FOOD
Australian Meat Pie
An easy Australian Meat Pies recipe to make,
full of flavor. Caramelized beef
in a red wine gravy with fresh rosemary,
will keep you asking for more!
Equipment
- 4 individual size pie pans
- baking weights
Ingredients:
Pie Base
- 2 sheets frozen short crust pastry
Pie Lid
- 2 sheets frozen puff pastry
Pie Filling
- 1½ lbs /750g Skirt Steak cubed in small pieces
- oil for frying
- 1 onion diced
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary chopped
- 1½ cups beef stock
- ½ cup red wine
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon water for slurry
- salt and pepper
- 1 egg beaten
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
Meat Pie Filling
- Heat oil in a saucepan and fry the onions and garlic for a few minutes until they are translucent. Add the cubed beef pieces and cook for about 5 minutes until browned.
- Add the tomato paste, rosemary, beef stock, red wine, Worcestershire sauce and simmer for an hour.
- When the meat is tender, make a slurry with the cornstarch and water and add to the meat. Cook for a few minutes to thicken. Salt and pepper to taste, allow to cool (in the fridge) before proceeding.
Meat Pie Short Crust Pastry
- Lay the short crust pastry on the countertop. Place the pie bases upside down on the pastry Use the pie bases as a guide to cut out the shape of the pie. Cut the pastry slightly larger than the pie base.
Blind Baking Instructions
- Place the short crust pastry inside the greased pie dishes. Cover with parchment paper, with the edges of the paper overhanging the pie dish. Fill with baking weights and bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (180°C).
- Remove the weights and parchment paper, and bake for another 5 minutes until golden brown.
Meat Pie Puff Pastry Lid
- Lay the puff pastry on the countertop. Using the same method, cut the puff pastry the same size as the pie base. This will be the top of your pie.
Meat Pie Assembly
- Fill the pie with the cooled beef chunks. Brush edges of the pie crust and lid with egg wash to help sealing. Cover with the puff pastry top. Using a fork, press the edges to seal. Trim excess dough. Brush the top of the puff pastry with egg wash.
- Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown. Serve with Ketchup.
- YUM.
Coffee
Reading
The Last Lighthouse Keeper
A memoir by John Cook with Jon Bauer
A beautiful memoir from John Cook, one of Tasmania’s last kerosene lighthouse keepers. A story about madness and wilderness, shining a light onto the vicissitudes of love and nature.In Tasmania, John Cook is known as: ‘The Keeper of the Flame’. John’s renowned as one of the last of the “kerosene keepers”: he spent a good part of his 26-year career in Tasmanian lighthouses tending kerosene, not electrical, lamps. He joined the lighthouse service in 1969, after a spell in the merchant marine. Far from reviling work on isolated islands such as Tasman and Maatsuyker, Australia’s southernmost lighthouse, he discovered that he loved the solitude and delighted in the sense of purpose that light keeping gave him. He did two stints on Tasman, in 1969-71 and 1977, and was the head keeper on Maatsuyker for eight years.
Tasman’s kerosene light was a pressure lamp fuelled by two big bottles that had to be pumped up to 75 pounds per square inch (about 516 kilopascals): “It was the equivalent of pumping up a tyre every 20 minutes,” John says. “Then you had to wind up the weights – they went down the tower and turned the prism around like a big clockwork. If the weights went all the way to the bottom, the light would stop.
“The main thing was that 365 nights of the year you sat in that tower, 100 feet up, and you had to stay awake,” John says of Tasman. “If you fell asleep the light would stop and then you were in trouble.”
Keepers took watches around the clock, in a system similar to that on a ship. Day watches weren’t a chance to slack off: standing orders required the watchkeeper to look seawards at least every half-hour and to log sightings of any vessels, and their course, in the area. “But the main thing was there was always maintenance to do,” John says. “Because Mother Nature was your boss. She’d blow gutters off, that sort of thing – she was always stickin’ her bib in, and you were repairin’ it.”
Tasman keepers also ran a herd of up to 500 sheep. They didn’t have a freezer, so they’d kill and dress a sheep every fortnight. John supplemented his bulk stores, delivered every three months by the lighthouse supply vessel, with extras brought on the bi-monthly mail boat, and by keeping chooks, ducks and turkeys. “I never ran out of things to do,” he says. “In my free time I used to do correspondence courses – I did navigation, diesel mechanics, business management and accounting.”
In 1977, keepers left the Tasman quarters forever. “I’ve got such strong memories of those places with people in them, and kids’ voices rattlin’ around,” John says. “It breaks my heart to think about those places sittin’ out there empty with no lights on.”
I have to be honest although I do love Koalas, I had little to no interest in this country. Combine that with an unfortunate online attack about what actually is in Australia- I pretty much just stopped with what I had done. Life’s too short. On to July. I do love Opera and will go back and learn all about the famous Opera house someday. I just won’t write about it. YIKES.
