Ireland: Dingle Pies (March 11, 2008)

The word fairings starts to turn up in English around the mid-1600's. It means something you buy at a fair -- sometimes as a present for someone else -- and specifically, food bought at a fair. In Ireland, these regional fairs -- which started out as periodic horse and cattle markets and expanded into general excuses for meeting and celebration -- were normally tied to the great holidays of the old Irish calendar, or to the major feasts of the Christian religious calendar that supplanted it.

One such holiday was Lammas Day, August 1st. ("Lammas" is a worn-down version of the Old English word hlaefmaesse, "loaf-feast": this festival, celebrating the grain harvest, is closely tied to the ancient Celtic summer / harvest festival of Lughnasagh.) Among many Irish Lammas fairs, one of the most famous was the one held in or near Dingle during the first week or ten days in August. People would flock to the Kingdom of Kerry from miles around to buy and sell their cows, horses and other goods, and to eat and drink and have a good time. The Dingle fair was particularly famous, and is still remembered in folksongs like the one about Red-Haired Mary. Other Lammas fairs in the area had such curious traditions as making a goat King of the Fair (this tradition is still carried on yearly at the Puck Fair in Killorglin, Co. Kerry, just south of the Dingle peninsula -- click here for the Google map), and they also still carry on the Dingle Fair's old tradition of serving fairings like the Dingle pie.

Once made with mutton, Dingle pies are now usually made with lamb. They're small individual pies that could easily be bought from a stall and carried around the fair while you had a look at the cattle or thought about where you might stop for your next pint.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.

For the pastry:

• 1 1/4 lb / 5 cups plain (all-purpose) flour

• 1 generous cup butter, or half butter and half shortening
• 1/2 cup very cold water

For the filling:

• 1 lb boneless lamb (or mutton if you can get it)

• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 potato, diced
• 2 celery sticks, diced
• 1 egg, beaten
• Salt and fresh ground pepper

First make the pastry. Sive flour into a bowl. Rub in the butter, or cut it in using two knives (or alternately, pulse it with the flour in a food processor) until you achieve a "corn meal" consistency. Add the chilled water and mix briefly (or pulse in the food processorjust until the pastry gathers into a ball). If doing this work by hand, turn the pastry out ontoa floured surface and knead briefly until it makes a cohesive ball.

Wrap in plastic wrap or baking parchment and leave in the refrigerator to rest for at least twenty minutes.

Trim fat or gristle form the meat: cut into small pieces. Place in a bowl with the diced onion, carrot, potato and celery. Mix well and season well with salt and black pepper.

Preheat oven to 180C / 350F.

Cut one-third off the pastry ball to save for the lids of the pies. Roll out the rest. Use a small plate as a guide and cut the dough into six circles. Lay these out flat on the work surface and divide the lamb and vegetable mixture among the six circles, piling it in the middle of each one.

Roll out the remaining pastry into six smaller circles . Lay these on top of the fillings. Brush the edges of the larger pastry circles with a little water and roll them inward along with the smaller circles, pinching the upper and lower layers together to seal them.

Pierce a small hole or cut a slit in the top of each pie so that the steam of cooking can escape. Brush the pies with beaten egg: place on greased (or nonstick) baking sheets.

Bake for one hour. Serve hot or cold.

(This recipe is part of the 2008 Festival of Traditional Irish Saint Patrick's Day Recipes at EuropeanCuisines.com. For the rest of the recipes, please check the menu at this page.)

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