Introducing Gelf’s new River Cottage Cookbook

The golden crust of a warming pie… The flaky first bite of a Cornish pasty… The soft, moreish encasing of a suet pudding… Pastry is the key to the comforting, homely dishes that we all know and love. Great, now we want to eat pie!

In River Cottage Great Pies, Gelf Alderson provides every home cook with the tools to achieve pastry greatness, featuring 80 achievable and delicious recipes for every occasion.

With a foundational chapter to build your confidence in the kitchen, you’ll find core recipes for the most popular pastries—including shortcrust, puff, rough puff, hot water, filo, suet, choux, and sweet pastries. These become the basis for your pastry-laden masterpieces. And if you don’t have time to make pastry from scratch, don’t despair—all the recipes are just as achievable and delicious with shop-bought varieties too.

The chapters that follow offer every kind of pie you could ever hope for, including Veggie Pies, Open Pies and Tarts, Saucy Pies, Raised Pies, Pasties, and Sweet Stuff. Here, you’ll discover recipes for crowd-pleasing classics, from the ultimate quiche and a traditional beef and ale pie to the much-loved River Cottage pork pie and even custard tarts.

Whether you need small bites for a buffet or a show-stopping centerpiece for your meal, Great Pies has you covered with reliable recipes for sweet and savoury treats of all kinds, including spanakopita, chicken balti pie, and plum, raspberry, and hazelnut meringue pie. Rounded out with a chapter on perfect pie accompaniments—sauces, gravies, and custards—you’ll have everything you need to enjoy mouth-wateringly excellent pies time and time again. You can buy the book from all websites, but we recommend purchasing it from Bookshop.org.