Baking days & wedding recipes

PART 1: Homemade family pasties from Jo in Australia

Dear Melanie, how do you pronounce pastie?

I asked my husband, “Tell me about your Nan and her handmade pasties again?” I pronounced them pass-ties, rhymes with lassie. And instead of telling me a heartwarming family story, he frowned, and said, “Well firstly, they’re called par-sties.”

Melanie, have I been saying this word wrong my entire life?

Once we got past that, my husband told me about his tough old Nan who lived in an old house in the paddock behind his family home in Bendigo. It was a mud-brick, earth-floored cottage from the 1880s, with no hot water, and an old Kooka stove, a bit like the one below but with a firebox on the right, and the oven on the left.

(There is a story about the time Nan’s cat climbed into the oven to get warm, which doesn’t bear repeating).

Once a week, Nan had a “baking day,” during which she’d light the fire to turn on the old Kooka oven. The heat in a Bendigo summer is not to be trifled with, a searing, dry heat that bakes and burns until your eyelashes sting just stepping onto the front verandah.

I can’t even imagine what it must have felt like to light a fire on a day like that, in a tiny, closed-in cottage (with not even a ceiling fan, let alone AC). Nan would endure this heat just once a week, during which she’d prepare all the food to feed her family for the next seven days. (It also happened to be the one time each week that she could enjoy a hot bath).

This 1857 painting by George Rowe depicts the goldfields on which Nan’s house was built, only two decades later. You can almost feel the dry, Bendigo heat radiating from the canvas.

Nan somehow turned austerity into abundance. Having lived through the Great Depression, she knew a thing or two about making do.

She’d pick up the “reject” produce from the supermarket for cheap or free, sifting out the rotten fruit and keeping the good; she’d roast chickens she raised in the back yard; and send the grandkids out rabbit hunting, before cooking the rabbits up into stews and pies. (Each night, according to my husband, she’d announce, “this is beef,” or “it’s lamb tonight,” but my husband begs to differ. “We always knew it was rabbit. Again.”)

And on baking day, Nan would bake enough pies, pasties, cakes and slices in her wood-fired Kooka oven to feed herself, my husband and his parents and four siblings, a multitude of aunts, uncles and cousins, neighbours from across the road, and anyone else who happened to pop in on any given day.

The pasties, he told me, were enormous. Big enough to slice and serve to all the assorted friends and family around the dinner table.

I think there’s a lot that I could learn from Nan’s example. Rabbit hunting and plucking the feathers from my hand-raised chooks are activities that have not made it onto my bucket list. But “baking day” is something that well and truly tickles my fancy. An entire day dedicated to making and baking for the people I love, and setting myself up for a stress-free week of mealtimes? Why am I not doing this?

Perhaps I’ll start with Jo’s family pastie, another giant, share-with-your-friends baked dish. (Is “giant pastie” a thing? I’ve only really known the individual pasties they sell in country bakeries).

Jo lives not so far from us, still in Victoria, Australia. She said in her letter that the pastie had become a family favourite for the simple reason that was easy to make, and one of the few meals that the whole family enjoyed. (I can attest to the benefits of the latter: most of the time at least one member of my family doesn’t enjoy whatever it is I’ve cooked: when I find something that everyone will happily eat, it is gold, and goes straight into the orange cookbook).

Jo’s pastie recipe is flexible and forgiving, allowing room for any vegetables or herbs you have on hand at the time of cooking, and only specifies “mince meat,” so I assume this means you could fill it with any protein that takes your fancy (including mushrooms, maybe, for a vegetarian version? Or rice?).

I know you’ll be able to bring this recipe to life, so I’m looking forward to reading what you do with it. Tell me: do you make your own pastry?

But here is what I love the most about Jo’s family pastie recipe. It’s another reason - another story - why Meals in the Mail is such a precious project to so many of us. I’ll share it in Jo’s words, from the letter she sent to me…

“Most of all, I love that this meal was made for me when I was small, by my lovely Nanna. She gave me this recipe on the day I was married, with a message: ‘Hope your day is really special and the future holds everything you dreamed of’.”

It may seem simple, but this gives me goose-bumpy sorts of joyful feelings.

Because… imagine if “wedding recipes” became a tradition, as familiar as the throwing of confetti or the tossing of a bouquet? If family and friends gave the new couple a handwritten recipe - something that was special to them and a sure-fire winner in their kitchens - to cook and enjoy as they embarked upon this next stage of their lives together?

What a special scrap-book of recipes that would be! And imagine, over the years and generations, the food stories and traditions those little recipes would inspire!

Happy cooking,
Naomi x

ps. I wonder if Jo’s grandmother had a baking day, too.

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Delicious homemade family pastie, from Jo in Australia

INGREDIENTS:

• 500gm mince meat

• one onion

• one large carrot

• one potato

• handful of frozen peas

• (any other vegetables or herbs you have!)

• 2-3 sheets puff pastry

• 1/2 tsp ground cumin

• 1/2 tsp ground coriander

• salt & pepper to taste

• one tablespoon olive oil

METHOD:

• Oven at 180 degrees Celsius

• Place onion, carrot, potato in food processor and pulse OR finely chop vegetables

• Heat oil over medium heat and add vegetables, cook until softened (a few minutes) then add ground cumin and coriander and cook until fragrant

• Add mince meat to pan, browning the meat and breaking up lumps s you go. Add peas

• Using a shallow tray, assemble pastie with a pastry sheet on the base of tray, fill with meat and vegetable filling, and place pastry sheet over the top. Pinch pastry edges together

• Brush top of pastie with a little milk or whisked egg

• Place in a moderate oven (180C) for approx 30 minutes or until pastry is puffed and golden brown

• Serve cut into large squares with a little chutney and salad!