Turkey and smoked bacon pie

October in the popular imagination is supposed to be the month when we step lightly into the ‘normal’ life, when you finally manage to rearrange your time schedule including the essential-for-your-self-esteem swimming class, the well deserved drink with your best friend, the quiet, calm and old style hour under the wool blanket reading your last book.

This year I’m not yet there, I’m still struggling to reach my balance of warm socks, soft scarves and well organized calendars. Hopefully November will bring the lilting rhythm of winter, in the meantime I try to carve out when I can a few minutes of stillness, in a ritual that gives me peace of mind.

The protagonist of my ritual is the 6pm slanting light, the light of the afternoon that is getting shorter day by day, the light of the resting sun that casts warm golden glows on any surface it  caresses. Usually in this moment of the day I’m in the car, coming back home from the office, listening to the radio and dancing with my dreams in the afternoon light, lost in its games between the branches of trees.

I escape from reality and take a deep breath in the favourite corner of my mind. I built there an ideal pub where I can chat with my friends, enjoying the last sun of the day in the garden behind the kitchen, over a small stream that runs lively a few meters below.

The tables are made of dark wood, worn out by the time, the hundreds of hands, dishes, glasses and elbows that have found a perfect support on that surface. The benches – made of wood – are solid and secure, steadily standing on a gravel-covered courtyard. Around the tables groups of friends are spending some free time together, gathered here after work to rethink, revise, play down and delete with a laugh the blue moments of the day. Someone sits alone, a little aside, with the precious company of a book or his thoughts.

Glasses of all kinds are scattered on the tables, the perfect playground for the last rays of sunshine playing hide and seek and gleaming with the amber and warm colours of  beer.

I really love spending some time in my mental pub, with the first scarf of the season and the brisk air that is reddening my nose: a moment of me time, when I can clean my mind and refresh my karma.

I’m not a big beer drinker, not to mention a connoisseur, but I do love the fried potatoes with salt flakes that come along with the beer, as well as those British meat pies, a perfect dinner in a late autumn afternoon with a pint of beer.

Which beer would you suggest to match with this turkey and smoked bacon pie? It’s your turn to suggest an interesting pairing! The ingredients are mainly the turkey, dressed up with sweet, juicy onions from Tropea and the pimentòn, the smoked Spanish paprika that turns any dish into a tempting alchemy.

If every now and then at 6 pm, during the afternoon golden hour, you will have the impression that I am a bit absent and I am not listening to you, don’t take it personally, it’s just that I have run for a while there, called by the clinking of glasses mingled with friends’ laughs and by the tempting smell of a rustic meat pie served with a nice spoonful of pungent mustard.

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