Nanny’s Magpie Pies

Some recipes survive because somebody wrote them down. Others survive because nobody ever forgot being fed.

During the darkest years of the Troubles, my father was sent to Northern Ireland as part of his duties as a Garda. He was away for several months, although as a young boy I never really grasped why. I knew only that he had packed a suitcase and disappeared into a world that belonged entirely to grown-ups. Words like politics, security and terrorism meant nothing to me. I knew only that Dad wasn’t at home.

Nanny slipped into the space he left behind.

She arrived carrying little more than a suitcase, yet within a day or two it was impossible to imagine the house without her. Somehow, she found her place without ever seeming to claim it, and before the week was out her presence felt entirely natural.

Throughout my childhood, Nanny, Denis and Kathleen came to visit us in Glenbeigh every year, sometimes twice. This is the only occasion I remember when Nanny stayed with us for any length of time, but it has remained with me ever since.

My mother was only in her early thirties, raising four children largely on her own while my father was away. There was always plenty to do. Washing was never finished for long, meals seemed to arrive with astonishing regularity, and four young children possessed an endless talent for creating fresh disorder almost as quickly as the previous one had been tidied away.

Nanny had a gift for making herself useful without ever taking over. While my mother got on with one job, Nanny would be folding washing, peeling vegetables or laying the table. Childhood carried on uninterrupted while, around us, the work was shared so naturally that we scarcely noticed it. By evening we had exhausted ourselves, my mother no longer seemed to be carrying quite so much on her own, and somewhere in the kitchen Nanny would already be thinking about what we were going to eat.

There was one meal she made that belonged entirely to her.

They were small pastry pies, filled with mutton and onion, the sort of thing that looked ordinary enough while she was making them. Nanny baked them first, but only for about twenty minutes, just long enough for the pastry to begin to colour. Then came the part that made no sense to me at all. Out of the oven they came and into a pot of stock, where they were left to simmer until the pastry softened again, taking in the broth as they cooked.

I loved them. The pastry was nothing like the crisp pastry of an ordinary pie. It was softer, somewhere between pastry and dumpling, with the stock worked right through it. I can still remember breaking one open with my fork, the meat inside, and spooning more of the broth over everything on the plate.

None of this, however, was what made Nanny’s pies famous in our house.

It was what she told us was inside them.

“Magpies.”

She never gave us any reason to think she was joking. She would put the pies in front of us, tell us what they were and carry on as though there were nothing remotely unusual about serving magpie for dinner.

I was old enough to have my doubts, but not old enough to dismiss the possibility altogether. Adults knew things children didn’t. Grandmothers, particularly, seemed to know things that belonged to another world entirely, and somewhere in that world it appeared perfectly possible that a magpie might end up inside a pie.

So we ate them.

Whatever reservations we had about the contents disappeared fairly quickly once we started. They were far too good to sacrifice to principle, and before long we were breaking through the soft pastry, spooning the stock over it and eating the supposed magpie along with everyone else.

For years afterwards, that was what they remained to me. Not mutton pies. Not a traditional Kerry dish. Not something connected with fairs or an older way of cooking.

They were Nanny’s Magpie Pies.

It was only years later that I discovered there was nothing peculiar about the pies at all.

What I had assumed belonged to Nanny belonged, in fact, to the place she came from. Around Camp, mutton pies had been made for generations, particularly around fair days, and the method I remembered so clearly — the brief baking followed by cooking in stock — was not one of Nanny’s inventions.

That discovery changed the memory slightly. The pies I had known at our kitchen table in Glenbeigh had travelled there with her from Camp, carrying with them a way of cooking she had learned long before any of us were around to ask where it came from.

I wish I had asked her.

I never did.

Nanny died many years ago, but the pies did not disappear with her. My mother still makes them occasionally, using the same method she remembers from Nanny: the pies into the oven first, then into the stock to finish cooking.

I don’t have them very often now, which may be part of why they still taste so particular to me. One mouthful and I know exactly what they are before I have had time to think about it: the soft pastry, the mutton, the warm stock spooned over the top.

My mother knows I still love them.

So whenever she makes a batch, she makes one extra for me.

Nanny’s Magpie Pies

The recipe, as best we can bring it back.

There was never a recipe card for Nanny’s Magpie Pies. She made them as so many things were once made — from memory, by eye and without any particular reason to imagine that somebody might one day want the measurements written down.

What follows is based on what my mother remembers of Nanny’s method, supported by traditional Kerry recipes that use the same unusual combination of baking the pies first and then simmering them in mutton stock.

For the pies

500g mutton or lamb, cut into very small pieces
1 small onion, finely chopped
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Shortcrust or hot-water-crust pastry
1 beaten egg, for brushing

For the stock

Mutton or lamb bones, if available
1–2 onions, roughly chopped
1 carrot, roughly chopped
A little thyme and parsley
Salt and black pepper
Water

To make them

Season the finely chopped mutton or lamb with the onion, salt and plenty of black pepper. Line small individual pie tins with pastry, divide the meat mixture between them and cover with pastry lids. Seal the edges well and make a small hole in the centre of each pie. Brush lightly with beaten egg.

Bake at about 190°C / 170°C fan for approximately 20 minutes. They should have begun to cook and taken on a little colour, but don’t look for the deeply browned, crisp finish of a conventional pie. Nanny’s pies had another stage still to come.

Meanwhile, make a light stock from the mutton or lamb bones, onion, carrot and herbs. Cover with water and simmer gently until well flavoured, then strain and season. A good-quality lamb stock can be used if bones aren’t available.

Bring the strained stock to a gentle simmer. Lower the baked pies carefully into it and simmer for approximately 20 minutes. This is the part that gives the pies their distinctive character: the pastry softens and takes up some of the broth, becoming much closer to the texture I remember from childhood.

Lift each pie carefully into a shallow bowl and spoon plenty of the hot stock around and over it.

Serve immediately, with a spoon and fork..

This is a reconstruction rather than Nanny’s written recipe, based on my mother’s memory of how she made them and on surviving recipes for traditional Kerry mutton pies.