I am in Pastry Heaven....

Today was bulk cooking day for my son's birthday. So I made meat pies (2 types). Both using my own recipes that I just made up on the spot using ingredients around the house.

The first batch are the "party pies" for the kids:



I made enough to make 24 (hope this is enough for 10 children)... Recipe as follows (sorry I don't measure when I make up recipes so I say add as many or as little as you like of the ingredients):

Party Pies

Grate zucchini and finely chop onion. In a pan, brown mince. Add zucchini and onion. Add beef stock, soy sauce and oyster sauce. Simmer for 5 mins stirring occasionally. Add tomato sauce. Simmer for 20 mins. Add flour to thicken mixture.

On the pie tins, put shortcrust pastry on the bottom halves. Spoon in meat and zucchini mixture. Top each pastry shell with puff pastry. Slash a little "x" on the middle of each puff pastry to let steam escape.

Brush lightly beaten egg over the top of each pie.

Place pies in a preheated oven at 200 degrees.

Then the next pie was a lamb and carrot pie:



Recipe is:

Chop carrots, onion and meat. In a pan, broil carrots and meat with beef stock. Add chopped onions. Simmer for 5 mins or until meat is cooked through. Add lots of barbecue sauce and a dash of oyster sauce. Simmer for 30 mins. Add flour to thicken mixture.

Again, using shortcrust pastry for the bottom half of the pie dish, spoon meat mixture in pie. Top the pie with puff pastry. Add an "x" at the top to let steam escape. Use any left over puff pastry to decorate if you want.

Glaze pie with egg and place in preheated oven at 200 degrees. Take out when pastry has browned.

And after all that, I had 2 sheets of puff pastry left, so the kids and I had a wonderful time making puff pastry "bikkies".



Basically shape/cut the puff pastry however you want. Glaze with egg and then sprinkle a little bit of raw sugar on top of each puff pastry shape. (For a savoury version, sprinkle parmesan cheese).

Place in pre-heated oven at 200 degrees for 10 mins.

I also wanted to show off my latest cookbook - bought at Cobwebs (2nd hand and bric-a-brac store) in Fyshwick. I was talking to the proprietor of Cobwebs and told him how I wanted to learn how to cook on a wood stove, how to make food last longer etc etc. And he replied: "That's how I grew up!" And then he showed me a shelf full of old cook books. He told me how in the 50s and 60s, the "average" family didn't waste food like we do these days. How so many foods were imported into Australia that you just can't afford to let food go to waste. So you learned how to stretch a "luxury" food so you would only use a little bit for a meal and you learned how to preserve food. He also said how things were limited and how you didn't have as much choice in the supermarkets, so you learned how to make most things.

This was the cookbook I ended up buying:



There was no publication date, but there was a (beautifully) handwritten name in the inside cover, followed by the date "July, 1963".

Inside all the measurements were still in empirical (so "pounds,ounces" etc). There were also some fantastic pages that were a clear indicator of Australian's "discovering" native foods for the first time. This page below showed Northern Hemisphere fishes and then next to it, the Australian "substitute". (These days most people wouldn't even have to discover what the Australian subsitute- but this would be great for next time I go to the USA and have to "convert" all my recipes.)



There were also thorough explanations of different cuts of meat and how to carve and store them.



The recipes were all very simple with only a few ingredients in them (average I would say is about 4 ingredients per recipe). This is compared to my modern cookbooks with 8-9 ingredients for each recipe.



And the best part... whole sections dedicated to making things last longer!





Anyway, I am loving this cookbook and I can't wait to try out many of the recipes. If anyone actually knows the publication date of this book, I'd love to find out!