COUNTRY COOKING: AUSTRALIA

I have a new favorite food group and it's called Puff Pastry. If I could eat everything encapsulated in puff pastry I most definitely would. Now, I've eaten flakey pastry carbs many times but never have I made it from scratch - or even used it in my cooking! Making puff pastry from scratch was the easiest thing I have ever done, and it definitely ranks up there with the most delicious thing that's ever come out of my kitchen. But of course butter and a little flour would equal something truly amazing...

Ben and I were watching The Chew the other day (since we don't have tv, we are subjected to shows that ABC, Netflix... or TED puts on our Apple TV apps for free!). This really cool guy from Australia was promoting his new cookbook that is this super outdoorsy cook with the family experience kind-of-book. He talked about how various meat pies are an Aussie staple. I've had chicken pot pie... but that's not what this guy meant. 

Meat pie is a puff pastry filled with meat (typically ground beef), a tomato based sauce, and...vegemite. I tried looking up what is really in vegemite and had no such luck. That recipe is on lockdown. Unfortunately, I had to skip the vegemite ingredient this time around, but I am determined to try it when I get the chance!

But yeah, red meat wrapped in a primarily butter based biscuit - what could not be good about a meat pie?!

Puff Pastry from scratch seems to always be the same recipe - it's one of those "it is what it is" kind of things.

Puff Pastry

- 2 cups unbleached flour

- 2.5 sticks of cold, unsalted butter

- 1/2 cold water with 1 t salt dissolved

Dice up all the butter. Throw the flour and about 1/2 a stick of diced butter into a food processor/blender (I used our Vitamix). Pulse until mixed, do not over mix. Then add in the rest of the butter and pulse a couple times, then add water mixture. Pulse until mixed but again do NOT over mix. 

When it looks like a soft doughy substance, flour your hands and roll out onto workspace. Roll out to about 12x20" rectangle. Fold the dough into thirds hotdog-style, so you are left with a 4x20" rectangle. Next, roll the dough up into a cylinder, like a cinnamon roll turned on its' side. Lastly, flatten the rolled dough into a square. It should end up like the picture below! All this silly rolling is aiding in the flakiness I assume (well, whatever the reason, it works!).

You have to let it harden in the refrigerator, but I was impatient and stuck mine in the freezer. It worked just fine.

Here is the Australian meat pie recipe I used. A lot of the recipes I saw called for vegemite, but I couldn't find any with such short notice. I also added garlic (because EVERY recipe should use garlic), and I also saw in another recipe that they added cut up bacon to the beef mixture (so of course I did that). To make the tops of the pastry shiny I whisked an egg and swiped it across the top just before popping it into the oven.

The meat pies were incredible. Savory. Warm. Flakey. 

The one thing I always like to ask people, or Ben, is to rate the recipe based on if you'd make it again... or how often you would like to see this on our dinner menu. ha ha! This was a winner all around. I made this more labor intensive than it needed to be since I made mini pies. Making large pies would be much more time efficient. I would absolutely make them again, and Ben has already requested they be put on the menu for this week. #winning