Recipe: Wine Pie

Never make this.

I can't stress that enough, this is the most revolting thing I've ever encountered. Well, probably.

The basic premise of this dish, is to create a pie with a high alcohol content. When we made this disaster a few years ago, there was very little method to our madness. Basically we bought a bottle of cheap white wine from Booze Buster or similar, and some pastry mix to create a lid for the pie. So far so good... but what would also be in the pie? I mean, you can't just have wine sloshing about in the glass bowl we were using for a pie dish with a pastry lid on top, can you?

Some genius decided that bread would do an excellent job of soaking up the wine, and would then be edible. Wrong on both accounts. Regardless, a selection of slices of white bread had their crusts removed, and were placed in the bowl. Wine was added during the process, to create a "layered" effect... in actuality it was more like a "mush" effect. Here's a little sketch to show you the process... though as stated, it is never to be copied:

The lid was then stuck on top and glazed (probably with more wine) before the whole thing went in the oven for a fair while. There was some concern as to the safety of the glass bowl either cracking with heat or exploding due to the masses of wine within it. Thankfully it was fine, but probably got binned soon after.

The resulting product, our wine pie, was the worst thing. The pie crust was fine, a good solid pastry mix, nothing could possibly go wrong there. We even ate this bit of the damn thing, because you actually could.

The contents of the pie were not so appealing, in fact I would say they were definitely inedible. A gooey mush of white bread doused with warm horrible wine which had somehow changed flavour for the worse whilst inside the oven. We all had a go at eating some, but just thinking about it now makes me feel shameful to have done so. It doesn't make me feel sick though, strangely... but not something I would go back for seconds of.

I'm sure the resulting carnage was left to one side for a good week before being thrown out. It didn't mature with age either, it just went smelly.

Never make this.