Chef Thomas
Cauliflower Cheese
A whole cauliflower blanketed in strong, mustardy cheese sauce, baked until the top blisters gold and the kitchen smells like the kind of evening where nothing else needs doing.
Culinary Explorer
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Devonshire Squab Pie
Created by Chef Thomas
A West Country farmhouse pie of lamb layered with Bramleys, onions and prunes under a golden shortcrust lid, the sweet-savoury balance so quietly right it makes you wonder why it was ever forgotten.
Main Dishes
British
Special Occasion
Comfort Food
45 min
Active Time
2 hr cook•2 hr 45 min total
Yield6 servings
October rain on the window. The Bramleys are in, the last of them, pulled from the tree at the bottom of the garden where they've been dropping into the grass all month. This is their best use, I think. Not a crumble, not a sauce, but here, layered with lamb and onion and dark, sticky prunes inside a pie that most people have never heard of and Devon is in danger of losing altogether.
Devonshire squab pie has nothing to do with squab. No pigeon. The name is old and the reason for it is lost, which feels about right for a dish this unassuming. It's lamb and apples under pastry. That's all. But the balance of sweet and savoury is quietly remarkable, the kind of thing that makes you put your fork down after the first bite and look at the plate properly, because something is happening that you didn't expect. The apple melts into the lamb juices. The prunes go soft and almost jammy. The nutmeg, grated generously, ties it all together without announcing itself.
I found this recipe years ago in a second-hand bookshop in Totnes, in a little paperback of West Country cooking that cost fifty pence and smelled of damp. I wrote it down in the notebook and have been making it every autumn since. It's the kind of pie that belongs to a particular sort of evening: cold outside, warm in, nowhere to be. Right food, right evening.
There are few better feelings than putting a warm pie in front of someone on a night like that and watching them come back for a second slice without being asked.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
plain flour
Quantity
300g
cold unsalted butter
Quantity
150g
cubed
fine sea salt
Quantity
pinch
cold water
Quantity
3-4 tablespoons
lamb neck fillet or boneless shoulder
Quantity
700g
cut into thick slices
onions
Quantity
2 large
peeled and sliced into rings
Bramley apples
Quantity
2
peeled, cored, and thickly sliced
pitted prunes
Quantity
12
whole nutmeg
Quantity
for grating
thyme
Quantity
a few sprigs
fine sea salt and black pepper
Quantity
to taste
lamb or chicken stock
Quantity
200ml
egg
Quantity
1
beaten, for glazing
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| plain flour | 300g |
| cold unsalted buttercubed | 150g |
| fine sea salt | pinch |
| cold water | 3-4 tablespoons |
| lamb neck fillet or boneless shouldercut into thick slices | 700g |
| onionspeeled and sliced into rings | 2 large |
| Bramley applespeeled, cored, and thickly sliced | 2 |
| pitted prunes | 12 |
| whole nutmeg | for grating |
| thyme | a few sprigs |
| fine sea salt and black pepper | to taste |
| lamb or chicken stock | 200ml |
| eggbeaten, for glazing | 1 |
Equipment Needed
- •1.5-litre deep pie dish
- •Rolling pin
- •Baking tray to sit the dish on
Instructions
- 1
Make the pastry
Tip the flour and salt into a large bowl. Add the cold butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like rough breadcrumbs. Some pieces of butter should still be visible, flat little shards that will make the pastry flaky. Add the cold water a tablespoon at a time, cutting it through with a knife, until the dough just comes together. Don't overwork it. Gather it into a flat disc, wrap in cling film, and put it in the fridge for at least thirty minutes. The pastry needs to rest. So do you.
Cold hands, cold butter, cold water. Warmth is the enemy of pastry. If your kitchen is hot, grate the butter in from frozen and work quickly. - 2
Season the lamb
While the pastry rests, lay the lamb slices out and season them well with salt, pepper, and a good grating of nutmeg. Be generous with the nutmeg. It's the quiet backbone of this pie, the thing that ties the meat and the fruit together without anyone quite being able to name it.
- 3
Layer the filling
Find a deep pie dish, about 1.5 litres. Start with a layer of lamb on the bottom, slightly overlapping. Follow with a layer of onion rings, then a layer of apple slices. Tuck four or five prunes in amongst it all and scatter over a few thyme leaves stripped from their stalks. Another grating of nutmeg. Repeat the layers until everything is used, finishing with a final layer of lamb and onion. The apples will cook down to almost nothing, sweet and yielding, holding the whole thing together. Pour the stock in slowly at the side of the dish. It should come about halfway up.
The layering doesn't need to be architectural. This is a farmhouse pie. Rough layers are fine. What matters is that the lamb, apple, and onion are distributed evenly so every forkful gets all three. - 4
Top with pastry
Set the oven to 180°C/160°C fan. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface until it's a little larger than the top of the dish, about the thickness of a pound coin. Wet the rim of the dish with a little water or beaten egg. Lay the pastry over the top, pressing the edges to seal, and trim the overhang with a knife. Crimp the edges with a fork or your fingers, whichever feels natural. Cut a small slit in the centre to let the steam out. Brush the top with beaten egg. The glaze is vanity, but earned: it gives the crust that deep, conker-brown shine that makes the kitchen feel like the right place to be.
- 5
Bake low and long
Put the pie on a baking tray (to catch any runaway juices) and bake for about two hours. After the first thirty minutes, turn the oven down to 160°C/140°C fan if the pastry is colouring too quickly. You can lay a sheet of foil loosely over the top if it needs protecting. The pie is done when the pastry is a deep golden brown, the filling is bubbling up through the steam hole, and the kitchen smells of lamb and apples and thyme and something you can't quite place, which is the nutmeg doing its work.
- 6
Rest before serving
Let it sit for ten to fifteen minutes before you bring it to the table. This isn't optional. The filling needs to settle, the juices to thicken slightly, the first frantic heat to ease. Serve it with mashed potatoes and something green. Steamed cabbage with butter. Purple sprouting broccoli if it's the right time of year. Nothing complicated. The pie is the thing.
Chef Tips
- •Lamb neck fillet is the cut for this. It has enough fat to stay tender through the long, slow bake, and it slices neatly into rounds. Shoulder works too, cut into thick pieces, but neck is what the old recipes call for and they were right.
- •The prunes aren't optional, even if you think you don't like them. They lose themselves in the cooking, going soft and sticky and sweet, and they round out the lamb in a way nothing else quite manages. Agen prunes from the French aisle of the supermarket, the soft, dark ones, are best.
- •Don't skimp on the nutmeg. It should be freshly grated, not the dusty pre-ground sort that tastes of nothing. Nutmeg is the quiet genius of this pie. Grate it over every layer and again at the end for good measure.
- •This pie reheats well. If anything, it improves overnight as the flavours settle into each other. Cover loosely with foil and warm through in a moderate oven for twenty-five minutes. The pastry won't be quite as crisp, but the filling will be better.
Advance Preparation
- •The pastry can be made up to two days ahead and kept wrapped in the fridge. Remove it thirty minutes before rolling so it's pliable but still cold.
- •The whole pie can be assembled, covered with cling film, and refrigerated for up to a day before baking. Add ten minutes to the cooking time if baking from fridge-cold.
- •Leftover pie keeps in the fridge for three days and reheats well, loosely covered with foil, at 160°C for twenty to twenty-five minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 300g)
Calories
730 calories
Total Fat
42 g
Saturated Fat
22 g
Trans Fat
1 g
Unsaturated Fat
19 g
Cholesterol
165 mg
Sodium
590 mg
Total Carbohydrates
61 g
Dietary Fiber
5 g
Sugars
13 g
Protein
30 g
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