Monday 5 February 2007

Aussie Meat Pie

Earlier that morning I’d been browsing in the Wordsworth book shop and flicking through a book dedicated to the art of baking pies.

Yummy.

So that night I decided I would cook my first pie. A pie just for me - Happy Australia Day. I looked up a recipe in the Maggie Beer cookbook (Mum and PJ gave it to B for Christmas a few years ago) and nothing was going to hold me back.

No sour cream for the pastry – no worries.
No pastry scraper – what's that for anyway?
No pie tin – no problem.
No rolling pin – I have a hand.
No clue what I was doing – normal.

For the filling I though I would improvise on the Cottage Pie filling B and I make – mince, lots of sauce and this time I added some peas. (I think B would die if I added peas to his traditional pie.)

Then while that was cooking I started with the pastry. I was making a Rough Puff Pastry. But I was making it my way. The recipe was:

450g Flour
450g Butter
250ml Cold water.

I decided to make half this because it was only one pie. After I made the ‘well’ with my flour I went to add the butter – and Oh My! Do you know how much butter that is? I knew I was going end the whole pie, and while I like butter, that was probably my calorie intake for a week. So I just added a bit and decided to see how it goes. With no scraper – what ever that it – I used my fingers to make crumbs like I’ve seen Marnie do with Shortbread cookies.

After refrigerating it for about 5 mins (I am the impatient chef) I rolled it out with my hands. Looking back I should have used a glass, but at the time just pushing it out and flipping it over worked just fine.

Finally I made it to the best part: cutting the edge off and making shapes!

It was pretty decent. The pastry didn’t taste like pie pastry but at least it was tasty and slighly puffy around the edges. I ate it for dinner then lunch then dinner again and I’m going to eat the last piece for lunch today. AA says I'm crazy and must eat some of her leftover chicken instead.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

mmm think I'll add this recipe to my collection. Excellent for camping, no utensils required! Well done poppet. Has Bertis asked you assist him in the kitchen yet?
Pj would say the peas are a most unofficer type of vegetable! xx