I couldn't resist, another Aussie here and pies are my favourite food. Here if you ask for a pie with no other adjective what you'll get is ground beef. It's a very common fast food here, especially for people working in industrial situations. You can eat a pie one handed while still working. One quick snack gives 1000 calories and a hefty dose of protein.
With herbs and spices it's best to keep it simple, some mixed herbs and black pepper is usually enough. Cook the meat in it's own gravy first, this lets you have more control over how thick or runny the contents of your pie will be. You don't want it too dry but you don't want boiling gravy dripping on you when you try to eat either.
I haven't done it for a while now but I like making pies. I make my own stiff shortcrust pastry for the bottom of the pie and use bought puff pastry for the top. Shortcrust pastry is easy:
2 cups of flour
2 oz of butter (preferably real butter from a moo cow)
2/3 cup of water.
Rub the butter and flour together first. Literally get you fingers in there and rub them together, keep going until there's no more lumps, doesn't take long. Then add the water, I use a kitchen fork to mix until it starts getting too thick then I get my hands in there again. You want the consistency of plasticine or play dough, so if it's too dry add a little more water or if it's too wet add a little more flour.
Once you're happy with the consistency dust a little flour on the kitchen bench top and plop you dough on there. Knead the dough by picking up the edges of it and pushing them in to the middle repeatedly. What you're doing here is stretching the flour particles out in to long strands to give your pastry a chewier texture, and at the same time you're trapping lots of little air bubbles inside the dough so that it rises and becomes lighter and fluffier. When the texture of the outside of the dough starts to look pebbly or lumpy and you notice that it's air bubbles near the surface then you're done.
I use a wine bottle as a rolling pin. In tropical climates a lot of people keep a wine bottle full of water in the freezer for this purpose, keeping your pastry cold until it's time to cook it gives better results. Just roll your pastry out a little bit at first, then dust the top with a little flour, flip it over and dust that side too, then roll it out some more. Keep repeating until it's stretched out enough to cover your pie dish with plenty of room to spare, it will shrink a little again when you pick it up to put it in the dish.
Shortcrust pastry in the bottom of the dish, tip the meat and gravy mix in to it. Put a sheet of bought puff pastry over the top and use a butter knife to trim all the excess pastry from the sides of the dish. Use a kitchen fork to press a pattern in to the edges of the pastry, this is to make the two pastries weld together as one piece. Poke a few holes in the top to let steam out then put it in a hot oven for 35 to 45 minutes, when the pastry on top looks good it's done.
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When I was growing up all the commercially available pies were made with proper French puff pastry and they were really nice, these days they're not easy to find. I'm lucky enough to live in a city that has one such bakery:
Vili’s Family Bakery bakes authentic pies, pasties and many mouth-watering sweets for distribution across Australia and globally around the world.
www.vilis.com
