@ ILF & Shadowlander. I did go through my recipe books, but found the best one was
this Donna Hay recipe. Another good one was
this Reader's Digest recipe. Some others were weird since they include ingredients like a teaspoon of vegemite. No wonder
IlF doesn't care for meat pies.
The Donna Hay recipe is the best one because of the conversions she put into the recipe, since we use Celsius in Australia for oven temperatures, quantities etc. 180 degrees Celsius is 350 degrees Fahrenheit it seems.
I don't like minced meat much, though I use it for speed and prefer it as lean as possible. I usually prefer chunks of meat with as much gristle and fat sliced off as I can. I can then dust with either cornflour or plain flour before cooking which I do with a basin lined with glad wrap or a plastic bag containing the flour in which I can roll the meat around to cover it lightly.
Meat pies can be varied. They don't have to be beef. Chicken, bacon and fish, even vegetables on their own, can be done in a pie, though you would have to change the stock and sauces to match what you are cooking. Chopped tomatoes, frozen peas, corn, and carrots, sliced mushrooms and capsicum strips are all ingredients that can be combined with meat fillings to give a more tasty pie.
Curried powder or the various Indian curry pastes can substitute for worcestershire sauce, and tomato sauce, our equivalent of tomato ketchup for a curry pie. Shadowlander, do they have Worcestershire sauce in USA?
ILF wrote: I think it is funny we call motor cycle gangs, "Bikie" gangs. Makes them seem less threatening I guess.
On the contrary, it at least distinguishes them from motor cycle riders who may be perfectly innocent people who prefer a motor bike as a cheap and reliable means of transport. Not that I like motor bikes, myself. Saturday afternoons were usually the times when teenaged boys, having dodged helping Mum & Dad with the morning shopping rush, would finish off their tinkering with engine innards, clean themselves up - hopefully - and then, about 4pm, they would very noisily ride these monstrosities around the emptied streets, in an attempt to impress the girls. Or more likely, other petrolheads.
Some blokes can be just as offensive with automobiles also, except these ones were called surfies when they took along surfboards strapped to their vans (called sin bins) and station wagons. They are the ones whose descendants still take off noisily to show off when in the vicinity of a girl learning to drive.
I can agree that bikes may be of real interest, eg BSA, Harley Davidson, Isuzu, Kawasaki, etc. There are also motor bikes so laid back their riders look like they are lying down to ride them. And don't forget the trikes and the quad bikes. But even in the past, bike riders could earn themselves with this noisy showing off a lot of names like larrikins, louts, hoons and, originally, bodgies, thereby making life harder for themselves.
Shadowlander wrote:It's very much a cultural thing here
Of course it is a cultural thing for you, and many people in USA would agree, I'm sure. But it depends on exactly where you are what sort of cultural "thing" one has in mind, I guess. Our modern day bikie is often someone who is so extremely far gone that he joins bikie clubs where the uniform is black leather, tattoos, metal studs, biker helmets, beards etc. Some "milder" ones may do good in the community for PR. Until the powers that be find out what they have been actually up to under that "innocent" exterior. They may be Hell's Angels, Comancheros, Bandidos or Gypsy whatevers. Or they may have other more local names, like Brothers 4 Life or the Bra boys.
The trouble is, that these types of bikies are more into vendettas against each other, rioting, causing violent incidents, like drive-by shootings, drug pushing, gun-running, and in some of these vendettas and in the localities where they occur, the words "jihad" or "MEOC" (Middle Eastern Outreach Council - a police unit) may also ring a good deal more than a bell. All cultural, I guess, but it is sometimes hard to separate cultural and religious beliefs in places where forced marriages of girls younger than 12, segregating men and women, and other strange ideas like routinely breaking the law are considered okay.
This is another cultural thing I must do.
Happy 4th July from Down Under.