Julia Thompson wrote:
Mauro Diotallevi wrote:
On 1/31/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
What are the usual ingredients in a meat pie? AFOAA (a friend of
an acquaintance) has opened up a restaurant in Austin selling
Australian-style meat pies, and I'd like to find out before I trek
all the way down there whether or not I'm likely to be able to eat
them (weird assortment of food allergies). I could as Justin (the
acquaintance) but I figured our resident Aussies would be a more
knowledgeable source if information.
I'm not Aussie, but typically an Australian Meat Pie would have cubed
or minced steak, salt and pepper, beef stock, flour, soy sauce or or
Worcestershire sauce, egg yolk (sometimes mixed with a small amount
milk or sugar for glazing the pastry), puff pastry, and water. Some
recipes add thinks like onions, cornstarch, bacon, tomato sauce or
ketchup. The most common "secret ingredient" is anywhere between a
pinch and a dash of nutmeg (it really does go with almost anything),
but some cooks will add garlic, cayenne, chili powder, or spices of
that ilk. Some cooks also add veggies, but a purist would turn up
her nose at that :-)
Hth,
Mauro
I think it does. Beef, then, with the possibility of bacon, and
vegetable matter I can live with. I'd need to check into the bacon/no
bacon question, but that's easy enough to ask about at the restaurant, I
think.
Thank you!
(Any Aussies still wanting to weigh in, your input would be appreciated!)
Julia
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Sending us a message at 4am will always slow the response, especially
with late cricket and the Commonwealth swimming trials the night before :-)
The short answer is anything... Really. The can be exquisite culinary
masterpieces, or they can be crud you wouldn't feed a stock animal...
Mauro's pies sound excellent, but I have to say that some vegetables are
quite common - especially peas and onions.
In the average bakery, you will find "Meat Pies" which typically are
based on minced beef of varying quality, but you will also find
variations such as "Steak and Bacon", "Chicken and Vegetable", "Potato"
(which is a standard mince pie inside, but with a layer of mashed potato
forming the top instead of a pastry crust) etc. All variations are
clearly marked, and the variations are endless. Australians eat
500,000,000 pies per year, with less than 20mil population, so they're
pretty popular. It's normal to sell 90,000 pies inside the stadium for a
big footy game.
The preferred meat for the better pies is beef shanks and minced blade
steak, because they have a high collagen content, so you end up with a
nice consistency inside the pie, without too much fat. Steak pies are
fairly common, where the steak has been sort of "shredded" rather than
minced. Tastes great, but requires a toothpick afterwards :-)
The following recipe is just one of many many variations:
2 sheets of short crust pastry
2 tablespoons olive oil
400g chuck or blade steak, diced
1 onion, sliced
150g button mushrooms, thickly sliced
2 tablespoons plain flour
200 mls red wine
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup (250 mls) beef stock
1 tablespoon chopped rosemary
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
sea salt and pepper
1 sheet puff pastry
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
The really ugly truth about mass produced pies is contained here:
http://seven.com.au/todaytonight/story/?id=22630
Extract:
Meat pies are one of the great Aussie icons. Per capita, Australians
consume more meat pies than any other nation, but most eat them without
knowing exactly what is in the pie Former food inspector turned lawyer
Des Sibraa said that under current laws, a standard pie must contain at
least 25 per cent meat. But if you think that means steak, think again.
"'Meat' is a very broad definition and that's the real problem here," Mr
Sibraa said.
Mr Sibraa said that to cut costs, some manufacturers were now
substituting meat with soy protein. It looked like meat, it could even
taste like meat, but it simply was not real meat.
Analysts only checked for protein, meaning it was possible for a meat
pie to pass the test without containing any meat.
"You can go around and buy six frozen pies for something like $3 or
less," Mr Sibraa said. "So there's a lot of competition, especially
those very cheap pies."
"I would expect them to contain all sorts of things to reduce the cost
of making them," he added.
To find out how much real meat was in a meat pie we called on the
experts at a Melbourne food laboratory to examine more than a dozen
standard meat pies. Most popular brands were included, from the cheapest
to the most expensive, along with some of the smaller "party pies".
The experts tested each pie to determine how much meat it contained,
what type of meat was used, and the level of soy protein.
One pie had less than half the minimum meat content required. Two of the
pies that failed the tests were found to have substituted soy, even
though initial protein tests gave the impression that the required 25
per cent meat was present. In those pies, more than 2 per cent of the
"meat" was found to be soy.
Cheers
Russell C.
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