When Irish Eyes Are Smilin'

So today is (duh!) St. Patrick's Day, which seemed a perfect day to party like we're Irish, which my husband actually is 1/4 of the way. As I think I mentioned, neither one of us likes corned beef and cabbage, we're not like to drink green beer, and so it came to me like a bolt from the blue: Irish soda bread!

I thought I'd give you a quick background of Irish soda bread. According to Wikipedia:

Soda bread dates back to approximately 1840, when bicarbonate of soda was introduced to Ireland. Because the climate of Ireland hinders the growth of hard wheat (which creates a flour that rises easily with the assistance of yeast), bicarbonate of soda replaced yeast as the leavening agent.

There are several theories as to the significance of the cross in soda bread. Some believe that the cross was placed in the bread to ward off evil. It is also possible that the cross is used to help with the cooking of the bread or to serve as a guideline for even slices.

Soda bread eventually became a staple of the Irish diet. It was, and still is, used as an accompaniment to a meal.

However, there seems to be some controversary swirling around about Irish soda bread. Some claim that it's more an American creation, or at least an American bastardization of the real thing. You can read the fascinating story from an Irish chef here. My first brush with soda bread was in college. I ate it once on St. Patty's day, didn't care for it and haven't had it again. But it beats corned beef and cabbage! So it is what we elected to do. Incidentally, soda bread is one of the national dishes of Ireland. So how about that!?

Now, either I am a total trendsetting genius or I'm a lemming like everyone else, because I swear, everyone is making Irish soda bread today. Seriously. So much so that I could not get buttermilk at my local grocery store. For some reason, though, I've been reading a lot about, "If you don't have buttermilk, curdle some milk with lemon juice and it'll work just fine". So due to the fact that I didn't want to have to go to 3 different stores like my friend Lauren did, I decided to just go ahead and curdle it here at home. Plus, I can use milk and I probably couldn't have used whatever might have been left of the buttermilk.

If you want to use the recipe I used, please visit the website at Associated Content, where someone has posted their aunt's recipe, said aunt living on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula (does that sound like a made up place, or is it just me?).

If you look in the ingredients, you will see a bottle of lemon juice. Lemon juice in Irish soda bread, you ask? Well, that's how you curdle milk. I wanted to do this first, since my friend Jacalyn suggested that it had to sit on the counter for a while and curdle properly. This was supported by anecdotal evidence on the internet. Jacalyn also suggested that since I needed 2 cups of buttermilk, I might want to do it in two separate batches, so I did. I put in 1 tablespoon of lemon juice per 1 cup of milk.


Curdle away, boys!

Ok, so while that was curdling merrily away, I preheated the oven and got to work with the dry ingredients. I measured out 4 cups of flour and put it in the bowl of my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer :-) I decided to use the dough hook today since we are making bread, and figured it would give a nice little kneading (bread sure is kneady! *insert groans here*). I'm not sure if you'll be able to see it, but of the various shades of white stuff in here, you will see sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

Once I combined that, it was time to cut in the butter. I used a regular unsalted butter since I had already added a little salt to the dough. I have to say, the dough hook didn't do much for it to cut the butter in, so I switched to the paddle for that step. While it did mean I dirtied another attachment, it worked much better. Then it was time to add some dried fruit. I selected golden raisins, although the General is probably not going to like them, but I love golden ones better than the black raisins and I have them lying around from a previous recipe, so I figured I would go ahead and use them. I still have some (hooray!) for something else, but I'm not yet sure what.



Ok, so by this time, the 'buttermilk' was in pretty good shape. I read the directions carefully this time-as opposed to with the spaetzle where I dumped everything in--and discovered I had to whisk the egg and buttermilk together before adding them to the flour mixture.



Then I put the dough hook back on the Kitchen Aid and started slowly adding in the egg mixture. The directions said to do this by hand, but I was like, "What?! How do you pick up a liquid with your hand!?" so I let the machine did it.

Almost immediately upon the completion of incorporating the two parts of the ingredients, I was aware there was a problem. See anything strange?



Yeah, it's like a freakin' liquid! It was so sticky and gooey. Ugh. I figured the hook missed some flour on the bottom of the bowl, which it had and which I incorporated, but that was before I took the above picture! The problem became even more apparently when I turned it out on my "lightly floured" surface.


Attack of the killer blob

So I knew from reading the little article that the dude wrote to accompany his aunt's recipe that it was kind of ballparky at best--his aunt didn't use recipes, just did everything by feel. Still, it took me nearly another 1 1/2 cups of flour to get it to resemble anything close to bread dough and man did it make a mess! I got a little nervous that maybe I needed to add some extra leavening, but I wasn't really sure, so I left it alone. I transferred the bread to a parchment lined cookie sheet and cut the traditional cross into the top of it.



The directions said it should bake 50-60 minutes, but I found that when I took it out after 55, it was still a little gooey on the inside, so I let it go about 65 minutes. And voila! I made Irish soda bread!



Well, you know how it is, one of the best things ever is fresh baked bread, it just smells awesome! And how about the taste of it when it's slathered in butter, which then melts and gets all yummy? So I couldn't just sit there and look at it, I had to cut myself a little piece and try it.



Ok, so why I should be surprised that the cafeteria at my college had totally loused up the bread, I don't know since they basically loused up everything they tried to cook, or maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe it's just better hot, but whatever the case may be, this is/was one damned good piece of bread. Irish, American, Irish-American, I'll take it!

I can't wait to see what the General thinks!

Sorry, Charlie!

No 80 Plates today. I've been feeling like crap all day and running around anyway. Will be back on Tuesday with Ireland. Jamaica will happen--just not sure when!

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

So I've been lamenting that we're somewhat falling behind on our 80 Plates cooking, and that we need to step it up some. I've got 2 countries planned--Italy on March 28th (open to friends--please RSVP if you are coming! You won't be alone, Elizabeth is intrepidly being our Test Italian) and Turkey on April 6th (book club only, I'm afraid!), but beyond that we haven't found time or recipes that inspired us to get cooking! Mike and I have been playing "clean out the freezer" from many of our previous dishes, and also from things we put in there and forgot. It's saved us money on the grocery bills in addition to providing some challenges with "what the the heck am I going to do with a half pound of pork!?"

So today we pulled out bratwurst that has been in there since who knows when. The thing is, I've made brats a thousand times, so I didn't really feel good about counting it for Germany. The aforementioned Elizabeth, also an expectant mommy, (click here to visit her blog) and I were talking and we both hit on a flash of brilliance at the same time: spaetzle!

I love spaetzle. The first time I remember having it was when my mom got us beans and spaetzle from Birds Eye when we were little and visiting my grandparents in Connecticut. Since then, I've had it prepared in several German restaurants, including one here in Stafford County, which I highly recommend. However, if you visit Zum Rheingarten, make damned sure you have reservations and don't wear blue jeans. Although the General and I broke both rules and they still seated us anyway and were darned nice about it, so what can I say?

Anyway, I had found a recipe on line for spaetzle that garnered rave reviews from German cooks and I'd been wanting to try it, so what better occasion than this? So out of the blue, another country down.

I'm including my preparations for bratwurst here too, just in case you want to see it. It is basically what they used to show during the Johnsville brats commercial, but it's so good and so yummy that it's how I've always elected to make ours! So it was a gorgeous day here in Fredericksburg, 72 degrees this afternoon. So nice in fact that I put on the ceiling fans and opened the windows. I decided I was going to go ahead and fire up the grill for the first time since last fall. Remember I said we call it Vesuvius? Well, here it is! You can see why. That sucker is massive. But I could also call it Old Reliable, because it fired up with no hesitation this evening when called for duty.

My recipe for brats is a simple one: Thick slice an onion, throw it in a pot, dump a can of beer over it, bring it to a boil, add the brats, boil them up a bit, and then throw them and the onions on the grill till done. See below!











Ok, time to make some spaetzle!! If you want the recipe I followed, please visit this site. Yes, yes, it is Tyler Florence again, but reading the feedback, it is an authentic recipe, so I felt justified in using it. Not to mention that every single spaetzle recipe I read had the same ingredients as this one, so I think you make one spaetzle, you've made them all. You can buy spaetzle mix at your local grocery stores, but it really isn't hard to make, so why bother? Also, in reading the comments left on this recipe, everyone said that the spaetzle came out really nutmeg-y, so if you are leary of nutmeg, you should add a bit less. I like nutmeg a lot, but I didn't want them to taste of it overpoweringly, so I only put in a quarter teaspoon instead of a half.

Ok, so the ingredient list is pretty easy: flour, eggs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, milk. You will also need butter to sautee them in and chives for the top if desired. I did put some chives on them to make them more colorful. So the prep is pretty easy--mix together the dry ingredients, combine the wet ingredients in a separate bowl, combine the two. Only, I guess I got excited because I dumped the milk on the flour mixture without first combining it with the eggs! Oops!



I mixed it all together using a silicone spatula because it allowed me to give everything a good beating and mush out any lumps in the dough. Then it had to be set to rise for a while before I could boil it up. I put it to the side while I put the brats out on the grill and then came back to make the spaetzle.

Spaetzle is fun to make!! Basically what you do is force the dough a little at a time through a slotted spoon into a pot of boiling water. Once it floats to the top, you skim it out and put it in a colander to drain, and rinse it under cool water.





Once this is completed, it's gravy. My hands did get a little bit messy and occasionally the dough overflowed the spoon and made giant dumplings instead of sweet little neat ones, but all in all, it went perfectly. They looked and felt like authentic spaetzle.

All that was left was to saute them up. I had the butter melted already, just having put the pan on the hot burner from when I had boiled up the brats. I just turned it back on and tossed the spaetzle in. I didn't think they'd really fry or brown up, and they did not. It just kind of sizzled in there and got buttery delicious. I tossed on the chives, and it was time to eat!!



I made a side of green beans for myself, and Mike just had his spaetzle and brats. He thought they were "good". He said that when he thinks of dumplings, he thinks of something bigger that has a filling, but over all he thought they were good. I was really freakin' impressed with myself for having made them!! I thought they were really good.

So another country knocked off! We need to get more heavily into Africa--we've only done one African country so far. It's hard finding recipes from there. Here is a map of the places we've been so far:


visited 15 countries(6.66%)
Create your own visited map of The World

I recommend this recipe for a fun and delicious dish to cook! :-)

The Verdict is In!

Heard back from my friend Tom in New Zealand this morning:

Heh, I guess I should have known that someone who is ambitiously setting out around the world with cooking would be able to handle the challenge of the pav. Well done, and I laughed at Mike wanting only the sweet version.

Kiwi Cookin'

So as you know, we didn't get to New Zealand during the blizzard due to our lack of supplies for the traditional NZ dessert, pavlova. A pavlova is a traditional dessert from New Zealand which was created in honor of Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova. There is some debate as to whether the dessert was invented in Australia or New Zealand, but the earliest recorded recipe in print was in a New Zealand recipe book, so I firmly claim it as a New Zealand thing. Apparently, this is a source of some contention between the two countries, as is evidenced by this amusing advertisement which I found on line.

Ok, well as it turns out, one of my two very good friends from graduate school married a Kiwi (the kiwi [the bird, not the fruit] being the national symbol of New Zealand) and moved to New Zealand. So I dropped him a line on Facebook the other day, inquiring after how they were doing and explaining my intention to make a pavlova. Tom responded this morning with words that chilled my heart:

Wow, that is a brave thing to do! It has been 10 years since I last tried a pav, and it fell completely. It is sometimes considered a rite of initiation as a classic kiwi chef, which I guess I am not. So, I would not take any tips from myself on that one.

Well okay then. If someone from that very country considers this a challenge, what is little ole me going to do with it? It made me thing of the old saying "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." But again, in for a penny, in for a pound. I'd already spent five freakin' dollars on raspberries for this sucker, and despite my profound love of raspberries, I bought them with this express purpose in mind and I was darned sure going to use them for it.

I googled some recipes and came upon one from somebody called Peggy Trowbridge Filippone. I can't vouch for its authenticity in terms of its New Zealandness other than to say she called it a New Zealand Pavlova, nor am I sure exactly where I found it--I didn't bookmark it after printing it out. So if you want the recipe, please email me and I will happily send it to you via email.

So today was a good day to bake. I had the afternoon free, which was good because according to the recipe, you bake a pav for an hour and then you let it sit in the oven until the oven goes cold or overnight. So it needed some time, since we were darn sure going to eat it tonight!



Pavlova is actually a pretty easy dish if you get all your stuff together first before attempting it. What you are basically doing is creating a meringue of sorts and then topping it with whipped cream and fruit and chocolate. If you have experience with meringues, it will help you a lot. I like to make meringue cookies for Christmas, and while this is a different technique for making a meringue type substance, I think you will find it to be similar in many ways.

So in reading the directions, it tells you to line a shallow jelly roll pan with a piece of parchment paper. A bit later on, it tells you to mound your meringue in a roughly 6 inch circle. So I used one of our cereal bowls and traced it on one side of the paper and put the written on side down. I could faintly see the circle from the other side and it gave me a nice guide to what I was doing. I took a picture, but it's really hard to see. I'm sure you know what a circle on a piece of paper looks like, however. I also preheated the oven to 400 degrees.

Ok, now the directions said to sprinkle cream of tartar over egg whites and then add in corn starch and superfine sugar that have been whisked together. I decided to have the corn starch/sugar mixture together before starting whisking the eggs so that I was that much more prepared. Let me again extol the virtues of my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. It is so powerful that whisking the whites and tartar together till stiff was a quick job. It took 2 minutes tops, and I doubt it took that long. Once they were nicely combined, I jacked it to top speed and let it roll.

Then it was time to add the sugar and cornstarch, one tablespoon at a time while the mixer is on medium speed. Please note that superfine sugar is NOT the same as confectioner's sugar. In fact, Ms. Trowbridge Filippone suggests that if you can't get superfine sugar, you take regular granulated sugar and grind the heck out of it in your food processor until it is very fine. Once you begin dropping the tablespoonsful of sugar in, the meringue comes together very quickly. It becomes beautiful and pearly colored, very shiny and very white.

Once this is accomplished, it's time to fold in some vanilla extract. I always get nervous when I'm folding that I'm going to over-fold it and the whole thing will collapse or I'll beat the air out of it. I've seen a technique by Alton Brown on the Food Network that I tend to use, which basically involves kind of a cutting motion through the middle of whatever it is you're folding and just going till everything is incorporated. So I let it go till everything looked like it was in there, and then it was time to put it on the sheet and in the oven.



While I may not be a champion folder, I'm a pretty good mounder. :-)

I put it in the oven and immediately dropped the temperature to 200 degrees, per the directions. Then it bakes for an hour. And then you turn off the oven and you let it sit. And sit and sit and sit. I let our sit for about 4 hours after I turned the oven off.

So after dinner, it was time to chop up the fruit and prepare the whipped cream. The whipped cream was supposed to be 'lightly sweetened'. When I make whipped cream, all I do is sprinkle some powdered sugar on top of heavy cream and let it go with the mixer. I may have overdone the sugar just a tad--it got away from me and I probably put in a tablespoon where I meant to put in a teaspoon. Next time, use the spoon, don't sprinkle from the bag! Next it was time to chop the fruit. As you can see, I used a variety--peaches, kiwi, strawberries, and raspberries. From my reading, it appears the fruit topping you choose is regional by country. For instance, the UK is getting into pavs big time and is hot on raspberries on theirs. It seems important that contrasting flavors are used, some sweet and some tart, and two of the combinations listed on Wikipedia were combinations I used--peaches and berries and strawberries and kiwi.

So this is what my pavlova looked like when I took it out of the oven:



Now, according to Trowbridge Filippone, the fruit goes on and then you top it with whipped cream. Now, in my extensive Google image search research, I did not find a single picture of a pav in which the fruit was not on top of the whipped cream. In fact, the picture in the print out from her recipe shows the fruit on top of the whipped cream. So this is what I did. I spread on the whipped cream, added the fruit, and then sprinkled mini chocolate chips over it.




Now, the meringue base did crack a little bit under the weight of the fruit and whipped cream, but nothing awful. It was quite airy to begin with and so consequently I think the top collapsed a little bit, but as you can see from the following picture of the General with the pav, it actually held up beautifully.



So it was time for a taste test! We dug in and oh what a treat we were in store for! The outside of the pav is crunchy like you'd expect a dry meringue to be, but the inside is chewy, almost like marshmallow. The shell is sweet and the whipped cream is sweet, so a tart fruit on top is a must. In fact, if we have this again, I intend to have just raspberries and chocolate on the next one. They are the perfect combination for a pav in my mind. I took a couple of close pictures to try and get you the sense of what the marshmallowy part of the pav is like.



As you can see, it's rather dense in there. Once the cream and fruit fell through the crisp outer shell on top, it was stopped by this delightful marshmallowy stuff.

The General liked it, although he picked off all the fruit. He would prefer it with just chocolate chips the next time, and when I packed some up for his lunch, I didn't include fruit with it, just chocolate.

The wonderful thing about it is that a little piece goes a long way and it is made with egg whites, which counterbalances the heavy cream a bit :-) Seriously, we each had a piece and I packed some up for the General's lunch and we have half a pav left.

It was a fun experience and I was glad to have succeeded pretty well! I'll be looking forward to Tom's feedback on how I did, seeing as he's a native, and hopefully I'll get passing marks!

No idea what country's next--we are getting close to baby's arrival date, so I don't want to plan too much in advance, but is anyone interested in coming over for an Italian night? I'm going to make tagliatelle bolognese and a carbonara dish, but pasta is big and filling and hearty, so I definitely need to plan for a crowd! I was thinking March 28th if that works for anyone/everyone? Let me know!!! The more the merrier!

They Eat What in Iceland!?

I thought I'd check out what Iceland's national dish was. It's something called Þorramatur. What's in it?

* Putrified Greenland shark
* Ram testicles, pressed in blocks, boiled and cured in lactic acid
* Singed and boiled sheep heads, sometimes cured in lactic acid
* Head cheese
* Sausage made from the offal and liver of sheep
* Something called blood-fat
* Wind dried fish served with butter
* Sheep’s loins wrapped in the meat from the sides, pressed and cured in lactic acid
* Seal's flippers cured in lactic acid

I never could imagine myself saying so, but the seal flippers seem like the most palatable item on this list.

They're big rye bread fans in Iceland, thankfully. It might come down to that...

G'Day Mate! Time for Meat Pie!

So I was doing some research this past week. It is a challenge to try and figure out what to cook from various smaller countries and when I get a request that someone wants us to try, it can be a challenge to find a recipe from a small country and try making it. For instance, I am looking for recipes from Trinidad and Tobago. So I did a Google search and I came upon a site and found a few recipes, one of which had the key ingredient of 1 1/2 cups of lard and the other of which required a bucket of blood and a pile of intestines. Now I've gotten slightly more culinarily adventurous since this project took off (ie I ate a piece of cheese that had not been melted or otherwise modified first), but locating buckets of blood is not something I'm especially excited about. Sorry!

So I decided that what I needed to do was to looked up T & T's national dish. And I came upon a Wikipedia entry that listed the national dishes of every country on earth as near as I can tell. And I have a feeling that this list is going to be immensely useful. So we had some fun--the General would list a country and I would find the listing and tell him what the plate was.

If the General could pick one place in the world to go, it would be Australia, so when he said it and we read that the national dish is meat pie (as declared in 2003 by New South Wales Premier Bob Carr), we knew we had our next country. To be honest, I've had a little bit of experience with Australian meat pie. A couple of years ago, we went to Sunset Beach, NC with our friends Brian and Lara and Brian cut Lara and I a deal: he'd cook dinner if we did the dishes. He had just gotten Rachel Ray's 365 No Repeats cookbook and found a recipe for Australian Meat Pies in there. The recipe was so good that I actually went out and bought a copy of the cookbook myself and a couple of times a year, I make it. But how authentic is it? It was time to take on the task of doing it myself from an Australian recipe.

I did a little research on line and found a few recipes, and finally settled on one from an Australian cook. The many variations I found seem to all be pretty similar, except for the ones on the Food Network site, which I discounted as they were pooh-poohed by actual Australians. I selected a recipe from Cybersoup, and you too can find it here if you care to give this one a try.

Yesterday we did our regular grocery shopping. This was a mistake due to the fact that the storm of the century was upon Fredericksburg and everyone and their uncle was shopping. People were so freakin' rude, even yelling at the General to get out of the way, and I was getting pissed. Because we've been trying to 'eat down' our excess reserves of foods we've had left over from our various culinary adventures (a couple of pork chops here, a few chicken breasts there, various sausages over yonder), we haven't done a whole lot of shopping. Yesterday was a bad, bad day to do the first shopping in 2 weeks.

Fortunately, this meat pie recipe didn't call for anything nutty or even normal but sometimes a challenge to find, like fresh herbs. It is your basic comfort food and we were all over that.

So today with a day off, I decided to make it. I was initially going to make a pavlova to go alongside it, a pavlova being a dessert which is from New Zealand although apparently Australia and New Zealand have some turf wars over who the pavlova actually belongs to. I am very well familiar that Australia and New Zealand are two different countries, but wanted to knock off two birds in one dish and we've been falling behind lately, so I need to catch up! Unfortunately, I forgot to purchase heavy cream to make whipped cream, so we did not get to make the pavlova today. I have emailed my friend Tom in New Zealand and asked him for any pointers on it, so I hope to concoct it on Wednesday or Thursday and it will be even more authentic due to advice from a real live Kiwi!

So back to the meat pie and Australia... First of all, I must apologize to the people at Heinz. My brain was apparently taking a snow day and when I was assembling the ingredients and putting them together for a picture, I neglected to include the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce that the recipe called for. All other ingredients are included. According to everything I read in preparing to cook this dish, I was NOT to buy extra lean ground beef--only lean would do, which according to my local grocery store was 85% lean with 15% fat. And if you read the recipe, it suggests using a pre-made pie crust and puff pastry, so I am not cheating in doing so!

Ok, so the first task is that I needed to finely chop up some onions to cook with the ground beef. This was of utmost importance as earlier, the General had demanded to know if there were onions in this dish and when I replied honestly that there were, he said quite firmly, "No onions, Susan!" So if anything, I minced them. Those suckers were thin and tiny. I browned everything together and then I got into a debate with myself. You see, the recipes were explicit about using beef with a higher fat content. So was I supposed to leave all that in there? Or was I supposed to drain it off? I couldn't really find much about draining, certainly not in the recipe I was using. I finally decided that I just really didn't want to have all that grease and fat in the dish, so I went ahead and drained it off.

I returned the beef to the pan and then went ahead and added water, beef stock cubes which I had crumbled, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, oregano, nutmeg, and pepper. Then I made a paste from the remaining water and flour, whisking it together. I tell you, that mini whisk I got for Christmas with some hot cocoa mix has turned out to be the most handy little item for these little pastes that I've been putting together. It's small but mighty!

After it was all mixed smooth, I added it to the beef, which began to thicken beautifully and the most amazing smell filled the kitchen. It was rich and warm and YUM! I let it boil a few minutes and then put it aside as it was supposed to cool before I put it in the pie shell, which I had unrolled and lined my stoneware pie plate with.



After a while, I came back--I had decided to spend my afternoon productively watching the Food Network. Everything was cool, so I preheated the oven to 450 and poured the meat pie filling into the crust. Then came the good stuff: covering it with PUFF PASTRY! Yum, yum! We love puff pastry in our house! After I got it covered, I tucked it in lovingly, cut off the excess, and brushed it with a beaten egg.



Now, here is where I quibble with the recipe, sorry Australian Chef Knockdonagh. The directions said to bake at 450 for 15 minutes, reduce the heat to moderate (I did 350) and bake for 25 minutes or until pastry is golden. I did the first 15 minutes fine, turned the heat down, but after about 10 minutes, I started smelling what could only be construed as the beginnings of the end of a normal bake cycle--any longer and it was going to burn.

I dashed upstairs, and lo and behold I was right! But what I pulled from the oven was magnificent.



Cutting into it was almost a sin. Seriously. I just wanted to stare at it in wonder. But it smelled so good, it would have been a sin not to cut into it. The filling was nice and rich and thick, not runny at all. The pastry held together on the bottom and the top, which I think is quite impressive--usually the bottom crust gets kind of soggy if you don't blind bake it first, but that was not the case at all with this particular dish.



There aren't words. I never thought cooking with nutmeg would be so exquisitely delicious, but two dishes in a row now we have used it (this and the fondue) and it's been fantastic. It really lends a warmth to the dish and while it tastes nutmeg-esque, it's also understated. It's just a wonderful flavor.

The General wanted his smothered in ketchup and I ate mine just plain. I had mine with a side of broccoli and carrots and the General did not. We were just in absolute heaven, seriously. It was so good! Subtley different from the kind I've had before (RR uses tomato paste instead of ketchup, flour, and water for instance), and I would say I preferred this way, but RR was very close to this recipe. We have both agreed that we would add this recipe into our regular rotation!

The General has devised a play list in honor of our meal tonight, so if you want to eat meat pie and listen to some Australian tunes, we suggest:

• Men at Work – Overkill
  
• Air Supply – Don’t Turn Me Away
  
• Kylie Minogue – I Should Be So Lucky
  
• Olivia Newton John – Hopelessly Devoted (to You)
  
• Robert John – Sad Eyes
  

Also, as you know, Australia has had some devastating brushfires and many lives and tons of property have been lost. If you would like to donate to help those affected by the wildfires, please visit The Australian Red Cross's Bushfires Appeal and donate today.

We'll be back with you in a couple days with our pavolva! Till then, happy eating!