For this breakfast pie we travel halfway around the world. Bacon and egg pies are a New Zealand classic. They make a perfect holiday breakfast. Fancy looking and easy to assemble. Read about our hero for some great dinner conversation.
Eggs, thick smoky chunks of juicy bacon, lightly spiced flavorful soft green shallots, and gooey cheese all encased in beautiful, buttery, flaky layers of puff pastry. What is not to love? Practice this elegant bake and be ready for the holidays.
Ingredients:
Shallot Mixture
▢ 1 tbsp butter
▢ 1 cup of sliced shallots
▢ ¼ tsp garlic powder
▢ Pinch of salt
▢ 1 TBS Worcestershire sauce
Bacon and Egg Pie
▢ 1 ½ lbs puff pastry or 3 store-bought pastry sheets, thawed
▢ Extra puff pastry sheet for decorations optional
▢ 12 oz smoked bacon thick cut, cut into ½ inch strips
▢ 9 eggs 1 yolk is reserved for the egg wash
▢ 3 oz Monterey Jack cheese shredded or Gouda
▢ Extra salt and pepper to taste
In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, shallots, pinch of salt and cook until they have softened, while stirring frequently. Once softened, stir in the Worcestershire sauce. Allow the mixture to cool down sightly.
Place a pizza stone in the middle rack of your oven, and preheat oven to 400°F.
Spray a 9 inch pie pan. Since my store was out of puff pastry I used a regular pie crust with a unrolled crescent dough for the top crust.
Place about ⅓ of the bacon on the bottom of the sheet.
Break 2 eggs into a bowl. Separate the next egg adding the white and reserving the yolk. Whip together. Spread the eggs over the bacon on the base of the pie dish.
Break the remaining 6 eggs one at a time in a small bowl and slide them into the pie, try to keep them evenly spaced through the dish.
By breaking eggs into a bowl you can fish out any bits of shell that might drop. Believe me it is a mess if the final egg decides to have its shell crumble into the other eggs in the pie shell!
Sprinkle some salt and pepper on top.
Dollop ½ of the shallot mixture over the eggs, followed by the rest of the bacon, then the rest of the shallots and finally the grated cheese. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the cheese.
Brush some water around the edge of the pie, and place the top pastry to cover the casserole dish. Press the edges gently to seal. With your fingers, roll the excess to create a ridge along the edge of the pie, and crimp it using a fork to completely seal the edges of the pie.
Mix the extra egg yolk with about 1 tbsp of water and whisk to combine. Brush this egg yolk over the surface of the pie.
Make 5 slits in the pie carefully (to avoid piercing one of the eggs).
Place the pie in the preheated oven, on top of the preheated pizza stone. Lower the heat to 375°F, and cook for about 50 minutes.
Check the pie after 20 minutes, rotate the pie if necessary and check every 10 minutes afterwards. If the top looks like it's going to burn, cover with foil.
When the pie is baked, remove it from the oven and let it cool down.
Slice and serve while warm, but not hot, or at room temperature.
Serve with ketchup for a truly New Zealand touch.
Notes:
Make sure to get some good quality thick bacon.
Some recipes call for scrambled eggs, here we added both whole eggs and scrambled eggs. So out of the 8 eggs used for this recipe, 6 were whole, and the yolks of the remaining two were broken. The scrambled eggs spread through the pie and the other whole eggs were evenly placed throughout the pie.
Just a sprinkling of cheese adds more flavor. I used Monterey Jack which melts well and has a milder taste than cheddar. If you can’t find Monterey Jack, use a gouda instead. The cheese adds a delightful creaminess to the pie without making it too soggy.
For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDnaW_JimyY December, 1963
So happy to be serving my Master for over ten years now.
socialslave
To satisfy and restore.
To nourish, support and maintain.
To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,
to nurture, assist, and sustain
…..I cook!
Please buy slave's cookbook:
The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTM via @amazon
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Charles Arthur Allen Aberhart died in a public park, Christchurch, New Zealand on January 23, 1964. He was a drapery store manager. A few months earlier, he had been convicted of indecent assault on a male, but because the offense was with a man who had consented, he was sentenced to only three months imprisonment. On the evening of Thursday the 23rd, he drove alone to the Armagh Street entrance where he visited the lavatory by Little Victoria Lake.
Allen didn’t know that there had been recent queer-bashings in Hagley Park. Some gay men sitting in their cars outside the park saw him go in, but nobody thought to warn him because they didn’t know him.
That evening, six youths – Zane McDonald, 15; Anthony O’Connor, 15; Frank Reynolds, 16; Raymond Neither, 16 or 17; Brian Johns, 17; and Roger Williams, 17 – decided to go to Hagley Park “to belt up a queer”, using Reynolds, who looked the youngest, as bait.
Aberhart was the second or third man Reynolds and O’Connor approached in the lavatory. He talked to them about sex acts. (A detective would later refer to “these disgusting phrases” rather than quote them.) They took him to the others, who demanded his name and began to gang up on him.
Allen called out to William Overfield, out walking his dogs, “Call the police, I’m being molested!” But Overfield thought Aberhart could look after himself, and told them all to go home. Aberhart tried to mollify them by offering to buy them a cup of coffee, or some fish and chips, but they dragged him back into the park.
John Cruthers, cycling through the park later, found Aberhart’s body half way between the gates and the lavatory block. He happened to know the six and had seen Williams’s car there earlier. They were arrested the next day, and pleaded not guilty to separate charges of manslaughter in the Supreme Court on May 5.
Five of the accused made statements to the police. Four said Ray Neither had punched Aberhart, three said Zane McDonald had, but each statement could be used only against the person who had made it.
A detective testified that Neither had said he had knocked Aberhart down, “and he did not get up again. He struck me as a queer. Someone else hit him when he was on his knees, and then I hit him again. You don’t know your own strength until you come against a joker who doesn’t hit back.”
But police did not have Neither make a written statement.
Aberhart had bruised arms and a broken nose, consistent with being held while he was punched, and a minor fracture of the base of the skull. The coroner ruled his death was from a brain hemorrhage.
The trial lasted five days. None of the six defense counsel called any evidence, but each spoke to exonerate his own client. Gerald Lascelles, for Neither, said: “It is quite impossible to put the brand of manslaughter on any individual. Of none of the accused can it be said that he actually committed the offense.”
It is believed as a convicted gay man, he was treated with less humanity, and the jury was more concerned for the boys' futures.
The jury had a lot more sympathy for the idea that the youths were just “getting into a bit of mischief”. The fact that a man had lost his life seemed to have been forgotten.
So far as is recorded, the only acknowledgment of homophobia in the verdict was a single line each from the prosecutor and the judge.
The prosecutor said: “Whatever the unfortunate man’s shortcomings were, he did not seek out his assailants: they sought him.” (If he had sought them out, presumably he would he have deserved all he got.)
The judge said: “The man who died might have had homosexual tendencies, but he had a right to live.” (As though queers deserved to be beaten up, in moderation.)
After deliberating seven hours, the all-male jury found all six not guilty of manslaughter. They had not even been charged with murder!
The Christchurch Press immediately responded:
“It is hard to understand how the jury decided that none of the six youths was guilty. We can only hope that they were not influenced by the reputed character of the dead man.”
Only Monty Holcroft in the Listener even mentioned the aspect of homophobia:
“At the center of the case…was the assumption that the dead man was a homosexual…. The six youths who went in search of “queers” were not moved by moral indignation: they were looking for excitement, and believed their victim to be fair game…. The verdict…leaves…a suspicion that…an alleged homosexuality has been felt to be an offense which mitigates a crime. And the crime itself came out of an unhealthy concern with sexual deviation.”
It was one of those events that set the political action in motion, and probably the first time that the public had reacted in this way.
Letters to newspapers agreed, and the president of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Arthur O’Halloran, wrote: “Perhaps in the not distant future our archaic legislation relating to homosexuality will be brought into line with the recommendations of the Wolfenden committee.”
The “not distant future” was to stretch out for years. Today, 57 years after Charles Aberhart’s lonely death, there are still quarters where there would be more sympathy for Johns, McDonald, Neither, O’Connor, Reynolds and Williams than there would be for him. The homophobia that drove them still simmers.
Homosexuality and same-sex relationships have been documented in New Zealand for centuries. Same-sex relationships and activities appear to have been acceptable among pre-colonial Māori. Some stories, for example that of Tutanekai and Tiki, center on same-sex couples.
Some of the earliest European settlers in New Zealand were Christian missionaries who came in the early nineteenth century and eventually converted most of the Māori population to Christianity. They brought with them the Christian doctrine that homosexuality was sinful. In fact, one missionary, William Yate, was sent back to England in disgrace after being caught engaging in sex with young Māori men.
When New Zealand became a British colony in 1840, British law was adopted in its entirety, making "buggery" illegal and a capital offense. In 1893, all kinds of sexual activity between men was criminalized, with penalties including imprisonment, hard labor, and flogging. Sexual acts between women were never criminalized.
A man whose death sparked progress for the New Zealand gay rights movement has had his conviction for homosexuality overturned.
Now the family of Charles Arthur Allan Aberhart, known as Allan, has planned a memorial in his name to recognize how far the movement has come.
"(We're) inviting people to reflect on the fact that we've actually come really far but it was at the expense of this poor man's life," Aberhart's cousin, gay activist and public relations consultant Nicole Skews-Poole said.
Outrage at Aberhart's killing saw the launch of the Dorian Society, the forerunner to the group that successfully lobbied for the homosexual law reform.
"For (generations) his death was a massive shadow over their lives and something that really defined their activism," Skews-Poole said.
"(We're) trying to also frame it as, it shouldn't have had to happen, but its happening is part of what helped the homosexual law reform pass," Skews-Poole said.
