Pie time

AS possibly we have suggested before, this column – like, say, a bowl of goldfish – is remarkably cheap to keep. Just ask the accounts department, or the guy who signs the expenses.

While the line might be drawn at ants eggs – should “ants” properly have an apostrophe? Do goldfish still get fed them, anyway? – little may be better than a gently fried hen’s egg, preferably between two thick slices of bread and butter and with a sprinkling of salt and pepper.

Then there are the sublime joys of a good corned beef pie, and once again a reminder of the Savoytrained chef who’d taken over a street corner pub in Hartlepool and was preparing pie and peas for the Over 60s club.

“There’s not much you can do with pie and peas, is there?” I asked, innocently.

“Yes, there is,” replied the chef, “you can bugger them.”

There’s corned beef pie and mushy peas at Lowfields Farm Shop at Willington, alongside the A690 heading towards Durham, a great inch-thick doorstep of muscular and nicely seasoned pie with mushy peas the way that grandmother used to make and gravy that’s hot, thick and aromatic.

What more could be wanted save (arguably) for a fried egg on top? For corned read cornucopia, the horn of plenty, and just £3.45.

The 600-acre farm has been run by five generations of the Moralee family.

Andrew and Sara, the present incumbents, opened the farm shop in 2007 in the now-familiar name of diversification and of healthy eating.

They probably don’t do fried egg sandwiches.

They do sell their own lamb and beef – The Boss thought the meat looked lovely, regretted that she’d just been to the supermarket – and much else from around the County Durham doors.

“We don’t do food miles, we do food yards,” Sara is fond of saying.

The shop sells everything from bags of sticks to “ingredients for spring pie” – whatever it is, it can’t come soon enough – the stoneflagged café offers sandwiches with salad around £5.50, paninis a few shillings cheaper and views across the fields to Byers Green. Breakfasts, until 11.30am, have been well recommended.

I’d started with a large bowl of manifestly home-made vegetable soup and “crusty” bread, the only disappointment that the promised “pot” of butter proved to be a stonecold catering pack. An enjoyable apple pie finished the meal, though the custard was lukewarm. Maybe they shouldn’t leave the windows open.

The Boss appreciated her salad bowl (£5.50) with coleslaw, only became agitated on perusing the bumph on a box of tea bags – or “biodegradable tea temples” as they were called, 15 for £3.49.

Signed by someone simply called Louise, like she was the lass from across the road, it followed a little dig at “ordinary” Earl Grey with the remarkable statement that it was like “claiming to be landed gentry and only owning a Barbour jacket”.

“Pretentious tosh,” said The Boss and so, of course, it was. Whatever the cup of tea, our inexpensive tastes will continue.

■ Lowfields Farm Shop and Café, Willington, County Durham, tel: 01388-746900. Children’s play area outside; educational farm visits in the offing. Closed Mondays, except bank holidays.

ON Friday lunchtime to Darlington Snooker Club’s mini-beer festival – pie and peas excellent as always, memorable pint called Nippy Nights from the York Brewery – followed in the evening by a do at Cockton Hill Club in Bishop Auckland in aid of St Mary’s Juniors FC. Food? Pie and peas. There’s a saying in journalism that some stuff’s fish and chippy. This column damn-near represents the green party; pie and peasy, anyway.

MOHAMMED’S back in town.

Dacca’s where he’s been these past two years, building a hotel and country club. Darlington’s the one he had to come back for.

Born in Skipton, getting on 30 years in Darlo, Mohammed seems over the years to have owned more Indian restaurants than most of us have had very hot dinners and has embraced worldwide charitable work, too.

Somewhere amid the globe trotting he may have misplaced his surname.

If he has one, none knows it.

Four years ago he opened Radhuni – he opened it, I officially opened it – next to the Civic Theatre. Subsequently he sub-let it.

Now he’s back, the place spotlessly and stylishly restored, the reopening night food terrific. This time it was Councillor Jim Ruck, the mayor, who cut the ribbon. Mohammed was iconic, said the mayor, the model for all to follow.

Then they wanted a few more words from me. After the lord mayor’s show… Rather more modestly, Coun Ruck had earlier in the day visited a dropin centre in Clifton Road for those with learning difficulties. Corned beef pie and peas was £2. “To die for,”

he said.

There, too, was the splendid Tony Mummery who’d begun on the washing up, been promoted (he said) to the coffee machine and moved seamlessly front of house.

Tony’s a Londoner, Arsenal man, insists on calling everyone Sir. Requests for a little more informality are invariably acknowledged. “Oh yes, Sir, I will.”

Outside it poured, but on a lousy November evening, Radhuni was Indian summer.

THE weather was no kinder for the mayor of Shildon’s charity dinner at the Civic Hall, but the grub represented one of the best function meals in memory. Proper beef, nice little garlic-flavoured potatoes, efficient service and a champagne-andsomething flavoured torte with which to finish. As always in Shildon, torte well.

LAST week’s 22-carat musings on Double Diamond and other keg beers of the 1960s prompt Ted Emmerson in Ingleby Barwick to recall that Old Shildon WMC won a Ford Escort for selling most DD in the North-East. Chilton WMC was second.

So what did they do with the car?

“Sold it and gave the money to charity,”

says Ted, the Tetley’s rep at the time. Diamond guys, Shildon lads.

Ron Taylor has also been in touch.

You forgot Whitbread Tankard, he says, a much bigger seller than DD, Courage Tavern or the ruddy Red Barrel. Ron was the Whitbread rep.

Tankard, he recalls, was heavily promoted back then by Ralph Daykin at the Victoria in Worton, Wensleydale. Tankard may be long gone; Ralph still holds court.

Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland recalls a Whitbread television commercial in which an attractive woman asks: “How do you do it Stanley?”

Stan sings: “It’s Tankard that helps me excel, After one I do everything well.”

In Bishop, perhaps unsurprisingly, they had an alternative version. It can’t possibly be repeated here.

…and finally, the bairns wondered with just 31 days to go if we knew what angry rodents send one another at Christmas.

Cross mouse cards, of course.