The Great Pastie Mission

The ongoing hunt for the perfect Australian meat pastie. PS: this is not a recipe.

It is the year of our Lord, 2025. I’ve been trying to re-create dad’s favourite pastie for what might be centuries but is probably, if I must be more specific, about 15 years. It just seems longer. My efforts recently intensified, given dad is in his 80s and undergoing treatment for a blood disease, and even the most optimistic of daughters might feel the pressing weight of time.

Not that he’s grateful. He loves nothing more than to complain about my cooking. It gives him great joy. A zest for life. He’s never looked more spritely and fresh than when he’s waxing on about how I’ve made far too much food or the flavours are too exotic or I’ve made that same thing too often. And he’s had a real fancy for a pastie for ages which has failed to materialise exactly as he prefers it. Not a Cornish pastie but the old-fashioned Australian pasties you used to be able to buy down at the local servo. His mum used to make them with vegetables and whatever offcuts of meat she could find. She had a huge old metal mincer that attached to the bench like a vice.

These kind of pasties are impossible to find. The modern pastie is either too mushy or too gourmet for dad’s tastes. He doesn’t like them ‘spicy’ which means it should contain no seasoning outside of salt and pepper, certainly no herbs, dried or fresh. He doesn’t like them too meaty, because then you may as well just eat a pie. They need to be plainly made, the vegetables diced just the right size, and the finished result preferably left to sit for a few days so the grease would soak through a paper bag should you need to store one that way.

He’s a very loved dad. I’ve tried many, many recipes trying to get it right. When I was a broadcaster, I shamelessly exploited my position on ABC Radio to conduct long talkback sessions on the subject, and plastered requests for advice all over social media. I’d think I’d finally got it, and the next time I’d visit, I’d spend hours slavishly crafting my latest test recipe. Gripped with wild hope, I’d hand over the fruits of my labour, he’d take a small suspicious bite then adopt that look of crushed disappointment parents get when their child announces they don’t want to take over the family business after all or they want to leave school and be an actor or they’re pregnant at 19. I know the look well because I did two of the aforementioned.

Then he’d scarf up the lot, musing the whole time about the many ways my pasties were lacking and the wonderful, glorious experience of eating a really well-made pastie.

Anyway, last time I was visiting I came so close. And dad hadn’t been sitting around wondering again where he went wrong with my upbringing either. He’d got jack of waiting after all these years, and been on the Interweb, painstakingly researching methods I could employ to improve.

And by George, I think we’ve cracked it. Dad, with his gun research skills. Me, with my endless love and patience. My sisters, with their endless love and patience. As a family, each in our own way, we seem to have finally – look, I want to say shut the old goat up – but he’ll probably read this and I’m not past a clip over the ear if he can catch me.

I fed him one before tea tonight because I was frankly beside myself with excitement after I tried one myself. He was positively giddy. He didn’t grumble anyway. We agreed it needed swede, I hadn’t been able to find one for sale. But that’s ok, because we all need something to strive for. Otherwise, we agreed, it was pretty good. Huzzah!

In return for my near-success, he gifted me with a story from his boarding school years at Aquinas College in Perth when he and the lads were fed an even-more-unusually-inedible-than-usual mash of swede as part of their dinner. It was so disgusting and fibrous that the boys all refused to eat it, instead they spread the vile woody paste thinly over their plates to disguise it, then stacked the plates on top of each other at the end of their tables for collection by the kitchen staff. The staff weren’t fooled. The cook came out and insisted they finish their dinner, and again, as one, the boys refused. It was an unheard of rebellion. The headmaster, Brother Murphy was summoned and he was a man who brooked no defiance. The offending plates with their smear of swede were handed back out, notwithstanding the fact that the original owners of each plate couldn’t be established, so they landed where they landed. Still the boys refused. Brother Murphy swelled up like a blowfish and told them they were all to stay put till they cleared their plates. And stay they did. It was a good two hours before Brother Murphy decided it was more dignified to give in and send them all to bed without dessert or supper than continue to try and outlast them, or inflict corporal punishment on every single child. It wasn’t physically feasible. Dad reckons based on past experience Brother Murphy would have loved to have a shot anyway, but decided in the end there were too many of them. It was, dad fondly recalled, his first experience of a unionised force.

He tells me he’s going to talk to the people at the servo down the road tomorrow about stocking my pasties.

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I know I said this was not a recipe, but for my own records, this is vaguely what went in to them. As it turns out, it’s a very simple recipe. My mistake was that I had been trying to be too fancy. Don’t cook the filling, add it raw and let it steam. No seasoning except for salt and lots of pepper. Not too much meat or you might as well eat a pie.

Pasties

Two potatoes, cubed into half centimetre pieces.

One carrot, cubed same size.

One swede, cubed etc etc.

One turnip, cubed etc etc.

One brown onion finely chopped.

1/4 a cup of minced lamb or beef.

Mix it all up raw in a bowl with salt and LOTS of ground black pepper, (and I’m told white pepper is even better) a good teaspoon, you should be able to taste it.

Use a bread and butter plate to cut rounds from puff pastry sheets. Put mix inside raw (don’t overfill) and a 1/4 teaspoon of butter, seal and brush with milk. Bake at 180 till brown.

While still hot, place in paper bags and leave in a bain-marie for a week till soft. (Kidding.)