Be honest, what was the best thing
about Sheffield Wednesday last season? You’ll remember the match, of course: one of
Burnley’s shitest away performances against rubbish opposition in a miserable ground.
Yep, that was the one. So leaving aside the before and after beer, what was the best thing
about the match itself, the actual ninety minutes you spent in the ground, or at least
whatever percentage of it you did before you decided to catch the early tram? Of course:
the pies. And not just any pies, no: the balti pies.
Yes, for me, the one silver lining in a rather grey cloud was the
excellent quality of the balti pies on offer. I had two! Yum, and indeed, yum. A second
visit to Sheffield for a second defeat was pepped up by a dose of something similar.
Birmingham, as well, didn’t let me down, even if the team did. You see, at least
three times last season, a sour mood of defeat was lifted by the hot concoction of pastry,
chicken and secret Eastern spices that is the balti pie.
Walsall’s return to this division was met with cheer amongst the
London Clarets contingent holidaying in Edinburgh at the time, and not just because
there’s a fighting chance that they’re another side that will finish below us in
the league. Walsall, you see, is the home of the balti pie. It was where this initially
odd concoction first came to light. And, because I know how your mind works, this proves
that there’s no correlation between eating balti pies and Burnley getting beat. I
just know you were looking at those three unfortunate examples above and putting two and
two together to make a superstitious five. But I’ve munched balti pies at the Bescot
and seen us win, so let’s hear no more about that.
Clearly, there’s already a lot to look forward to next season. I know
which away games I’m going to try to get to. But I want more. I want nothing less
than a guaranteed balti pie in every ground. I want to roll up in confident expectation
from Fratton to Blundell Parks and be sure of getting my fix. Clearly, this is a tall
order. So we should start at home. I’m planting my cross here: I want balti pies at
Turf Moor.
Why not, indeed? Let’s consider the facts. As far as I can tell, they
always sell very well. Wait until half time at St Andrew’s and you’ll not get
one; they’ve long gone by then. (No, I didn't eat them all. You can do better than
that.) So it could be an earner. That said, apparently they cost more to manufacture. But
of course, they are a quality item, and should be marketed as such: a premium product at
an aspirational price. Let the unimaginative stick to their humble, unseasoned meat. For
the smart man about town, absolutely the only thing to be seen with should be a balti pie.
Let it not be objected that the balti pie is untraditional fare. Since
when did the now ubiquitous pizzas, chips and hot dogs become an intrinsic part of the
Saturday ritual? Come to that, football grounds all sell that ghastly smooth beer, a
product invented as far back as the 1990s. Those innovations of blandness seem to be
something football can readily embrace, so why not something infinitely more palatable? So
balti pies aren’t a local product? Since when did that ever count for anything?
Indeed, if only it was thus. Bristol Rovers’ brilliant homemade Cornish pasties are
an all too rare exception, and one that we regrettably look to be denied for years to
come. Even then, Burnley plebs lining up at the hut would bemoan the absence of their
familiar pies. Sad.
For the most part football food is dull, bog standard and homogenous
fodder, and it varies little from one end of the country to another. You could be in
Deepdale or the New Den, and the chances are you’ll be chewing on something similar.
And it won’t be very nice. It would be great if the food on offer reflected local
tastes. We could have Eccles cakes in Preston, North Sea cod in Cleethorpes and jellied
eels in Bermondsey (just so long as I don’t have to eat them). At Burnley, we could
have little individual Lancashire hotpots, to honour the limp cliché spouted by every
tired reporter in the face of a bad-tempered North West game. Yet, let’s have these,
and more. And, at the same time, let’s have balti pies to hand wherever we may
wander.
Their origins, of course, lie in precisely that kind of local response.
When balti pies first saw the light at Walsall they were a runaway success, and so were
quickly taken up by other West Midlands clubs. This wrongly maligned part of England is,
of course, the home of the balti, that uniquely English adaptation of the curry, and a
strong contender for the title of our national dish. The balti pie takes it one step
further. Can you think of a more heart-warming example of ethnic fusion than curried meat
encased in pastry? The balti pie stands as a symbol of the contribution that people from
Asia have brought to our shores, and the marriage of their heritage with an ever changing
and diverse culture. This, of course, makes it an appropriate food for Burnley, a town
with a large Asian population, where the big challenge for the coming years must be to get
that section of the community involved in the club. Perhaps we could go further. How about
bhajis, pakora, samosas on the matchday menu? But we have to start somewhere. The balti
pie seems an appropriate entrée.
There is, I concede, little in this for vegetarians. And I sympathise with
them. I don’t claim to understand the belief – why cut yourself off from the
simple pleasure a good meal offers? – but I am married to one, so I appreciate how
ill served they are by football ground food, and how so often there is so little on offer.
This must be awful, because for me, except at Deadwood Park when I refused point blank to
give those Bastards any of my money (but, regrettably, how many of you did) a pie is part
of the ritual. Doesn’t seem right without one, and if I can get a couple, I
won’t waste drinking time by having to eat in pubs.
There is a hierarchy of desires here, a rough list of priorities in my
head as I join the queue. Top, of course, is the balti pie. No surprise there. Of course,
the balti is still a lamentably rare sight. It’s still a minority pleasure. More
often than not I have to step one rung down the ladder of culinary satisfaction, and
settle for a meat and potato. Nothing wrong with that. Providing it has been properly
cooked (are you listening, Burnley?), there will always be a place for the humble meat and
potato pie. Nicely moist and peppery, it’s always struck me as a particularly
Northern pie, although I have less time for the kindred butter pie, AKA the meat and
potato without the meat. Okay, so the precise relation of the meat you find in these
things to dead animal flesh is a matter of debate, but I think you need the texture and
punctuation of those lumps of stuff. Down south you tend to get stuck with your minced
something or other pie, never satisfactory, and then if you can’t get any of those
you really are struggling. It’ll be something unsavoury like a donkey burger –
and what do they do to those onions? – either with or without the optional layer of
orange plastic, and worst still, sausage rolls and hot dogs and the like.
But, although I have priorities and preferences, and although I may not
get my first, second or even third choice, at least I usually do have a choice. The choice
your veggie gets is normally Hobson’s. A few anecdotes will suffice. Someone I know
asked if they had anything vegetarian at Turf Moor. They were offered a cheeseburger. This
season, at the Hawthorns, one of our lot asked for the advertised cheese pie. Alas, sold
out. Before kick off. When asked how many they stocked for the away end (capacity circa
4,000) he was told eight! And then there’s the lamentable case of Norwich City. This
is a club run, lest you forget, by foodie doyen Delia, the woman who taught the nation how
to boil an egg. I looked forward to our trip to Carrow Road. Here, surely, we would get
fine food. Had not Holland’s pies been promised? I should have known better. In that
ramshackle stand, even finding the food presented a challenge. Only by going through a
door cunningly marked ‘Ladbrokes betting’ could you get near nosh. The menu
sounded promising. They offered potato pies and cheese ones for the veggies. One of each,
please! Only one problem: despite taking the trouble to tell me that they sold these, they
didn’t actually have any, err, on sale. Rather like Norwich’s prospects of
hanging onto a manager for more than a season, à la carte was a largely theoretical
affair. So what could they offer? For sir, a minced whatever pie of the repugnant Pukka
variety. For the madam, the vegetarian option was a packet of salt and vinegar crisps!
Really, what would Delia say? I must have missed that episode of ‘How to Cook’.
"First, pop down the newsagents."
Anyway, this is largely by the by. I do sympathise with vegetarians, and
as a sop I hereby call for the introduction of reasonable numbers of cheese pies to
grounds as well. Not a bad pie, the cheese, so long as you can forget it’s supposed
to taste like cheese. But mainly, of course, I want balti pies, and I want them
everywhere, and I want them particularly at Turf Moor. I’ve had enough of the rarity
value. This should be a regular treat. And here’s my pledge: this coming season I
will be making a significant number of journeys to Turf Moor. On each visit I promise to
buy, if available, two balti pies. If enough of us make this promise, we could guarantee
our club a valuable source of revenue to help Burnley progress to the next stage, or
whatever the official website usually says. Watch out for our special pledge postcards,
available shortly. Together, we can make this happen. Balti pies at Turf Moor could cease
to be a distant dream.
