Butter Turkey mini-pies

Spent this morning packing the car and getting ready to head off to the Narooma Blues Festival & three weeks of R&R five star camping around the South Coast of NSW next weekend. Can't wait...have packed up my Cobb Oven & all sorts of F&B goodies (the back seat is a pretty impressive wine cellar right now).

Then thought I would have a crack at making some more mini-pies to munch on during the week. I had picked up a great little box of 12 assorted 75g jars of curry blends from the good folks at Mudgeeraba Spices and Curry Blends at The Good Food and Wine Show (an old favourite from the Gold Coast Farmers Markets and the amazing Brisbane Powerhouse Farmers Markets), and thought I would use their Butter Chicken Murgh Makhani Curry blend to make up some savoury little pies.

I like their Ingredients list: "Freshly ground pure spice" and "No colours, no preservatives, no salt, no sugar, no gluten, no free flowing agents, no MSG"...just pure ground spices! Great products.

Eventually decided to make "Butter Turkey" pies, using Turkey mince I spotted at Coles...added plenty of fresh mushrooms and a some peas, corn & diced carrots. Sweetened with some palm sugar & chopped in a couple more red chillies to keep them nice & savoury.

Smaller pies this time...muffin size (a bit odd with round bases & squarish tops...but you get that!)

Anyway, a bit of fun in the kitchen & very tasty!

A new Butter Pie for Sir Paul to sing about:

"I had another look

and I had a cup of tea

and a butter pie (butter pie)

(The butter wouldn`t melt

so I put it in the pie)"

Roll on Narooma!

PS The Broncos went down inside the last minute of the game last night after leading the entire match. Guess there's always next year. Well done brave team.

Mediterranean lamb shank mini pies

It's very wet in Sydney today...has been raining constantly since about noon yesterday. So much for my much anticipated trip to the Good food growers markets on the first Saturday of each month, on the harbour foreshores opposite the casino at Pyrmont.

So obviously a great day for a cook-up. Decided to have a crack at something I've always wanted to try - mini-pies. My mum Joanie has always had these great little snack size pies for all to sample at Christmas time (as if we are under-nourished around then!).

My take was to buy a baking pan that fitted 8 little rectangular things, & have a go with that.

For filling, I used a base of crockpot cooked lamb shank & vegies I had left over...spiced it up with some of my Tintilla estate olive tapenade with Merlot (wonderful stuff), and some Chermoula Morrocan spices, and added some fresh diced up vine-sweetened minicaps baby capsicums (an absolute flavour blast these little fellows)...also used a few slivers of these for presentation on top of the pies.

Just used basic pampas shortcrust pastry for my first ever attempt at baking a pie.

Anyways...very fiddley making them up & working out the best way to cut the pastry, etc. Then when I thought the oven was on it wasn't.

Still, they came out looking good, & sure smells good right now.

Guess the sun's just about over the yard arm now (if the sun was out) so best crack something nice in the red department & try out a Mediterranean lamb shank mini-pie.

Cheers!