-section. Commercial producers of gala pies have an egg-based advantage: eggs are separated before creating a sausage of yolks which is poached, before being placed in a sausage of whites, creating a perfectly even egg cylinder. But you can create a similar effect simply by slicing off the ends of the eggs before placing them in the pie.

There are a hundred different ways to create the pork base; I use a mixture of sausage meat, pork belly and smoked bacon rashers. The bacon and pork belly are hand chopped, which brings a fantastic texture to the finished pie; it might feel like a slightly repetitive job, but it’s also a satisfying one, and certainly worth it over, say, using pork mince.