Curry puffs and pies

Puffs
With my sister and her hubby in town from Sydney, Mum invited all of us “kids” and our partners to a curry puff making (and eating!) session. Jac usually joins in the curry puff making, but I must admit my curry puff shaping skills are hopeless. I was there more for the eating than the making. :D

The curry puffs were fried in batches in the wok on the wok burner. Someone asked me why my parents seem to always cook on the wok on the barbecue. Well, their wok doesn’t fit on their stove! There is a wok burner attachment on the stove but it’s right near the wall and will only fit a very small wok – so Mum cooks with her wok on the barbie. It’s good in summer – keeps the heat out of the house.

Not all the puffs were filled with curry. There were also puffs filled with corned beef – the kind that comes out of the tin you open with the supplied metal key (Fray Bentos corned beef, any one? :)). These were especially for Ruby, but to be honest, the rest of us loved them as much as she did. The edges of the corned beef puffs were marked with extra patterning made with a fork.

Some of the curry puffs were eaten, piping hot and fresh. Some of them were allowed to cool, then packed away in containers for us to take home for later.

Pies
In addition to the fresh curry puffs and corned beef puffs, there were pies, hot out of the oven! Out came the chopping board and a knife, and one by one, the pies were carved, shared and eagerly sampled. I had a bite (literally, a bite!) of most of the pies, sharing pieces of pie with Jac.

First, the choice steak pie.

It was a good, tasty meat pie.

Next, the pepper steak pie was sliced up.

Jac is normally not a big fan of pepper steak (she never orders pepper steak – she’d rather have steak with diane sauce, bearnaise sauce or mushroom sauce any day). She was surprised at how much she enjoyed the pepper steak pie. As it turned out, the pepper steak pie was Jac’s favourite of the lot.

This strange looking pie was the Tex Mex pie. Before we cut into it I thought it looked more like a sweet custard tart than a meat pie! (It smelled like a meat pie, though!)

This was my favourite pie of the lot. The meaty gravy had a hint of chilli and Mexican spice, with beans and corn in it. There was a layer of thick gooey melted cheese on top of the gravy that oozed with every bite. According to the Mrs Mac’s website, this is a limited edition pie, only available while stocks last.

The next pie to be sampled was the country pie. I had my piece with tomato sauce.

I also quite liked the curry pie. I’ve always enjoyed curry pies. When I was in high school I used to go into the art room on Saturdays, along with the Year 11 and 12 art students, to work on my paintings. For lunch, I would walk down to the closest deli and buy myself a curry meat pie, a bag of peanut M & Ms and a glass buddy bottle of Coke. :)

In curry meat gravy were cubes of potato and carrot. Mum tried a piece of the curry pie and said it didn’t taste like real curry, but then Mum has extremely high curry standards and isn’t so keen on “western” curries. :)

Next, my sisters and Jac were keen to try the beef and cheese pie.

It was a similar style to the Tex Mex pie, with a gooey layer of creamy melted cheese, but without the Tex Mex flavour. It got the thumbs up from the all the cheese lovers.

The last pie we tried was the chicken, cheese and bacon Cruizer. The Cruizer is a long rather than round pie, specially designed for eating on the go. The longer shape means a smaller surface area and a narrower pie cavity, meaning less gravy leakage as you eat the pie, making it less messy to eat. I was pretty full by the time I tried this last piece of pie, but it was very good, my kind of pie – in the white sauce with the chunks of chicken and pieces of bacon, there were also mushrooms. Yum!