Is there anything more Australian than a meat pie? Of course there is, it’s a kangaroo meat pie.
My workplace recently asked for volunteers to create a newsletter to connect the Asia Pacific offices. You can safely assume that I put my hand up. Naturally I suggested a recipes section since food brings people together.
Since the first issue is coming out of the Sydney office we needed an Aussie dish. Sounds easy. But when you think about it, most of our dishes are English or inspired by one of the numerous cultures here.
Mark’s suggestion was a good old meat pie. To ensure that it was truly Australian he made it out of kangaroo meat and it was delicious!
Recipe for Mark’s Kangaroo Meat Pie
Serves 6
For this pie you can make pastry with the recipe below from a leading female of Australia’s food culture. Or you can buy store bought short crust pastry. Mark made the pastry from scratch and people at work who were lucky enough to have a taste test are still talking about that pastry. It is well worth the effort if you have the time.
Stephanie Alexander’s Short Crust Pastry
180g unsalted butter grated
240g plain flour
Pinch of salt
¼ cup of chilled water.
Sift flour and salt onto a workbench. Toss butter and flour lightly together and gently rub to partly combine.
Make a well in the centre and our in the water. Work water into flour until you have buttery lumps.
Using the heel of your hand, quickly smear pastry away from you across the workbench. Press in to a flat circle, dust with a little flour. Wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Roll out the pastry, dusting with flour
as necessary.
Pie Filling
2 onions sliced
600 g kangaroo meat, cut in chunks (or beef)
Flour for dusting the meat
1 cup of red wine
1 cup of good quality vegetable stock
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon crushed juniper berries
½ a crushed star anise
½ eggplant, cubed
Method
1. Set a fan-assisted oven to 180oC.
2. Cook the onions in a heavy based pan until soft and remove from pan.
3. Coat the kangaroo meat in a generous dusting of flour. Quickly fry at a high heat in olive oil until browned. This is best done in two batches to make sure the kangaroo stays hot and fries quickly.
4. Add all meat and onions back in the pan, stir.
5. Add wine, stock, garlic, juniper berries, star anise, and eggplant.
6. Simmer until the meat is tender and the liquid has reduced, for approximately 15 minutes.
7. Butter a 22 cm pie or cake tin and line with pastry, put it in the fridge to set.
8. Set the meat aside to cool.
9. Remove the pastry from the fridge. Put the cooled meat in the tin and cover with a pastry top, ensuring to seal the edges with water.
10. Lightly coat the top of the pie with a milk wash, and make a small incision in the centre.
11. Cook in the oven for 30–40 minutes.
12. Remove from the oven, turn pie out and enjoy with Green Tomato Relish.
If you are also growing tomatoes you may want to make a relish to accompany this dish, go and read my relish recipe here.
After making something so Australian you may want to make some tiny French tea cakes which I’ve also shared here.
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