The Aussie Pie Saga

Right off the bat, let me tell you that making Aussie Pie - making it the way I made it, at least - is not for the faint of heart.  The result was very good in the eating, but getting there was something else again.  Though I tried to make it easy for myself by using store-bought pie crusts, and by making two 9-inch pies and not the traditional smaller individual serving-size pies, there's only one phrase to describe my experience:  it was just nuts.  When the preparation was all over and done with, I had to enlist the aid of my wife to get the pies out of the oven.  I barely had enough energy left to eat.

The entire affair was a comedy of errors, and it was that way mostly on account of my decision to use a pressure-cooker.

Firstly, most Aussie Pie recipes that I've seen on-line specify coarse-ground beef.  Well, I didn't have any coarse-ground beef on hand, so I used a 2 1/2-pound eye-of-round roast.  Moreover, instead of cutting the roast into small cubes, browning the cubes, and then braising, as the few on-line recipes instruct, I thoroughly browned the intact roast, and then tossed it into my pressure-cooker.  The net result of this was that I had to cut the meat into cubes after it came out of the pressure-cooker.  This would have been a straightforward task and easily accomplished but for one thing.

It's like this.  Pressure-cookers cook quickly because the water that cooks the food - being prevented by the internal pressure, which builds up in the contraption when it's sealed and put on the fire, from turning into steam and boiling off - has a temperature much greater than 212 degrees, the sea-level boiling point of water.  The temperature's more like 250 to 275 degrees, and that's pretty darned hot.  This means that it takes longer for the food to cool to handling temperature, and when you add to that the cool-down time it takes for the cooker to cool down enough so you're not in danger of scalding yourself when you open it in order to get the food out, you're talking about a significant chunk of time.  When you add it all up, I think I'd have been better off time-wise to have cut that roast into cubes first, and then to have proceeded according the sensible instructions I listed earlier.

Secondly, all credible (i.e., submitted by Australian or New Zealander cooks) on-line Aussie Pie recipes specify Vegemite, which is a vegetable buillon in powder form, or some other form of concentrated vegetable flavoring.  Now, being in general a from-scratch cook, I don't keep vegetable buillon.  Thus in need of a substitute, I decided on mirepoix vegetables (carrots, celerey, and onion), which I cut roughly and placed in the pressure-cooker water.  The recipe I adapted (as well as all other Aussie Pie recipes I've come across) calls for gravy, and my intention was to make a gravy that incorporated the mirepoix vegetables.  My intent was to pour the cooking liquid, vegetables and all, into my trusty blender and make short work of pureeing the vegetables.  I do this routinely when I want to make a smooth gravy from vegetable-seasoned braising liquid, but this time it resulted in a minor 'kitchen katastrophe.'  It could easily have resulted in me being scalded, too.

Anyone who's used a blender knows better than to overfill it.  I know better, too.  My excuse for doing so is that I was momentarily impaired by an exhaustion-induced attack of the stupids.  And I wasn't only stupid, I was impatient, too - what with all the time I'd already spent - and I didn't let my cooking liquid cool sufficiently.  Talk about a recipe for disaster.

Bottom line, after reducing my vegetable-laden cooking liquid to one-half its original volume, I almost immediately poured too much of the still-too-hot liquid into my blender.  Then I turned the thing on, and all Hell broke loose.

Realizing from the start that I had overfilled the blender, my enfeebled mind decided that I'd be able to compensate by pushing down on the lid more forcefully than usual.  Well, as you've probably guessed, that did not one whit of good.  Not to say that my hand was forced up; it wasn't.  It's being there, in fact, probably prevented a worse disaster.

The lid stayed in the same place, right where it should have been, on top of the blender vessel, but it surely did not stay the same shape.  The force imparted to the liquid by the blender's impeller blades literally warped the pliable plastic lid, almost turning it inside out, and scalding-hot liquid flew all over the kitchen.  The floor, the counters, nearby appliances - everything within a radius of ten feet, including the upper torso of yours truly - was covered in gravy-makings.

I uttered appropriate blasphemies, of course.  Then I sighed, uttered some more, and set about giving clean-up the proverbial lick and promise while uttering still more.  The clean-up (at least) was necessary because the kitchen floor had been rendered too slippery for safe walking, and my labors were not yet complete.  At this point, I was ready to cry 'uncle'.  The truth be known, if I hadn't promised my wife Aussie Pie for dinner, I'd have said to Hell with it all, and we'd have had fast food for the evening meal.

Anyway the blender incident turned out to be the last mishap of my Aussie Pie misadventure, and I'm glad it was, because I don't think I could have handled another misfortune.  I managed to do a pretty good job with the store-bought pie crusts; I even remembered to take a fork to the bottom crusts to allow steam to escape during baking.  I put the Aussie Pies in the oven, and poured my self a glass of Pinot Noir.  And by godfrey, I thought I deserved it.

That's my post for today because I have to go and finish cleaning my kitchen.  If I'm lucky, that task will only take all afternoon.  Tomorrow, I'll publish the recipe I used, and the details of how I prepared my version of Aussie Pie (or, rather, the details of how I should have prepared it and will prepare it, if I decide to prepare it ever again).

Happy cooking!