Anyone seen a vol au vent recently? Once the staple - the king, even - of the buffet, between me and Mrs D we've had three corporate type buffets this week and not seen a single one. What happened? Did the vol au vent crop fail this year? I want a vol au vent!

Vol-au-vents are passé, along with pork pie, sausage rolls and open sandwiches. It's all onion bhajis and chicken satay kebabs now, dontcha know...

Hopefully it's a sign that things are evolving for the good.
There must be land-fill sites somewhere full of the bleeding things.
They are usually 'last man standing' at buffets.

You need an invite to this years Harrogate Conservative Club Xmas party.

The blue rinsers bake them for fun.

I was in Munich on Tuesday for a conference, they served vol-au-vents with lunch. Not that I had one.

I got home ok but my colleagues got stranded overnight because of the heavy snow. Wish I'd been stuck, there was a nice Xmas market at the airport, the snow was drifting down, the sausages were hot and the beer was frothy.

If the craving gets too much M&S is your friend.

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Vol au vents, the arch enemy of saliva.

What you need my friend is a Geordie party, or "porty".

When I lived in the land of my wife's borth it was to my eternal fear and loathing that in approximately one weekend in three she'd come home and announce that we were invited to someone's borthday porty in tha clerb, for there would always be a predictable DJ and his portable disco ball, and several tables pushed together groaning under the weight of "tha boofet", acres and acres of cheese savoury and egg mayonaise sandwiches, sausage rolls from Greggs that had been cut into six small pieces, platters of corned beef and potato pie, and the vol au vents, thousands of them, little parcels of pastry with vomit inside them that could only be eaten when you were p1ssed enough to look at them and not think that they were pastry parcels of vomit - the only thing that was missing was a packet of Rennies at the end of the table.

Turn the music down DJ, turn up the clerb lights, announce that tha boofet is erpen and stand back or you'll get crushed in the first wave.

Your stereotyping of the Geordies is very insulting..

They have evolved in the last twenty years you know. They now drink Carling rather than broon ale and Archers has replaced snowballs as a nice genteel drink for ladeez.

Last place I worked use to make thousands of them and only for the Xmas market . I think they binned them a few years back because sales were dropping.

I bet if I went back to Tho Terrace Clerb the'neet there would be a borthday disco on with vol au vents sitting threatening you from a trestle table.

There is nothing remotely passé about a proper pork pie.

Nothing.

Never.

Still, you could always have an Iceland prawn ring, or their new 'lasagna bites' (lasagna as finger food?

). Or there's the new Iceland cake filled with profiteroles and Baileys. Or the M&S prawn balls covered in croutons ...

Today I have purchased a bun tray of six deep, not-sloping-sided, erm. things - not for the making of buns (although they will be very nice ones) but for six home made pork pies at xmas in the style of the Paul Hollywood recipe.

I worship at the table of the pork pie.

I always found filo parcels to be a nightmare to eat & make .Just when you think there cool enough ...Aarrggh napalm .

Pork pies should ideally be consumed fresh and still warm from the baking.
The warm jelly dripping down your slobbering chops.
There be orgasm country.
Eating them cold is a poor second IMHO

Now there is an altar worth worshipping at.



I have wonderful memories of the little pork pies that my mother used to buy from a little baker's called Cakebread in Mossley – she'd served them heated through with baked beans for tea. Mmmmm.

Although a good pork pie – artisanal Melton Mowbray, for instance – can still be a thing of great pleasure when eaten colds. With good pickles and bread, as a sort of ploughman's.

Oh, I am in total agreement, I was referring to it in the context of buffet food, which used to be fairly simple fayre. When was the last time you saw a proper stand pie at a buffet?

Call me basic bit I enjoy a nice dollop of tommy sauce with my butchers baked pork pie.

Brown sauce on

a cold porky pie for me thanks.

My apprenticeship as a surveyor was served in a first floor office above a sandwich shop, a 1970s office where everyone smoke and everyone drank coffee ALL DAY long, the guy I worked with would bawl me out if his coffee cup was empty.

My most important job of the day was at 10am, make another pot of coffee and then nip out of the fire escape door, down the metal escape ladder to the sandwich shop where they took delivery of a couple of dozen pork pies at 10 on the dot every day from the butchers across the road, sometimes those pies were too hot to carry.

I can't tell you how many building plans were totally ruined by some idiot (me) biting into a red hot growler and spilling liquid gelatine and fat all over the desk



I have worshipped them, hot or cold, ever since.


My christmas effort from the Paul Hollywood baking cook book seem simple enough, pork loin, bacon, onion and a gelatine leaf - I suspect that its the seasoning that counts to whether its just a meat pie made with pork, or a pork pie.

Can't fault you.
Strangely I've never tried brown sauce and don't think I ever will.

Mini Yorkshire puddings filled with beef and gravy are very much in vogue at the moment. If that's the replacement for vol au vents then I'm all for it.

I attended SalonQP in November and to my surprise and huge delight, pigs in blankets were being served. Well being rather partial to them and not having sampled their delights for the best part of eleven months. I to put it kindly, went to town on them. So much so that one of the servers brought me out a plater all of my own. That's the beauty of attending an event predominately attended by pretentious s, their too busy being pompous and showy to get chatty with the servers.

Good point, well made.

I like Vol au vents.

Quite happy with either sauce