This week’s photo challenge popped into my inbox just as my wife set lunch in front of me…well, actually about ten seconds after as evidenced by the damage to the left side pie…she’d already cooled them down and so they were quite definitely ready to eat…

This is actually left-over Sunday dinner, Black Pepper Pork, which didn’t come out so good but which was eminently reusable as pie filling…it started like this:

Ingredients

1 onion, peeled and diced

3 medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced

1 cup frozen peas

1 tablespoon canola oil

500g 100% New Zealand Trim Pork mince

Sauce

2 tablespoon oyster sauce

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon chopped onion

4 tablespoon water

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 tablespoon chopped garlic

2 tablespoon black pepper

Method (in the madness!)

Microwave the potatoes and onion for 2 minutes on high in a covered microwave container.

Add frozen peas and cook a further minute.

Meanwhile heat the oil in a wok or frypan and stir-fry the mince for two minutes or until browned.

Prepare the black pepper sauce: stir fry chopped onion till the color turns to transparent; add chopped garlic and the rest of the ingredients; simmer for 10 minutes over low heat and add to the wok.

Add in the vegetables and stir-fry for one minute until sauce thickens.

The original recipe called for premixed packet pepper sauce which I didn’t have any of and which I generally dislike using – anything premixed in packets – so I added a black pepper sauce mix from another recipe. What went wrong on Sunday night was that the recipe calls for all the ingredients to be mixed together and I didn’t quiet think it through far enough to realise that, of course, this would give everything a strong pepper taste with no flavour offsets or constrasts. I worked around this for dinner by serving it with some rice which offered a bland contrast to the pepper…Next time, I think it would be better to keep meat, veges and sauce separate until plated up (Masterchef speak!!)

As a pie filling, though, it was great although we think that some greens like spinach blended into it would have offset, not so much the pepper, but the potato…the pies are just a simple flour, butter and water concoction, mixed in the blender instead of by hand for a much smoother consistency  and then cooked in the trusty pie machine – every household should have one!!

I also think this recipe with little change would be eminently suitable for preparation as a meat loaf, and that it will work well with any meat mince i.e. beef, lamb or chicken…not too sure about minced fish but would love to hear from anyone who tries that…

So, voila! Pies ready to eat in 451 words