Posts Tagged With: Dutch oven

Australian Entree

MEAT PIE

INGREDIENTS – FILLING

2 pounds chuck or round steak
2 onions
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt (1/4 teaspoon more later)
1/4 teaspoon thyme
4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 cups beef stock
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoons flour (2 cups more later)

INGREDIENTS – BOTTOM PASTRY

2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter (softened)
10 tablespoons water

INGREDIENTS – PIE

1½ tablespoon milk
4 sheets puff pastry
1 egg
4 tablespoons ketchup

SPECIAL UTENSILS

Dutch oven
4 meat-pie pans (5″ diameter is best)

PREPARATION – FILLING

Cut chuck into ½” cubes. Mince onions. Add onion and olive oil to Dutch oven. Sauté onion on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add meat, nutmeg, pepper, salt, thyme, Worcestershire sauce, and beef stock. Simmer on low heat for about 1 hour. Stir occasionally.

Combine ¼ cup water and 3 tablespoons flour in mixing bowl. Stir with whisk until you get a smooth, runny mix. Gradually add the flour/water mix into the Dutch oven. Stir with spoon until the filling thickens. Remove from heat and let cool.

PREPARATION – BOTTOM PASTRY

While filling is simmering, add 2 cups flour,  1/4 teaspoon salt, and butter to a second mixing bowl. Blend ingredients with whisk. Add 10 tablespoons water. Remove dough and knead on surface dusted with flour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Let dough sit for 20 minutes. Flatten dough with rolling pin. (A large can of soup will do. A stick of dynamite is way too risky.)

PREPARATION – PIE

Line pie pans with bottom pastry. Add filling to each pan. Moisten rims of pies with milk. (This helps to tops stick with the bottom pastry.) Place a sheet of puff pastry on top of each pie. Trim away the excess puff pastry. Press edges of puff pastry onto rims of bottom pastry with fork. Beat egg with whisk or fork. Glaze tops evenly with egg.

Put pies in over. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-to-20 minutes or until golden brown. Spread ketchup over each pie. Have a nice cooling refreshment and enjoy. Press gang the least appreciative guest into cleaning up.

TIDBITS

1) Kangaroo is Australian Aborginee for, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

2) Melbourne, Australia has the largest public tram system in the world.

3) Australia is three times bigger than Greenland. So it’s no surprise that Melbourne has a bigger tram system than Nuuk, Greenland.

5) Curly Howard of the Three Stooges said “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk” in many of his movie shorts.

6) The Denver Broncos quarterback, Peyton Manning, often yelled out “Omaha” during plays all through the 2013 NFL season. Some people think he was promoting the city of Omaha, Nebraska.

7) Was Curly really trying to promote Nuuk, Greenland?

8) That would be truly scary for Nuuk was called Godthaab until 1979 and Curly died in 1952.

9) Perhaps Curly had a time machine and visited modern Nuuk.

10) We should all be grateful Curly did not use his time machine to achieve world domination.

11) If you had a time machine you could go back to the point when you had just cooked yourself a wonderful dinner and eat it. You would never have to cook again. You’d just keep going back to that moment and eat that delightful dish over and over again.

12) But then no one would ever need to buy food again. Millions of farmers would be out of business. They’d riot. Worldwide collapse would ensue. To this, Curly would say, “Nyahh-ahhh-ahhh!”

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.