no. 63: very bad ideas

A few years ago, I had a really bad idea. This year, I’m finally going to act on it. My gap between idea and action is usually much shorter, which goes to show how utterly awful this idea is: I’m going to enter the Championnat du Monde du Pâté-Crôute – the world championship of meat pie. And for your entertainment, I’m going to write all about it. 

Here are some Frequently Anticipated Questions. 

There’s a world championship of meat pie?

Yes. The competition is held in France, whose citizens have demonstrated propensity for creating new world championships. If there were a world championship of world championship creation, they’d be right there in the finals. World championships relating to France’s cultural and culinary patrimony seem especially popular – see for instance, le Championnat du Monde de l’Oeuf Mayonnaise. 

But meat pie.

Well, elaborate meat pie. Architectural, multifaceted meat pie. Filled with all manner of fowl, pork, game, and jelly. Not like, a hot Cornish pasty which expels chunks of mystery meat when bitten into. Those are beautiful too, but perhaps harder to judge because they occupy a narrower range of experience.

With jelly?

Yes, but not like in a jello salad. Meat jelly. When you bake a pâté-crôute, the filling shrinks, leaving a gap between the filling and the crust, into which you pour jellied consommé. I know this doesn’t sound appetizing to most American readers, but chacun à son goût. 

The jelly gets its own line on the scorecard, and the filling does not, which tells you how seriously people take the jelly. 

Getting the jelly into the pâté-crôute is an adventure – you wait for the pâté-crôute to cool, then pour the consommé in through the vents. A funnel helps. You’re essentially testing the watertightness of a pastry case. 

What exactly makes a meat pie “architectural?”

Previous entrants have included a clock face made of boudin blanc and a pâté with a woodland scene. I don’t know what to call these if not “architectural.” See also exhibits 1, 2, 3, and 4, among many others.

This is insane. Are there no rules?

There are rules – two whole rules!

1. The pâté-crôute has to be meat-based. People make pâté-crôutes of vegetables and seafood, but you can’t enter with one of those.

2. You can’t use truffles, to ensure this doesn’t turn into a black truffle arms race. 

What’s at stake?

Glory, basically. And the chance to have a trophy presented to you by a chef in a leather apron. Lionel Messi has never received a trophy from someone in a leather apron.

Leaving all this aside, how are you qualified to enter this thing?

Usually, entering a world championship of anything takes years of dedication, training, and sacrifice. I am capable of none of these things. Fortunately, the bar to enter this world championship is much lower – you have to be a culinary professional with 5 years experience, working somewhere other than a culinary school, and you have to be willing to make a bunch of pâté-crôute. The last is by far the most significant barrier, but if you occasionally have very, very bad ideas, it might not seem like a problem.

Have you ever made a pâté-crôute?

Yes. Several in fact. Nobody died (that I know of).

A couple of my efforts to date:

And:

It looks like you have a ways to go. Where are the clock faces? Are you going to practice?

Yes. I did say this is a terrible idea. In order not to embarrass myself, I’ll be practicing quite a lot between now and the qualifying round in October. I’ll be documenting this experience in a series of issues for paid subscribers. If you’re one of the many people who’s asked me to write about how I think about cooking, you’ll probably enjoy these issues. 

Can I try some of your pâté-crôute?

I certainly can’t eat it all myself. Between now and October, paid subscribers in the Boston area are invited to pick up some pâté-crôute as a fringe benefit of their subscription. Each of the pâté-crôute issues will include a pick up time and location for the pâté-crôute described therein. 

Unfortunately, if you’re a paid subscriber somewhere other than Boston, you’ll have to get yourself to Boston. Pâté-crôute doesn’t ship well, and I’m entering the world pâté-crôute championship, not the world shipstation championship.