Today I cooked dinner for my host family, more specifically the great Australian food that is the meat pie.

I had cooked meat pie before I came to Norway, we made single serve pies in food tech last year, but there was a bit of added pressure here. This dish is iconic and I didn’t want to mess it up. If my pie was terrible then that would be my host family’s understanding of an Australian pie. I can imagine them thinking to themselves : “This is a weird food. It tastes terrible! Maybe Australians’ tastebuds get burnt off when it gets above 30 degrees in Summer?”.

Thankfully it wasn’t a mess, although it wasn’t what I would call a perfect pie either. There are little things I took for granted, such as pie dishes, ready-made short crust pastry, measuring cups and tablespoon measures, whilst in Australia. I now know I was a little naive to assume that everyone had similar cooking equipment and ingredients available.

The recipe that I used was one that has been used in my family for as long as I can remember. My aunt cooked it when we were staying with her and my uncle and, to my mum’s shock, my sister and I both liked it (my brother wasn’t even a thought at this stage). That was back in 2004. Ever since then meat pie has pretty much been one of my favourite foods. My mum would make it for dinner on my birthday and it would be what she would cook for us when we returned back from a school camp. This pie, as trivial as it may seem, actually means a fair bit to me.

The pie I ended up cooking was slightly unconventional. Cooked in a casserole dish, I hand made the short crust pastry (something I had done before but it’s certainly not something I’m an expert at) and used minced meat instead of chunks of rump steak. This pie wasn’t perfect (as you can probably see) but there was a certain amount of joy in being able to cook dinner for my family and be the one, at the end of the meal, to say var så god (you are welcome) when everyone else says takk for maten (thankyou for the food).

Now that I have served the humble pie I intend to move onto ANZAC biscuits, sausage rolls and maybe lammingtons.

Until my next adventure,

Alicia