Aussie Pie - Anatomy of a Kitchen Disaster

When I signed off yesterday, I fully intended to give you the ingredients and details of preparation of Aussie Pie.  However, after cleaning up yesterday the mess in my kitchen I'd made the day before, I've had a change of heart.  I made a really huge mess, you see, and I think it's incumbent on me to discourage any attempts at emulation.  At any rate, we'll take up Aussie Pie again in due time.

Now, I know you're not really curious about the kitchen clean-up I was compelled to perform yesterday after submitting my post, but I'm going to talk about it, anyway.  My purpose is to tell a horror story, in hopes that it will discourage you from cooking when you're tired, and to give you a concrete example of the cost, in terms of unnecessary and entirely avoidable work, of culinary mental mistakes.

As you'll recall, I, in the throes of an exhaustion-caused stupidity attack, overfilled my blender with scalding-hot gravy-makings, and when I 'shot the juice', figuratively speaking, to the blender, the blender responded in kind by shooting the juice, literally speaking, back at me and my immediate vicinity.  The indoor cloudburst that resulted, in and of itself, wouldn't have been much of a problem if the contents of the blender had only been clear liquid, but this, sadly, was not the case.

My gravy-makings, remember, had been pressure-cooked, and thus contained little pieces of eye-of-round roast, carrot, celery, and onions.  Well, after having been neglected all night and most of yesterday morning, these food particles could not have been stuck faster - to counter-tops, floors, appliances, etc. - if someone had used epoxy cement or crazy-glue to stick them.

It was, basically, one whopping Hell of a mess.  They were many in number, these food particles.  There must have been literally thousands - I do not jest - of these, stuck individually and in little clusters, onto surfaces throughout the kitchen (and beyond its confines, as well, it turned out).

And then, there was the grease.  Although a well trimmed eye-of-round roast doesn't have much external fat, more fat comes out when you pressure-cook one than you can shake a stick at.  Now, we all know that cooking fat in liquid form doesn't dissolve in water but floats on it instead, so what do you think happened when I poured my gravy-makings into the blender?  That's right, the fat floated to the top.  Then, when I turned on the blender, what happened?  Right again.  I wound up with not only food particles all over the place, but a boat-load of grease, too.

Feeling horrified yet?  No? well, just wait.  I've not yet described my clean-up ordeal.  If that doesn't scare you, nothing will.

Immediately after posting my article yesterday, I entered my kitchen, and on close inspection, discovered the extent of the mess.  My findings dismayed me, but knowing the job had to be done, I set to work.

First off, I collected cleaning supplies - kithen-cleaning liquid with grease-cutter, general-purpose cleaning liquid, mop and bucket, floor-cleaner, kitchen towels, paper towels, etc. Then the actual cleaning started.

I started with vertical surfaces, such as cabinet fronts and the sides of appliances.  My intention was to clean from top to bottom so that I wouldn't have to clean places more than once.

The refrigerator is in close proximity to where I had the blender positioned that fateful evening, and it was the grease spattered on its side that led to my discovery of how much grease I had to deal with.  Fortunately, although there was a lot of it, the grease was mostly in the area surrounding the scene of the accident.  The grease, being localized, was comparatively easy to clean.  This was a good thing, I thought, and I made reasonably quick work of it, although there was a gracious plenty of grease.

The grease, however, turned out to be the only blessing (if I dare call it that) in this sordid affair.  Grease was, in fact, only the tip of the iceberg.  It was while cleaning up the grease that I discovered the problem of the food particles.  This turned out to be worse than my worst nightmare.  The good news was, I discovered that I could get the glued-on food particles up.  The bad news, without expending considerably more than a little elbow grease, I'd have to apply the liquid to my target and wait for the cleanser to dissolve the 'glue'.  Either way, it would take time - lots of time - and not a little effort.

Anyway, after a little experimentation, I determined that less time, but more material, was consumed by spraying cleaner on a surface and letting the glue dissolve before wiping, and more time, but slightly less material, using the elbow-grease method.  For horizontal surfaces, I opted for the spray-wait-wipe method.

Vertical surfaces were another matter entirely. I didn't even bother trying the spray-wait-wipe method on vertical surfaces.  I'd be working against gravity using the spray-wait-wipe method, the problem coming in during the 'wait' stage, so the elbow-grease method was obviously the only effective way to clean these.

By the time I'd cleaned all the vertical surfaces and raised horizontal surfaces, I had been working for almost five hours.  I was pretty much beat by now, but I still had the floor to tackle.  This was not going to be easy, despite my having done a half-assed job of cleaning it the night before.  I had gotten up the liquid, you see, but I hadn't gotten up all of the food particles.  These food particles now were glued securely to the floor.  Trying to scrub the particles up, by using a mop, liquid floor cleaner, and brute force, would be a useless gesture, and besides, my reserves of brute force were low just now.  No, time and dissolving the glue were the only solutions, but Lordy! Lordy! was I tired (as well as sore, stiff, and fed up to here), and about half-past ready for this job to end.

Anyway, I persevered.  It took me some time to clean that floor, but clean it I did.  I laid down a generous amount of liquid floor cleaner, and then waited.  Every fifteen minutes or so, I did a little test mopping.  Finally, no food particles remained.

This final clean-up task wound up taking an hour to complete, so the duration of the entire job was about six hours.  I was utterly exhausted, for the second consecutive day, and I've been kicking myself ever since for being so stupid as to have caused it in the first place.

Moral of story? It's this: Please, please, please! never ever try to cook when you're tired - you're apt to regret it.  As the proverb says, What ye sow, also shall ye reap.  In cooking, however, it can be worse than that.  For the one mistake you sow, you often reap twice - you may very easily screw up your food (I got lucky and didn't, fortunately), and there likely will be a mess to clean up afterwards.

Happy cleaning - er, cooking!

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!

Aussie Pie

Years ago, during my software engineering 'apprenticeship', as it were, in California's Silicon Valley, I was introduced to Aussie Pie.  Aussie Pie is a savory meat (beef, usually), onion, and gravy filling stuffed into a pie crust.  The typical Aussie pie is small enough to be picked up in one hand and eaten without ceremony or fanfare.  In Australia, they're sold as fast food and eaten like we eat hamburgers here in the U.S.

My acquaintance with Aussie Pie dates back to the late 1980s.  Being an inveterate foodie - always have been, always will be - I knew what Aussie Pie was, and based on the ingredients, I knew that I'd probably like it.  Therefore, when I read that an Australian firm was introducing Aussie Pie on a test-marketing basis on the West Coast, my interest was piqued.  When Aussie Pie finally arrived on the scene, I was not disappointed.  I was a bit surprised, however, because the advanced publicity had not proclaimed "coming to a 'ptomaine trunk' near you!"

That's right.  The first Aussie Pie I ever ate I purchased from a cold-serve vending machine.  I had to 'nuke' it to warm it up, but the flavor, texture, and mouth-feel were to die for.  In short, it was the complete package, and I've been a fan ever since.

Now you may ask - and with good reason - just what in the world does the abovegoing 'war story' have to do with Southern home cooking?  Well, the answer is absolutely nothing.  But I've been thinking and remembering about Aussie Pie now for the last couple of days, and I'm thinking I'll take a crack at making Aussie Pie myself.  I'll let you know how it turns out, and over the course of the next few days, I'll describe my labors (and recipe) in detail, which will lead (hopefully - keep your fingers crossed!) to my ultimate triumph.

Happy cooking!

Zucchini, Onions, and Tomatoes

Here's the very first zucchini dish I ever sampled.  It's simple and unpretentious, but it's tasty.

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Zucchini with Onions and Tomatoes

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1 large zucchini squash.
1 small Vidalia onion.
1 small can whole tomatoes.
Vegetable oil.
Salt.
Black pepper.

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Cut zucchini into quarters lengthwise, then cut each quarter crosswise into 1/2-inch slices.

Rough-chop (3/4-inch dice) the onion.

Drain the tomatoes, reserving the liquid, and chop into bite-size pieces.

Into a heavy skillet, pour enough oil to coat the bottom fully.  Place over MEDIUM heat and bring up to cooking temperature.

Cook the zucchini slices, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes.

Add the chopped onion and continue cooking for another 5 minutes.

Reduce heat.  Add the chopped tomatoes and the reserved liquid.

Simmer until most of the liquid has evaporated.

Season to taste with the salt and pepper.  Serve immediately.

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Depending on how large your "large zucchini" is, and on whether you like your vegetables crisp or on the softish side, and upon how much you like onions and tomatoes with your zucchini, you may want to lengthen or shorten the recommended cooking times as well as increase or reduce the recommended amounts of onion and/or tomato.  Recipes are only guidlines anyway, so feel free to experiment.  Hell, I experiment with recipes all the time, so I can't very well feel put out if you do, too.  What's good for the goose, you know.

Happy cooking!

And You Can Stuff Them, Too!

In Friday's post, I mentioned that I've been known to stuff zucchini.  This is not really traditional Southern fare, but it's really good.  Here's how I do it.

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Stuffed Zucchini:

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2 medium Zucchini squash.
1 recipe Meat Stuffing.
Mozzarella or Provolone cheese slices.
Aluminum foil.

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Slice each squash in half lengthwise.

Using a spoon, scrape the seeds out of each half, in order to provide room for the stuffing.

Optional step: For more tender zucchini, wrap individual zucchini slices loosely in foil and bake in a 300 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Spoon stuffing loosely into zucchini halves.

Cover stuffing in each zucchine half with cheese slices.

Wrap each of the individual stuffed zucchini halves in foil, loosely, in order that the cheese doesn't come into contact with the foil (and come off in the foil when you unwrap them).

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove and let stand for 10 minutes.

Carefully remove from foil and serve.

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Meat Stuffing for Zucchini:

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1/2 pound lean ground beef.
2 1/4 pound sweet Italian sausage links.
1 small can whole tomatoes.
1/4 C Italian-style breadcrumbs.
1/4 C Grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.
2 cloves garlic, minced.
1 Shallot, minced.
1/2 t dried oregano.
1/2 t dried sweet basil.
Salt.
Black pepper.

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Remove casing from sausage.  Split the casing with a sharp paring knife, then remove the sausage meat.  Pull the sausage meat apart into bite-size (preferably smaller than bite-size, actually) pieces.

In a heavy skillet over MEDIUM heat, cook the sausage pieces until about half done (still showing a good bit of pink).

Add the ground beef.  Crumble it as you put it into the skillet.  This is easier if the ground beef is referigator-cold.

Just before the ground beef is fully browned, remove from heat and drain through a collander.  Rinse the meat mixture in cold water, in order to rinse off excess fat.  Allow to drain, but not too much, after rinsing.

Return the meat to the skillet, which you have removed from the heat.  Stir in the garlic, shallots, oregano, and (optionally) basil.

Drain the tomatoes, retaining the liquid.  Chop the tomatoes into 1/2 inch pieces.  Add chopped tomatoes and retained tomato liquid to the meat/herb mixture in the skillet.

Cook mixture over LOW heat until half of the liquid has evaporated.  This step is necessary in order that the dry herbs get moistened and softened, and so the flavors of the dry herbs can permeate the mixture.

Allow to cool, then sprinkle breadcrumbs and grated cheese over mixture.  Stir well.

Makes enough stuffing for 2 medium-size zucchinis (4 pieces), and then some.

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Happy cooking!

And By the Way, Frying Works with Zucchini, Too.

It may seem strange that an Italian vegetable would be so popular in the Deep South, and yet this is so.  I don’t know how long this has been, but it must not be a very long time.  Nevertheless, I had my first experience of zucchini before I was ten years old.

Our next-door neighbor (and Nannie’s contemporary) came over one afternoon and asked if we wanted some free zucchini.  Her husband, she explained, kept a garden at their vacation home, and they were overrun with zucchini.  Now, Nannie had never heard of zucchini, so the neighbor-lady had to explain that zucchini is a squash, that it’s very good to eat, and that you could either bread it and fry it, or fry it unbreaded and then cook it with onions and tomatoes (I have since prepared zucchini many other ways, including stuffing it with an Italian sausage/ground beef mixture, but I suppose the neighbor-lady was not really that experienced with zucchini)  At any rate, Nannie graciously accepted the gift, and fixed us zucchini with onion and tomatoes the next day for dinner (the noon meal at our house, remember).  I’ve been enjoying zucchini ever since.

Anyway, here’s a recipe for breaded fried zucchini,

Breaded and Fried Zucchini

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1 medium- to large-sized zucchini squash, cut crosswise into 1/4- to 1/2-inch slices.
Egg wash.
All-purpose flour.
Salt.
Black pepper.
Dried and crushed sweet basil (optional).
Vegetable oil.

Prepare the egg wash by breaking an egg into a shallow bowl and then stirring the egg rapidly with a fork until the yolk and white are completely mixed.

Prepare each slice of squash as follows:

1. Dip in the egg wash and coat the slice completely.  Then allow any excess egg wash to drain back into the container.
2. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and optionally, basil.
3. Dredge lightly in the flour.

If you’d like crunchier fried zucchini, try repeating steps (1) through (3), above.  If you do this, go easy on the seasonings each time, because you’ll be seasoning twice.  Alternatively, you could omit step (2) on the first go-round, and season only on the second, or vice versa.

Pour just enough oil into a large, heavy skillet to coat the bottom completely.  Place over MEDIUM heat and allow to come up to cooking temperature.

When the pan’s hot, place the breaded zucchini slices in the pan so that they don’t overlap.  You want to cook the slices evenly, and if they overlap in the pan, this won’t happen.

Cook both sides of the zucchini slices until they are a golden-brown, a little darker than you would summer squash.  Zucchini can be a bit more dense (i.e, weighs more per unit volume) than summer squash, and it takes longer to cook through.

Drain and serve immediately.

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Note: Please, please don’t think I’m such an idiot that I actually do steps (1) through (3) - egg-washing, seasoning, and dredging - for each and every individual slice of zucchini.  Steps (1) through (3) merely specify the order of operations.  You don’t have to do them exactly as specified, and I don’t.  What I do is, I egg-wash a batch of slices, then season the batch, then dredge the batch, and then repeat for the next batch, until I’ve done the lot.

Personally, I like the mouth-feel, the extra little something, that the zucchini skin gives to the finished dish, but this may not appeal to you.  If the notion of leaving the skin on the squash clashes with your sensibilities, then do not hesitate to pare the skin off your zucchini before you slice it.  You can remove all of the skin, or just part of it, as is often done with cucumbers.

Happy cooking!

While We're on the Subject of Squash . . .

. . . let's look at another way to fry it. 

I imagine that there are more squash recipes to be found in the Southeast than there are cooks in the region, and at least as many recipes for fried squash as there are cooks.  Squash just seems to be a popular food down here, except maybe among school-age kids.  Squash-hating may not be so prevalent among today's school children, but squash was almost universally disliked, and in some cases hated outright, by pupils in the Dougherty County, Georgia, public school system, of which I am a product.

Now personally, I do not remember a time when I didn't like squash.  When we had squash for lunch at school I was, as they say, in hog heaven.

Early on in my academic career, when the school cafeteria served squash, I'd have one or more schoolmates approach me with the intention of trading their squash for something on my tray that I didn't care for.  The problem with that was that there wasn't much I didn't like in the way of food, so there was usually nothing I was willing to swap for another helping of squash. I suppose I had inadvertently developed a reputation for liking squash, but since I liked everything else and usually declined to swap, this sort of propositioning became rather rare.  More often than not, though, I'd end up with an extra helping or two on days when squash was served.

There were always certain kids, you see, who couldn't stand the sight of the stuff, much less the idea of putting it in their mouths.  Such children called it names like squish in elementary school (and they waxed more and more descriptive, I'm here to tell you, as they advanced in grade level and their skills in the use of obscene and/or profane language improved).  Anyhow, I came to know who these people were, and on squash days, I'd stalk them.

My modus operandi was this:  I'd choose one particular squash-hater and schmooze them. Then, when it was time for lunch, I'd follow my intended victim to a table, sit down close to them, and start eating my lunch.  Then, just when lunch started to kick into high gear, I'd nonchalantly ask my victim, "Hey, you gonna eat your squish?"

I think it was probably the word squish, spoken with a tone and inflection intended to evoke unpleasant feelings in the listener, and timed for when the listener's mouth was full of food, that did the trick, but the why isn't important.  Regardless of the reason, it was the result that counted:  the squash-hater gladly parted with his or her portion of the abominable vegetable.  Yuk! take it and good riddance!  I believe they might have paid me to take their squash, if the thought had crossed their minds and they'd had the money.

Okay! okay!  Pardon my ruminations, but I couldn't help myself.  Remembering those days, so long ago now, always gives me a chuckle, and I do enjoy telling a story.  Now, to today's recipe.

Deep-Fried Squash

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4 C fresh yellow squash at room temperature, quartered lengthwise, individual quarters then cut crosswise into 1-inch slices.
1 C all-purpose flour.
1 large egg.
Table salt.
Black pepper.
Vegetable oil (for deep-frying).
Onion powder (optional).

Beat the egg lightly with a fork to mix the white and yolk.

For each piece of the squash, do the following:

• Dip into the egg. Coat thoroughly, then allow the excess egg to drain back into the egg container.
• Season to taste with salt, black pepper, and onion powder (if you're using it).
• Dredge lightly in the flour.

After confirming that there's suffficient oil in your deep fryer, and topping it up if there isn't, set the temperature to 350 degrees.

When the oil in the fryer reaches 350 degrees, carefully drop no more than a handful of the squash piece in the oil.  If it's more than a handful, the additional mass could reduce the temperature of the oil significantly.  This is not a good thing to have happen, because in order to cook in the lower-temperature oil, the food must remain in it for a longer time than normal.  The food can thus absorb more oil than usual, and it may become greasy.

Cook the squash until the flour breading is a light golden brown.  Cooking squash in a deep fryer doesn't take long, so be careful that you don't overcook it.

Remove food from deep fryer and drain.

Allow drained squash to cool, then serve immediately.

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Breaded squash can also be cooked in a skillet, but you'll need to use 1/4-inch slices rather than 1-inch, and you'll need to cook the squash slices in batches of no more slices than cover the bottom of the pan. You'll need only enough vegetable to cover the bottom of the pan. Keep an eye on your squash by turning frequently.  Your food is done when it takes on the light golden-brown color, as described above.

Either way you fry it - deep or pan - you may want to substitute a seasoned for the table salt.  That little extra flavor might be all it takes to convert a young squash-hater, should it be your misfortune to have one running around your house, into an enthusiastic squash fanatic.

Happy cooking!