If a thing is worth doing once, its worth doing a hundred times I always say, so here is last year's halloween article followed down the page by a great recipe for this and all your winter parties.

As promised I am bringing you a recipe to delight your friends after they have been out doing silly things on Halloween or for that matter indulging in any activity during the cold weather. But first let's think about the festival. Halloween, or Samhuinn was banned by in Britain by King James the First, a dour Scottish Presbyterian (who incidentally did not let Presbyterian homophobia get in the way of his favourite pastimes,) but the court advisors, the Karl Roves of their day pointed out that to remove such an important festival from the calendar might make the peasants revolt. "The peasants are always revolting" replied King Jimmy, "they can celebrate my salvation from the wicked papist plot instead." The plot referred to was the famous gunpowder plot when six prominent Catholics conspired to blow up the English parliament, ridding themselves of the King and all his supporters in one fell swoop. Unfortunately the schmuck lined up to light the blue paper and retire to a safe distance was the less than competent Guido or Guy Fawkes. He was apprehended in the cellars below the parliament building and charged with possession of several barrels of gunpowder and a box of matches. After doing nasty things to Guy's thumbs, toenails and bollocks the Kings men soon learned the names of the other conspirators, but it was Guy Fawkes who became remembered and deservedly so, after all he was the world's first suicide bomber, or would have been.

The King ordered that we would celebrate the failure of the wicked papist plot by burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes on a bonfire and holding a feast each year on November 5. This craftily moved the party away from the traditional Halloween while incorporating the bonfire (essential for any outdoor feast in Britain in November) with fireworks said to represent the gunpowder of the assassination plot but really a link with the old pagan celebrations; plus the feasting and drinking that went with the British Samhuinn, the Greco - Roman Bacchanal and similar celebrations in other cultures. The pretence of celebrating the King's salvation was upheld by the pompous upper middle classes but the great mass of British people, being bloody minded and anarchic by nature actually burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes as a symbolic punishment for his failing to overthrow King James.

Halloween is a very potent pagan festival, it is celebrated in all cultures and almost everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere (including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa of course because they are honorary members of the northern hemisphere. In the Indian sub continent almost a billion Hindus plus the Sikhs and Jains observe the feast as Diwali, the New Year celebration. It is a feast of colour, music, dancing and lights. Fireworks are let off to keep away the spirits of the dead who may bring bad luck for the coming year.

In Islam the feast of Eid begins at the same time, to celebrate the end of Ramadan and the beginning of a new lunar year in the Islamic calendar. We tend to think of Islam as a joyless religion. Trust me, during Eid the strictures against alcohol, gambling, eating certain foods and indulging in gross moral turpitude are not strictly observed by many of Britain's Muslims.

So why is this feast so universal? The reasons reach deep into the collective consciousness as you will find out when I reveal the nature and true whereabouts of the Holy Grail.

But now let's feed your friends. This great traditional dish eaten throughout northern England, Scotland and Ireland is not just a Halloween speciality, it is equally good as a follow - up to a skating or sledding expedition in the depths of winter, and sort of gathering on a cold night, or just as a warming and nourishing winter meal for people like my friend Sandy Schraut in Minnesota who tells me the temperature can get as low as -40. A Thorpe family tradition is to let the new year in with a Meat and Potato pie, but we seldom manage to get together these days.

This is not one of my specialities, my wife's and mother's brains were picked. I have never heard of savoury pies being eaten in America but they are an eternal British fave.

Meat and Potato Pie

Ingredients (for 4 people)

8 ounces casserole steak
1 large carrot, washed and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
3 medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced
half to three quarters of a pint of beef stock
salt and pepper to taste.

For the pie crust:
(Now normally Teri or my Mum or sister would just buy some frozen pastry from the supermarket but I am not sure you can get short crust pastry in the US, things tend to be a little sweeter over there and you would not want apple pie pastry on your main course meat dish. So to be on the safe side here's how to make your own.)

6 ounces plain flour
3 ounces Lard or Margarine
pinch of salt

rub the flour, fat and salt together until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add water little by little and knead until the mixture forms into a smooth dough (be very careful with the water, really tiny amounts at a time.

Bakers trick. Rest for an hour - not you, the dough.

Put at the ingredients (picture 1) into a casserole dish with the stock and seasoning. Cover and put in an oven pre heated to 180 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) for about 1 hour 30 minutes or until meat and vegetables are tender. Check occasionally and add a little more stock in the mixture looks dry (picture 2).

 

When the filling is ready dust the dough with flour and roll out with a dusted rolling pin (or an empty wine bottle or something like that - or flatten it with the heel of your hand like a pizza cook) Put the crust on the filling (picture 3) and return the pie to the oven until the crust is light brown.

Serve with pickled cabbage. Over here its usual to use pickled red cabbage as that adds a nice touch of colour. Picture 4 shows a typical serving of the finished thing - without read cabbage because we forgot to get some.

If you are feeding a lot of people and need to use a deep dish, just bake extra pastry on a baking tray so that everyone gets a good sized portion of crust.

This can be served without the crust, in that case it becomes the famous Liverpool dish lobscouse, staple diet of the mariners who sailed the Atlantic in the nineteenth century. In those days ships biscuits were put in to make it go further. I once asked a Liverpool landlady why it was called lobscouse. She told me, "well yer meat an' taties an' onions, they're yer basic scouse, then yer jus' lob in anythin' else yer've got.
A great way of getting the kids to eat vegetables is to lob in a stick of celery, a handful of beans or chickpeas, anything like that and them blitz the veg beyond recognition in the blender.

NOW get yourself in the mood by looking at my spooky poems here at AD

Beloved Succubus (with special audio track)
The Hounds of The Morrigan
The Hitching Stone
Dancing With The Dead
The Days Upon The Year
Ghost Girl