No rolling pin at the Shrewsday household today.

I left it at school, about a fortnight ago, when I did a tortilla-making session, and as is my wont, I have been forgetting it ever since.

This isn’t a problem until I need to make pastry; but today was a day which shouted “pie!” at the top of its voice.

My last obsession, before blogging, was cooking. As you read, so I cooked: with volume, listening to the flavour of each day and matching it as best I could.

Some days were light, playful fairy cake days, each cake topped with butter icing and sweeties.

Others demanded an assertive veggie curry, which was so pushy and coconut-milk-sumptuous, one could rarely manage a pudding.

When the going got tough, I always chose Churchillian shortbread, stalwart, unmoveable, stolid and creamy.

Every now and then, on a Saturday morning, when the cares of the world had popped off for a weekend away, and Mum and Dad were coming for dinner, the only piece of mood-cuisine which would do was pie.

I’m not sure I can put into words why this was so. A good steak pie is decadent, but it also has that feeling of sheer comfort food. It is the equivalent of a louche velvet-clad corner of an old English pub. Which is, coincidentally, where I have eaten many a pie.

When Phil and I were younger and minus children, we used to make mad dashes to his sedate Victorian seaside home town every now and then, to see his parents.

In Britain, we make a meal of travel. Perhaps because the British Isles, from Lands End to John O’Groats, spans just 986 miles, we grumble endlessly about even an hour’s journey.

This was four hours, this journey. And while we loved each other’s company and chattered all the way, we did not enjoy crossing Birmingham on the M6. We might sit stationery, staring at the black AA console building which overlooks a main junction, for an  hour. Grim, it was.

Even when we were free of Birmingham we needed two further hours to get to our destination.

We had a landmark: a place where we would phone Phil’s Mum and say, get the kettle on. Put the meat-and-potato pies in the oven. We’re nearly there.

I do not generally like graffiti. It is an intrusion and an outrage. But our landmark was a bridge that went over the motorway, and on it, emblazoned in huge writing were four words: “The pies, the pies!”

Somebody, somewhere, had become incensed or thrilled or inebriated or even enamoured enough to climb to the precarious heights of the bridge and write this timeless truism.

The Pies.

By the time we reached Phil’s parents, the real pies would be waiting, steaming, with baked beans on the side. And while I can hear my culinary cyberfriends wincing even from this great distance, may I say these pies were the king among  junk food, and their little orange pulse accompaniments with them.

I have in front of me a singular pie recipe. It was published in 1598 in a book called Epulario – The Italian Banquet. I have been debating whether to include the whole thing.

And I think I just might.

“To Make Pie That the Birds May Be Alive In them and Flie Out When It Is Cut Up .

“Make the coffin of a great pie or pastry, in the bottome thereof make a hole as big as your fist, or bigger if you will, let the sides of the coffin bee somwhat higher then ordinary pies, which done put it full of flower and bake it, and being baked, open the hole in the bottome, and take out the flower.

“Then, having a pie of the bigness of the hole in the bottome of the coffin aforesaid, you shal put it into the coffin, withall put into the said coffin round about the aforesaid pie as many small live birds as the empty coffin will hold, besides the pie aforesaid.

“And this is to be at such time as you send the pie to the table, and set before the guests: where uncovering or cutting up the lid of the great pie, all the birds will flie out, which is to delight and pleasure shew to the company.”

The idea to put live birds in a pie was coined by the Italians – which is predictable –  but the barmy British welcomed it with open arms.

Poor birds. It cannot be easy to live, for however short a sojourn, in a pie. I am sure that when the time came to make good their escape, they did so with all speed. To the delight of all gathered round.

A wealth of pie memories, and centuries of pie history, weighed heavily upon me as I settled to cook my morning pie today.

Steak casserole and mustard were set to slow cook throughout the morning, and I made pastry to cool in the fridge. And the Maddie and I went out shopping.

When we arrived back, I went to make my pie: and remembered where my rolling pin was. Lounging around in the school kitchen, and absolutely no good to me whatsoever.

I used a wine bottle. I couldn’t get the pastry thin, and every now and then there would be a pastry ripping incident which left me cursing.

Somehow I manhandled a sheet of pastry onto my filling. And I looked down, and saw that it was far too small- which, as anyone who knows pastry will tell you, is calamitous, because pastry shrinks in the oven. There was a real danger my steak and mushroom would end up looking sheepish (if beef can be such a thing) and denuded.

There were unsettling gashes and cracks where gashes and cracks should not be.

I had extra pastry and I set to work, patching and papering. Then I stood back to admire my creation, the work of my hands, a testament to all I subscribed to.

It was a monster. A patched, gruesome parody of all that a pie should be. Look, Maddie, come and look at this, I said. We stood and giggled.

Frankenpie.

Technically, in line with Mary Shelley’s original, I as creator of this monstrosity should don the name: but as always, the pie lumbered off with it.

It went in the oven, it came out of the oven. It now resides within the replete stomachs of  four adults, two children and a dog.

Who did not give one fig what it looked like.