Pieminister: A Pie for All Seasons

Fantastic cookbook! Fun stories, nice photos, very interesting recipes. I've been collecting cookbooks from the UK, to better familiarize myself with the cuisine from my ancestral homeland and this one is a worthy addition. There is a meatless pie in here that I read about a while back, so I tracked down the recipe to this book and bought it. Although I haven't yet made anything from the book (I'm busy, and also insufferably lazy) I definitely will. One of their recommended ingredients is ground suet, which I'm willing to try but is next to impossible to find in my neighborhood. That said, mouth-watering recipes and a great presentation.

Great fun. More a series of inspirations than a rigid "do it this way only" book, the pie guys have included recipes for a number of different crusts and seasonal pies, both double and single crust. It's great encouragement to happily mess about with lots of ingredients, such as the steak and Stilton pie we made for Christmas (yum!). Plus I can finally identify and use celeriac.

I was eager to get this book because I traveled to London and enjoyed eating at Pieminister. I hoped to get some recipes to try at home. I was disappointed that most of the recipes weren't for the pies you can regularly purchase from the store. I would have much preferred to find those recipes in this book and not recipes for things that were not as expected and that I wasn't as interested in. There was the recipe for the crust and one of two of the pies, but the others I probably won't use.

Good recipes, especially the variety of crusts.

I love this book for both content of recipes and good humour. We are unable to purchase Pieminister pies in Canada and were thrilled to be able to purchase this cookbook to make our own after we fell in love with them in Yorkshire. Well done and thank you!!!

Its whimsical and fun to read and the photography of the pies makes me want to run right out and get the ingrediants so I can start cooking them. Yum Yum Yum

Like many people I buy recipe books but generally only make the ones in "Main Course", not really hosting enough dinner parties or soirées to justify starters and desserts and things. So recipe books that lack main courses tend to get forgotten. Thankfully, a book of pie has plenty of mains.But the best part is, there are simply so many different ideas. Whether it's a fairly heavy, comforting potato and cheese pie, or an elegantly flavoured duck and pear, or light and veggie with red pepper and beans, there's a lot of variety here. Potato-topped, shortcrust, filo, suet, puff, homemade pastry or shop-bought, top-only or all the way, and a genuinely interesting array of different fillings. You could have a different one each night and still not feel you were repeating. It really shows the versatility of the humble pie.Plus there are dessert pies, so suddenly I'm in the mood to make those too.Weekend grocery shops are based around what Pieminister I'll be making, and the recipes are skilfully constructed with flavours and seasonings to make your dishes taste extra-special and professional. I like the way they're arranged by season, not just in terms of flavours and what people might like to eat based on the seasons but in terms of which veg is in season also.This is easily my most used recipe book.

I’ve struggled a bit with this book and have held off reviewing for quite a long time. There’s some great recipes in here but we’ve consistently struggled to get the pastry recipes to work - this may be my incompetence in pastry making but other books seem to be more consistent in that their recipes work every time. Worth having in your cookery book library but I’d suggest taking a look first!

When my mate told me that Pieminister were publishing their first cookbook, I bookmarked it straight away to buy. Ok, so I only just got round to buying it, but I'm very glad I did!Although aptly released in time for the coming winter months, there really is 'a pie for all seasons' here (to use their subtitle). I am partial to a good cookbook but must admit that I very rarely follow the recipes in them. They make for good bedtime reading - I flick through the pages, make some notes, jot ideas of flavourings, but never get round to using them.However, I think it would be difficult to resist the temptation to cook from this particular book. There are gorgeous photos throughout with quirky little illustrations dotted around too. The recipes are unnumbered and a little more longwinded than I would personally prefer, but have fantastic names that really catch your attention - 'poussin boots' or 'pietanic' anyone? I've already tried the Butter 'nut nut' pie - a gorgeous butternut squash pie with crunchy nuts on top - which I took into work where it got devoured like crazy!The actual content of the book is well-thought out too - you don't just have recipe after recipe, which can get tedious, but chunks of other useful or interesting info as well.For instance, you can learn about the best cuts of meat for pies, some worldy facts about pie, Jon and Tristan's favourite pie shops, and even pick up tips on what to do with pastry trimmings - though I don't see what's wrong with just baking the titbits and munching them straight out the oven ;-) But it's the little details like this that really put their signature on this book. Great personal touch.And that's the most important feeling you get from this book I think - that pure love for pie :-)

Love this book, bought as a present. Loved it so much, bought one for myself

As a semi-accomplished pie maker and fully accomplished pie eater, I think this book is great. The four pages on how to make different types of pastry alone makes it a worthwhile purchase. This book has elevated my pie making to a new level and I would recommend to anyone. The format is clear, the recipes mix old classics with new ideas and everything is clearly explained. I also think that for the price, what you get with this book is a complete bargain.