The Humble Pie-Peppersteak Pie

The Humble Pie, Elizabeth St Hobart, Main Rd Moonah & two locations at Eastland shopping Centre, Hobart, Tasmania

I’ll confess straight up & say I used to make all the fillings for the Humble Pie up until two months ago, so reviewing it before then wasn’t an option.
Now enough time has passed enough for me to come back & taste the pies that I once knew so well. When I was a part of the business, the thing that I most liked about the pies we made was the pastry. The bottoms were excellent & strong & the tops were flaky. I always tried to push that the pies could be ‘finished off’ better, that their presentation could be the thing that makes them stand out as a superior product & I always thought that the pie fillings tasted on the commercial side of the ledger.
I felt & still do, that there was an opportunity to break away from this type of pie, that there was an audience out there who’ll appreciate a pie that doesn’t lean on flavour enhancers, thickeners & emulsifiers. Maybe I’m wrong?
The Humble Pie has three stores with a fourth on the way. The staff in the Elizabeth St store, the flagship, were smiling & friendly, an excellent start & knowing the owner of this store that’s no surprise as he has excellent customer service skills himself.
Today’s pie I tried was the one that I always thought came the closest to a very good product, the pepper steak pie, $4.50. It looked well browned & crisp. It was very hot, straight from the warmer, another good sign.
I consumed it in the Ute, tradie-style. After the first bite though, its structure quickly weakened, not surprising but still made it difficult to handle. The flavour was not what I had remembered. I recall a significantly complex pepper flavour profile which contained white, black & green peppercorns, with a wallop of seeded mustard. This was decidedly simpler, less robust & hardly any pepper flavour at all. What made it even more disappointing was a faintly metallic tinge to the taste, kind of strange in a fake kind of way? The meat could have been cooked a tad longer as it still had a bit of ‘chew’ factor. I have to say though, the consistency was really quite good.
All in all, not bad at all, but not the pronounced & assertive taste that I would have liked & remembered.
We also tried a Sunday Roast pie which is a mixture of stewed lamb & rosemary, veggies with a potato top. This was again a pale echo of the heavy rosemary flavour that I remember which set this pie apart from the pack. The filling was also quite gluggy & not only lacked the rosemary flavour but seasoning in general. Very disappointing.

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Main Street Deli - Beef and Burgundy Pie

Main Street Deli | 53 Main Street, Mornington, Victoria

Pop.Pop.Ouch!

That was the sound of the blisters bursting on the roof of my mouth, as my tongue probed about for the damage done by this Beef and Burgundy pie.

To my horror, this delectable looking golden object of desire had seemingly emerged from a nuclear reactor and in all its radioactive glory, had burnt a toxic trail across my palate.

The pastry had withered to a soggy damp sponge that clung to my gaping gums as I tried to expel the steam from my mouth.

Technically the dough was adequately short, which is probably why it recovered its form as it cooled. But after such a vigorous burst, nestled in the steel chamber of a countertop microwave oven, it would never again be a crisp pastry. Surprisingly it was still possible to eat it without cutlery.

The filling had congealed in the nuking process to a dark jelly, but as it too cooled, it was redeemed. An ooze of purple sauce hit my withered tongue. Tasty, though vaguely sweet, it sadly lacked substance. And then, raking through the crusty reactor for content I turned up a few clusters of glowing hot grains of ground beef. Then finally a single centimetre cubed of stringy meat emerged. Some faint evidence of a mirepoix lurked within but overall there was little indication of solid nutrients in the the fallout.

On the surface this pie was full of the promise of good things, but once consumed was a wipe out, leaving misery and devastation in its wake.

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Kerrie Road Bakery Chunky Beef Pie

Kerrie Road Bakery
20 Kerrie Road,
Glen Waverley, 3150
Tel: (03) 9803 9979

FINALLY!! A pie worth blogging about. I have to confess the Muse has abandoned me over the past few weeks. I think She cracked the sads as I consumed too many pies that were at best mediocre, at worst, disgusting pap. Like a fresh relationship, there's the thrill of the first meeting, the hope that the interior will live up to the beauty of the exterior, the frisson of pleasure as you moisten your lips to plunge into intimacy followed by the bitter disappointment of reality. It's hard to keep getting up, dusting yourself off and reminding yourself that there's plenty more out there and one day.. if you long enough, hope enough, Manifest the Secret long enough, that THE ONE will come.

And last Sunday, I think I might have snagged THE ONE... It's only early days in our relationship.. only one week.. but we have a second date scheduled for later today, and I am hoping that he is as excited about meeting again as I am.

So before we become just another jaded old couple, each other turning a blind eye to each other's faults, I thought I'd describe her/him with the heart-stopping, pulse-racing thrum of the newness of it all.

He's perfect. Buttery, flaky top, perky and proud. A sturdy short base that passes the initial test with flying colours. Both types of pastry are definitive and discernible all the way through to the end of the experience.

But here's where he really shines. Beneath that Chesty Bond chiselled exterior, he is exactly as described... big meaty pre-sautéed CHUNKS OF BEEF... chunky yet tender that retains its meaty, beefy note. Fall apart moist and succulent. The gravy HAS FLAVA.. real roast meat pan-scraping-just-like-Nanny-used-to-make gravy. Nary a hint of Gravox or cornflour, this is gravy like it should be. I detected black pepper and maybe a hint of onion.

This is the SNAG of pies... rugged and strong on the outside, with a heart like Phar Lap, but sensitive enough to be who he says he is... this is the George Clooney/Matthew McConahey/Brad Pitt of pies. This pie will adopt limbless war orphans while wrangling crocodiles and writing me Sonnets.

And whether it is a fleeting relationship or a life long bond, as the sock puppet says "I’m in LERVE!"

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Choux Choux Patisserie - Steak & Mushroom Pie

Choux Choux Patisserie | 12 Byron Street, Bangalow NSW

Touting traditional French training and employing these techniques, owners of Choux Choux Patisserie have helmed this 50+ year old bakery for the past 5 years. In an area where felafel and lentil burgers seem more likely than the iconic pie, this place gets a lot of airplay.

The shop is a mixture of 1950’s diner with a slick, modern display counter with a mix of French pastries, aussie cake shop treats, and of course, the pies.

The mince pie is bypassed in favour of a steak and mushroom pie. On opening the white paper bag something is awry. The base pastry is raw white, yet the cap, also a short crust pastry, is nicely browned. In the words of Julius Sumner Miller, why is it so?

Chomping into the pie, my co-taster notes with disappointment that this is not a steak and mushroom pie, rather a mince pie with mushroom, and the reason for selection had been based on not wanting a mince pie…

On closer reflection this is a mince pie with a few slices of mushroom on placed on top of the mixture before “capping” (you can see where the pastry has adhered to the mushroom in cooking). The mince mixture holds no trace of mushroom and in itself has little flavour. Clearly the traditional French techniques (or any technique for that matter) are dropped when it comes to filling these pies, and I’m left thinking of Gordon Ramsay rebuking a French chef in Chelmsford!

This is a lazy, lacklustre pie – it causes little offence, but does nothing to please either.

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The Bush Bakery Steak, pea & mushroom pie

Bush Bakery- 682 Leslie Vale Rd. Leslie Vale 7054 TAS tel: 03 6239 6196

My love affair with pies began when as a kid living in New Zealand for a couple of years I experienced a pie epiphany. It was during a rowing regatta at Lake Karapiro, home of the 1980 World Rowing Championships. After a particularly vigorous morning, famished I was dispatched to get edible fuel for my teammates & I returned triumphant, with some pretty deceptively ordinary looking General Foods meat pies. To this day I can still taste the meat, the pastry, the peas & the potatoes that made this pie stand out, highlighted in my hands by a column of golden light emanating from the heavens & with the chorus of angels announcing its excellence. The standard had well & truly been set.

Fast forward to me to today, living in southern Tasmania.

Picture a bucolic paddock, bordered by scraggy gums, a mob of sheep grazing contentedly at its edge whilst some riders on horseback trot past on a perfect Saturday morning ride. Out here in Leslie Vale, you might as well be a zillion miles from Hobart, which is just ½ hour away, but the pace is so much slower, moving to the rhythms of the country. Its here in this bucolic valley that the Bush Bakery can be found, a tin shed next to a house in a paddock.
I had heard many good things about this bakery from my neighbors but to my shame I had dismissed these endorsements as merely proud local chest-thumping. The pastie I had from this bakery was one of the best I have ever eaten so they had my attention.
As I mentioned, the bakery is a fairly modest tin shed erected next to family home. Several Mini Minors in the adjoining carport, in various condition indicate, to me at least, a passion of sorts, a good sign. Inside, the bakery is workmanlike, a packed pie oven conveys about 10 different varieties whilst the pastry counter displays many typically represented offerings that you would find at a traditional country bakery, the custard slice, the apple slice & the fruit tart etc.
Again I was to be surprised, the vanilla slice was the best I can ever remember having!
Perhaps Sticky et all better hightail it over here!
They provide hot or frozen pies only. My eyes were finally open to this place & I decided to stock up as I realized this was one out of the box.
We took a few pasties, sausage rolls & some pies.
Finally the pie in question was the bush bakery Steak, pea & mushroom pie $3.50.
Its pastry was as fine as the pastie which I had hoovered earlier. Buttery without being overwhelming & smelling as many do, rancid. The filling was good without being as inspiring as the pastry & presentation of the pie. It was light brown in colour, verging on the insipid however the great flavour made up for this. The meat was plentiful & very tender & it didn’t taste like a bunch of commercial pie seasonings were evident even though I did spy some beef booster in the ingredients panel of the same frozen pies.
All in all, the best Tasmanian pie I have reviewed.

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