My love affair with meat pies began in late 2001.  I has just moved to South Australia on a research fellowship, and a friendly Aussie had offered to take me on a hiking trip to the beautiful Deep Creek conservation park.  On the way we stopped at a country bakery - there is one in every town in Oz -which was well known for its savory pies.  I was still a vegetarian at the time, and embarrassed myself by ordering a 'veg paystie.'  All of the Aussies laughed at my faux paus, and I was schooled as to the difference between a 'pah-stie' and a 'paystie.' 

Syntax aside, the pastie was a revelation.  Warm, crisp pastry wrapped around tender veggies with oozing cheese.  What could be better?  I was hooked, and for the rest of my seven years Down Under I ate pies, pasties, and sausage rolls from coast to coast.  I remember an amazingly good little sausage roll in Hobart, Tasmania, lots of great spinach pasties from Bec's Bakery in Adelaide, and then there were the BEST PIES EVER from Stone Hut Bakery.

Stone Hut is a little Outback town in the lower Flinders Ranges, about three hours north of Adelaide.  A few times a year we'd head up there with a crew of friends for a weekend of mountain biking.  A highlight was always a visit to the Stone Hut Bakery, where we'd gorge ourselves on hot meat pies, sausage rolls, and choc caramel slice, and then buy as many cold pies as would fit into our cooler to sustain us back in Adelaide until our next trip.  We always joked that time stood still in this bakery, as all of the ladies working there moved v e r y slowly, so you really had to practice patience.  But after a weekend of biking, all we wanted to do was stuff our faces with pies!

When Chris and I had this crazy idea to start a meat pie business in Portland, I thought - I wonder if the folks at Stone Hut Bakery would let me come work there to learn all about the pie makin' biz?  Chris thought that I was a little off my rocker, but sure enough the kind owners invited me to come work at their bakery.  It was the perfect excuse for a trip back to Australia, so in August 2008 we flew to Adelaide and then headed north to the Flinders Ranges.  We took our mate Jason along, and he and Chris spent their days mountain biking while I learned about pies from the bakery's fabulous pie master, Dawn.  Over the course of three days we busted out hundreds and hundreds of meat pies and pasties.  We even cooked up a batch of the Kangaroo pie filling (the secret to balancing the meat's gaminess is the red wine, says Dawn). 

We returned to the States all charged up about pies -  so yummy!  so convenient!  And yet it was near impossible to find a proper pie in the land of pizza and burritos.  We packed all of our belongings into our little car and drove from Philly to Portland, on a mission to bring some pastry wrapped goodness to this food lover's town. 

And the rest is pie history.  It's been almost a year since we first rolled in to PDX, and we had a fabulous summer at the Farmer's Markets.  The expats found us right away - sometimes it was like a mini-UN at our booth, with folks from Oz, New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland, and England lining up for their weekly meat pie fix.  And while it took a little while for some of our American customers to muster up the nerve to try a *gulp* meat pie, once they tasted that savory filling and flaky pastry they too became pie devotees.

We are hard at work getting our retail space ready, so very soon Portland will have its very own savory pie shop.  Yesterday we trolled the Rebuilding Center and the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and loaded up on light fixtures, old cabinets, reclaimed doors, and recycled shutters.  Just wait til you see what we do with it all! 

Ok, before you get too excited this is not the PPC pie crust recipe - you'll never get that one out of us!  But several friends and customers have contacted me lately asking for a good pie crust recipe for all of those Thanksgiving pies. 

I used to be afraid of making pastry, but this is a (fairly) fool proof method that will result in crust that is both flaky and tender.  The vinegar is essential - the acid prevents too much gluten from forming when the flour combines with the water - and gluten = tough, heavy pastry.  Some pie crust recipes add a tablespoon or so of sugar, but I don't really think it is necessary...your pie filling will be sweet enough, and I like the contrast of the buttery, crisp pastry and sweet filling.  I also think it is worthwhile splurging on some good butter - we use Rose Valley butter, which has a great milkfat content and fantastic flavor.  Trader Joe's usually has good prices on organic butter, or even better try to find some butter at your local farmer's market.  

This recipe will provide enough pastry for one double-crust or two single-crust 9-inch pies.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup ice water

Method

Cut butter into small pieces, put into a bowl, and put in the freezer for at least 30 minutes and up to several hours.  If you have room in your freezer, it is also helpful to combine the flour, salt, and baking powder and put that bowl in the freezer for 30 minutes as well.  Getting the butter nice and cold will ensure a nice flaky crust - flakiness results when small pieces of fat melt during baking, resulting in the beautiful layers of the best crusts.

Once all of your ingredients are very cold, put the flour mixture in the bowl of a food processor.  Pulse one or two times to combine.  Add the butter, and turn on the processor.  Add the vinegar and then the ice water in a continuous stream through the feeding tube.  Immediately turn off the processor.

Turn out the dough onto a clean, lightly floured work surface.  Smear it back and forth a few times with your hands until it starts to come together.  Often it seems too crumbly at first, but don't fret!  Just keep working it a bit and it should come together.  If it is really crumbly for some reason, sprinkle over a teaspoon or so of the ice water and keep gathering it together.

Divide in half, and then form the pastry into two rough squares and wrap each in saran wrap.  Refrigerate at least 2 hours, or overnight. Proceed with your pie recipe...

Good luck and let me know about your pie baking adventures! 

One of the reasons Chris and I decided to move to Portland is the amazing food culture.  There is such an abundance of local food and even some of the supermarkets are down with the regional and organic movement.  Portland also happens to be an amazing drinking town - from Portland Roasting coffee, which we savor every morning, to lovely Columbia Gorge Pinot Noirs to the incredible selection of microbrews.   

So when it came time to choose beer for our pie recipes, we undertook a highly scientific study of the local breweries.  Meaning we had a reason to go to happy hour all over town and write it off as a business expense!

Recently we sat down for a few (uh, like 10?) pints with Chad Kennedy, Head Brewer for Laurelwood Brewing Co.  Chad's wacky sense of humor and Laurelwood's commitment to local and organic produce won us over, so we will now be featuring Laurelwood Space Stout in our super-popular Beef & Stout Pie.  The rich coffee and chocolate notes in the Space Stout really make for a delicious pie.  We are also working on some other beer inspired recipes so stay tuned!

When Chris and I were planning the Pacific Pie Company menu, we knew we had to include some lamb pies, because what is more Aussie than lamb?  But we weren't sure how lamb pies would fly in the States - while the typical Aussie eats 30 pounds of lamb per year (and the Kiwis chow down on 57!), Americans eat less than a pound of lamb per year.  Which is quite a shame, given how scrumptious a roast leg of lamb can be, with tons of garlic and rosemary and mustard.

Another delicious way to enjoy lamb is in a PPC pie, and our market customers certainly agree.  Much to our surprise (and the delight of our lamb farmer), lamb pies have been a hit at all of our markets.  Our Sunday Roast Lamb pie is Chris' favorite dinner packed into PPC's flaky crust - free range lamb brasied in red wine, rosemary and onion, which is then combined with oven roasted organic yams, carrots, and yukon gold potatoes.  I drew the inspiration for the Golden Lamb Curry pie from my absolute favorite cookbook author, Nigella Lawson.  Her fabulous Feast cookbook includes a recipe for Lamb Maharaja, which is a wonderful tumeric and chile-spiked curry.  I tweaked the recipe a bit, and added yams and yukon golds, which pair beautifully with the tender curry-soused lamb. 

The lamb in our pies comes from Anderson Ranches in the Willamette Valley.  Reed Anderson raises Certified Humane lamb on the lush pastures of the Valley.  The lamb is totally free of antibiotics and hormones.  We think it tastes fantastic, and we're so glad to be partnering with Reed Anderson to bring our customers yummy lamb pies.   

Tonight I am making Greek Lamb patties, which will be so good wrapped in pita with yogurt sauce, tomato, lettuce and feta. 

Greek Lamb Patties

1/3 cup bread crumbs

1 garlic clove, minced

1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh mint, basil, parsley, or whatever herbs are growing in your garden 

1 1/4 lb ground lamb

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon good dijon mustard

1/4 lb feta, crumbled

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Mush everything around in a bowl with clean hands (or a fork, if you must).  Form into patties and pan fry or grill for about 4 minutes per side.  Wrap in pita and smother in yogurt, veggies, avocado, and whatever else you can find in the fridge! 

Recently I have spent a lot of time devising recipes for our pies. For years I have devoured cookbooks and food magazines, but I have always been a fairly casual cook - a bit of this, a dash of that. Now I have to be really precise, measuring and recording everything so that I can duplicate the recipes again and again.

So this weekend I started working on the recipe for our Moroccan Chickpea pie. With about ten different cookbooks spread out on my desk I started pondering chickpeas...I tend to buy canned chickpeas because they are so easy to use, but I am also drawn to the bulk section of any grocery store, and dried chickpeas do look so wholesome and cheerful. I did a quick search on dried versus canned chickpeas, and was blown away by The Hummus Blog. Did you know that canned chickpea's contain 52% more sodium than dried? Plus, canned chickpeas provide you with 48% less Iron, 42% less Copper, about 30% less Magnesium, Phosphors and Potassium and 10-25% less Zinc, Calcium and Selenium! Holy smokes, who knew? So thanks to the Hummus Blog, I decided right then and there to create the PPC recipe using dried chickpeas. Pretty soon I had a pot of chickpeas simmering away with some ginger and cinnamon, filling the house with amazing aromas.