Cheese pie, school dinner style!

Following my post about school dinners, we have had quite a conversation, reminiscing about the many delicious meals we used to have (OK, I know some people had awful school meals, I was lucky!) One thing I had forgotten was cheese pie… it was always popular, never any left in the tray! In my mother-in-law’s School Meals Service Recipe Book which she had as the person in charge of the kitchen, I found the following recipe:

• 25 lb potatoes
• 9 lb 6 oz cheese
• 6 lb chopped onions
• 2 lb dried milk
• ½ lb dripping
• 1 quart potato water (approx)
• salt and pepper

1. fry the chopped onion in the dripping
2. cook and mash the potatoes, using dried milk and potato water
3. mix all ingredients together, season well and keep out some cheese to sprinkle on the top
4. cook in a hot oven until well browned

Obviously unless you have 100 guests for lunch you’re not going to cook this amount! You’ll notice there is no pastry, just the cheesy potatoey filling, so it is a really economical dish and I guess very tasty… It’s a long time ago that I had school dinners, but I wonder if we had a similar meal, as well as the one I remember with the pastry?

Here are what I reckon the amounts should be to serve four:

• 1 lb potatoes
• ¼ lb cheese plus some to sprinkle on top
• 6 oz chopped onions
• 2 fl oz milk
• your preferred oil/fat to fry the onions
• salt and pepper

1. cook and mash the potatoes with the milk
2. fry the onion
3. mix the onions, cheese and potato,
4. put into an oven proof dish, scatter with cheese and cook in a hot oven until well browned

There is another recipe for cheese flan/pie, where there are layers of potatoes, peas, peeled tomatoes, carrots and onions and cheese either in a pastry case with a lid or served open as a flan, with eggs and milk beaten together to make the filling set.