Ernie was quite a character.
As if he wasn't striking enough with the orange hair and piercing pale blue eyes, being 5' 2" square made him quite imposing considering his height. His long suffering wife Aunty Frances was a good six inches taller than him, and my God sometimes she needed it. They had 4 children, mercifully most of them were spared their father's colouring (although I did mistake a photo of his grandson for him once). After my mother's funeral, Aunty Frances told us of the day she got up at 5.30 am to go to her 1st cleaning job (she had many jobs all at the same time), and found a goat in the living room. Yes that's right, a goat! It was a pub transaction, typical of Uncle Ernie.
Anyway, one day Mom and I were making pastry when there was a knock at the door. It was Uncle Ernie, who just thought he'd pop in to see how his closest sister was keeping. Via a few pubs of course.
"Making pastry are we? Let me show you how to make proper pastry Ivy!" Mother was perplexed. The last thing she wanted was a pissed-up Ernie ruining tea for Dad. She only had enough stuff to make this lot of pastry. Ernie pushed past and started doing a running commentary on making rough puff pastry: only using a third of the butter in the mix, dividing it into 3, dabbing with butter, folding and rolling, resting a short while in between: all this while I stood mute in the corner by the larder absorbing his commentary and creation. Commentary that was interspersed with tales of Army life and tuts from Mom. After he'd rolled the pastry lid out and egg washed the creation, he said "Ta-ra" and went. Mom looked as if she'd been hit by the steamroller I saw outside the day before.
We drunk our tea and put the pie in the oven ready for Dad to come home.
Over tea, Dad said "Did Ernie come today?" Mom was shocked. "How did you know?" "I saw him outside the Plough," which was a mile in the opposite direction from Ernie's house, "and I thought he probably called in our house on the way."
A short while later Dad said "Who made the pie?" Mom had to confess it was Ernie.
"Tell him to put more salt in the pastry."
So apart from needing more salt, how good was his advice?
ReplyDeleteDo you know, I've never made rough puff pastry, because I don't particularly like it!
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