Here in Lillooet we get a lot of tourists in the Spring and Summer. They hail from all over the globe and one can hear snatches of conversations in many of the languages of Europe when walking down Main St. The tour buses stop at several locations around town and one of these is near our museum. Nearby is an Esso station which used to have a picnic area on their property for visitors and provided food and ice cream for those hot canyon days. When you walked past, two things occurred. You heard lots of Aussie accents and you smelled something wonderful.
A quick glance at the menu board would have revealed that the source of the coy aroma was Aussie Meat Pie. If you were a permanent resident here you'd likely tell yourself to go home to eat. You might waddle off to the Post Office to pick up your bills and those vacuum cleaner bags you ordered from Kamloops a month ago. On your way back home you'd pause and notice that all hands really seemed to be enjoying their meals. You'd promise yourself that one day you would try one.
This is exactly what happened to me a few short years ago. I had never had the pleasure of eating an Aussie Meat Pie although I have travelled the world and have eaten everything offered to me. The one exception being balut, which is a half-formed embryonic duck.
Growing up in suburbia, I ate the usual Chicken and Beef Pot Pies. Those anemic distant cousins of the AMP were tinfoil cups filled with corn starch, chicken or beef bullion, diced carrots, peas and diced meat. A typical forkful yielded only enough meat to obscure an American ten cent piece. The whole affair was wrapped in pale half-cooked dough which smelled reminiscent of wet newspaper.
Personally, I detest pie crust while I love many types of pie fillings. I make exceptions for thin crust pizza, spanakopita filo pastry and anything with graham cracker crust. I have harboured this wise culinary prejudice since early boyhood and it was much later in life that I realized it was the ancient mark of a colon whisperer.
A few seasons back, after over eighty hours of sustained high winds, I ventured forth to collect my mail and buy my tobacco. It happens that the Esso has the best price on that commodity and as I approached, two tour buses came into my view. I had just cashed in a five dollar lottery ticket which brought my pocket cash total to ten dollars. I went inside the gas station and did something I had always wanted to do. I asked the lady to fix me up one of those Aussie Meat Pies. I watched out the window as the picnic tables cleared and the buses re-filled. They were just pulling away when my pie went into the infra-red warmer.
While I waited I had a nice chat with an elderly gent about the meal I was about to enjoy. He taught me that what set the Aussie Meat Pie apart from any other meat pie was simply the meat to vegetable ratio employed in its creation. An Aussie Meat Pie, he told me, was made by the meat, for the meat and to protect the meat. It was merely laced with enough peas and carrots to add the tiniest bit of colour, to afford better passage and to still the vestigial balanced diet concerns of Continental civilization. I thanked the man, paid the lady and carried my prize outdoors where I polished it off in the time it takes a kookaburra to sing his warning.
The crust was buttery, crisp and very thin for such a robust pie. For that I was thankful. The interior was a lovely brown lightly speckled with green and orange. The consistency was that of a person's first meatloaf before they learned to add an egg or any breadcrumbs. Thick enough to stand alone when dipped into but ready to yield to the gums of an infant. The spicing was bland in general as is proper for a dish of British heritage. That said, I soon found that the choice meat, fresh peas and carrots had been allowed full expression of their own flavours.
I was so impressed, I went home and proceeded to adapt what I had just learned into something tangible. As a result Cayoosh Pie was born. I will sketch out my method below for any interested parties.
***Recipe for Cherokee Swede's Cayoosh Pie***
Take about 4-5 lbs. of grass-fed lean beef, buffalo, deer or moose meat ground fine. Fry it up slowly and chop it into puree as it browns. If your meat is of good quality, when you are done you should not have enough fat to pour off into anything bigger than a spoon, thus you can save the meat drippings in a cup on the side as they consist mostly of water and salt. Open up a bottle of Argentine Malbec and pour yourself a glass. Put on some Pink Floyd and crank up the volume. In this ambient, scrub up about five potatoes, each as big as both of your fists. Skin them with a ceramic device and boil them in salted water until they yield to a fork.
Have the meat standing by in a tall pot with a spoonful of olive oil spread across the bottom. Mash the potatoes with real butter and add nothing more to them. Put them in a clean bowl and set them aside. Wash up the implements you have used, refresh the music and top up your wine glass. Get another clean bowl and crush up a six inch stack of Stoned Wheat Thin crackers if you live in Canada or an equal amount of stale baguette if you live elsewhere. Use a clean smooth fist-shaped river rock that has been rubbed over with fresh garlic.
When the bread or crackers are well crushed, add one egg, two capfuls of ReaLemon, seven hard shakes of Worcestershire sauce and five soft shakes of Tabasco. Wash your hands with particular attention to getting the soap off of them. In a small dish, spill out some oregano, thyme, black pepper and dill fresh enough that it smells like driving down a Texas highway in June with the windows rolled down. Start out with 1/4 teaspoons of each herb.
Open a big 28 oz. can of chopped spinach. The best is Natco brand Epinards Hachés from France. After opening the can drain the water off. If you have used the French spinach there will be less than a teaspoon. Roll up your sleeves and dump the spinach into the crumb bowl. You will now plunge into the stuff and hand mix it until it resembles green drywall paste. Pour the plate of herbs into it and mix it up again. Taste a bit off your hand and see if, in your opinion anything is lacking. Set this aside and wash up again.
Put the pot of meat on a burner and bring it up to heat. Dash on some crushed black pepper about the size of a silver dollar in your hand. Stir this constantly with a wooden spoon. If its too dry, add the water you saved from frying the meat. Now, add a whole fistful of Sabzhi Ash Amira. This mixture of fresh sun-dried herbs from the slopes of the Zagros and Alborz Mountains of Iran is easy to find in your local Persian market. There are five kinds of leaves in this particular mix. Cilantro, dill, spinach, parsley and leeks. They are bright green, paper thin and swell up like Japanese dried seaweed when cooked. They will provide an incredible feedback loop of flavour to your spinach mix.
Take a single crunchy and noble celery stalk and slice it into razor thin half moons. Drop it into the meat pot and stir it in. It will be the last time you see it but you will taste it forever. Now, take a pack of Knorr Cream of Leek soup mix and hydrate it with 1/2 the water called for on the packet. Whisk it while its still cold and let it heat until it thickens up nice.
When this is accomplished, add it to the meat. Keep stirring that pot of meat and pour in a half teacup of the Malbec. When you get this mixture up to a bubbling heat, take a small bag of frozen diced peas and carrots and add one half to the meat. While that is coming up to bubble again, take four big tablespoons of tamarind paste and mix it up with enough warm water, meat juice or spinach juice to make it resemble enamel paint. Pour that in and stir it up. Watch the pot and keep scrubbing the bottom as things try to prevent sticking.
When the little geysers of water which have formed during the simmer diminish in number to no more than two or so, this phase is complete. Give another mighty stir and take it off the heat. Set out whatever crockery you happen to own as long as it is five to six inches deep and grease up the bottoms, sides and rims with a paper towel moistened with olive oil. Using a spatula, put down a compact layer of spinach mix on the bottoms. Keep it about as thick as a sheet of 1/2” plywood.
Wait until the meat mixture has cooled down a bit and then add a good four fingers worth on top of the spinach bed. Bang the vessel gently on a cloth covered side board to get out any bubbles and to level it off. Now you will top it with mashed potatoes as you would do for a Shepherd's Pie.
If they are too cold and stiff with butter, heat them gently by any means available and then spread them on like warm cake icing. Bang it all flat again and from a foot of height, dust some sweet paprika onto the potatoes until they resemble dirty parking lot snow. Turn on the oven to 350 F and bake the crock for about twenty minutes.
The bottom layer's forest fern aroma will travel into the meat layer where it will pick up the soul satisfying smack of protein, animal fat and two mysterious hints of other continents. When these flavours are married they will attempt to cross the potato barrier. In a typical mouthful, you will taste the delightful evidence of their partially successful ascension. Remove the crock or crocks from the oven and let them completely cool down.
You can then slice out big intact slabs of red, white and green and lay them sideways onto a plate for re-heating. This dish washes down equally well with fresh ground coffee, buttermilk, a glass of Malbec or a cold beer. Have a puddle of HP Sauce on your plate to swab up with each forkful. Cayoosh Pie takes about 48 hours in the fridge to mature into its full potential. Enjoy this treat and remember that when it comes to pie crust, just say No! Cheers from Lillooet, Mate!
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