A Classic Australian Meat Pie

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment
Classic Australian meat pie

Master 10 has recently upped his pastry game. The ‘game’ being the eating of pastry, not the making of it. After years of solid allegiance to the sausage roll he is branching out … thanks to a trip to the pool and a Mrs Mac’s Famous Meat Pie. This then triggered a request for a classic meat pie for dinner so we borrowed some pie tins from my parents and I searched the web for a recipe. For his first birthday party I’d actually made party pies but didn’t save the recipe and also recalled them being a little dry, so it was useful to take the opportunity to revisit.

I based my recipe on this one from bestrecipes but baulked at the idea of adding tomato sauce so substituted in tomato paste.

Classic Meat Pie Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 500g mince (beef, obviously!)
  • 1 cup (ish) of beef stock – substitute stock cube & water if you prefer
  • 2 tbsp tomato paste
  • 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • salt & pepper
  • corn flour
  • pastry – I used puff on both top & bottom

Method:

  1. Heat some oil in a pan and sweat down the onion.
  2. Ensure the pan is hot and add the mince. Break it up and ensure you brown it.
  3. Add stock, tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce, stir well and then bring to the boil.
  4. Cook well – keeping an eye on the liquid level. Taste and season with salt & pepper.
  5. Create a slurry of the corn flour & some water and stir in to the meat – this will thicken the gravy.
  6. Allow filling to cool. 
  7. When ready to assemble the pie, preheat your oven to fan 180C and beat an egg to use as the glaze. Line your prepped pie tins, fill and top. Glaze with egg & decorative pastry. Cook for about 20 minutes or until pastry is golden.

For a different take on a pie using beef, check out the beef & stout pie.

Luciano’s, Glenelg

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

disclaimer: I was a guest at the Luciano’s influencer dinner

It was a sad day when Esca down at Glenelg’s Marina Pier closed. It had been one of the longer-lived venues in this somewhat tricky space and was also one of the best located – central, with both marina and sea views. And it was actually also good.

It’s space has been recently reinvented as Luciano’s – a modern Italian restaurant, with Adam Swanson on board as consulting executive chef and Loris Facciolo as head chef. While Adam is probably going to be a familiar name (Zucca’s, San Remo ambassador) Loris probably not so much. That’s because Loris hails from northern Italy and brings his Milanese experience to Adelaide.

The refit of the restaurant is very ‘beachy’ – my guest’s word to describe it – with a big open kitchen and lots of neutral colours, with a real white-washed feel to it. Mercifully, important things like carpet, upholstered chairs, tablecloths (and really lovely cloth napkins) have been incorporated into the new design. Great news for anyone who actually wants to have a conversation! Even at our very long (and noisy!) table, you were able to hear the people next to and opposite you. This augurs well for smaller groups.

Of course, lovely furnishings, a great ambience and incredible sunsets only get a restaurant so far. The most important things are food and service (and not necessarily in that order). The waiter at my end of the table was charming (Italian, so maybe that goes without saying), efficient and helpful – volunteering mocktails for the non-drivers and ensuring that glasses were always topped up.

We were incredibly lucky to be treated to an astonishing spread of food. It felt like almost every single dish on the menu was presented to us – the idea being that we take a mouthful of everything. By the time main courses arrived, most of us were full (pasta does that to you) – it was an extremely generous spread.

I’m not going to list every dish I tried, nor am I going to put every single photo up: I’m going to go for the highlights. All the photos (good and bad!) are in a Facebook album here.

Highlight of the antipasti was the vitello tonnato. This is a dish which, to my mind, should just NOT work. Veal with tuna sauce. In English it just sounds … average (to be kind). But it is so good – the veal was beautifully tender, the tuna sauce (dressed with bottarga) was delicious. I’d have this again – and someone suggested that it would make an amazing sandwich filling. I’m on board with this – if Luciano’s starts offering a vitello tonnato sandwich at lunch … I’ll be there!

For pasta, we had mezzi rigatoni (short ones) carbonara (“no cream!” explained Adam), the linguini con volgole and the gnochetti with crab (the restaurant’s signature) along with risotto milanese. I’m not not sure which was my pick here … possibly the linguini con vongole purely because I don’t eat it often. Alongside the pasta, three pizzas were served – the winner easily being the prosciutto rucola e grana on the smoothness and creaminess of the fior di latte alone.

At this point the mains came out – I managed a mouthful of each. Twice cooked pork belly – deliciously tender and moist with crispy skin, barramundi parcel – also tasty and the veal cotoletta which was a big thick chop, crispy crumbs and beautifully cooked. A shout out to the side of broccolini although this could be improved upon with just a touch of chilli!

If you can believe it – we then wrapped up with dessert. Of these, the star was the white chocolate pannacotta with raspberries and pistachio. You don’t hear me say that often because white chocolate is comprehensively the devil’s work but this pannacotta was delicious – wobbly, smooth, sweet and cut through by the raspberries and raspberry coulis.

As I was a guest, I didn’t have to worry about the bottom line but the menu prices are all standard – if you eat out often there’s unlikely to be bill-shock. The menu (and drinks list) is online and the ‘tutto’ (or feed-me) option at $60 for six courses sounds like it should be sensational value.

Will I head back and spend my hard-earned at Luciano’s? The answer is yes. I promised Master 9 I’d take him there for a meal if it was any good … maybe we’ll see you there during the school holidays!

Marion Hotel, Marion, SA

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment
Half chicken parmi with chips and salad

date of visit: 26 Jan 2020

Something of a hiatus between posts but let’s see if some belated new year enthusiasm has some steam.

The Marion Hotel has had a ton of publicity of late, with its revamp being much vaunted. It’s a pub I’ve driven past many times and for some reason we’ve never got around to going. A friend and I discussed going late last year but the calendar gods didn’t line up until this last weekend.

Being a weekend (Sunday) AND a public holiday we did the sensible thing and booked for our group of 6, even though we did our usual early dinner of 5:30. Turns out that this was a good thing because the Dining Room was busy (if not full) by the time we left shortly before 7:30pm.

So … how was it? Décor wise it’s obviously all very new and fresh and the use of some green is a bit more interesting than the 99% of all-neutral colour schemes that seem to be terribly du jour. The menu isn’t quite as modern … There is a selection of Yoder smoked mains and entrées and what feels like a strangely out of whack selection of ‘bowls’ (all vegetarian or vegan but you can add chicken, smoked salmon or halloumi). But then we’re into very comfortable pub-grub territory (schnitties, fish & chips, pasta, burger … you get the idea). If there are daily or chef’s specials – we weren’t told about them.

One big plus is that the schnitzels do come in half or full portions – which was the clincher for me to choose the (half) chicken parmi. It was still generous in size, moist and served with a small side salad that, mercifully, wasn’t drowned in dressing. The chips? Must try harder.

Unfortunately, the children’s meals didn’t come with salads (seriously … the picky child will never eat anything green if he/she isn’t presented with it and some of our children actually love salads and veggies – either do a salad bar or do a salad on the children’s plates!) so that’s a bit of minus.

The noticeable weak point of the evening was definitely the service. I don’t know if the pub was understaffed (even though most of the tables looked like they’d been booked, people still call in sick and things go wrong) or whether there were just too many new staff. But from a muddled drinks order, to delays in food, plate clearing, and (that old chestnut) getting the bill everything felt a bit slow and unpolished.

Would I go again? Yeah, but it wouldn’t be my first preference.

Marion Hotel, 849 Marion Road, Mitchell Park 5043