Friday 9 February 2007

Simple Simon Pies

Calgary Farmers Market
The humble meat pie is an Australian institution sadly unappreciated by our North American friends. I have to admit that the situation in Calgary is much better than in Ithaca, with frozen meat pies of reasonable quality readily available in the supermarket. However a weekend lunch of hot meat pies from the local bakery is generally not an option.

Simple Simon Pies brought a happy end to my meat pie wasteland theory. A trip to the Calgary Farmers Market is well worth the effort for the pies alone. I walked up to the counter and was immediately offered a taste. My request for “something that tastes like an Aussie meat pie” brought two offerings, steak and tourtiere. The steak pie was a fantastic open faced pie filled with real pieces of meat in enough (but not too much) gravy. Tourtiere is a French-Canadian pork, beef, and potato mixture, which was delicious in a lidded pie. Simple Simon make fruit pies too, and the mango pie we tried was a welcome taste of summer in the cold weather. Not too sweet, but sticky enough to satisfy.

We came home from the markets with a dozen frozen pies, and it won’t be long before we go back for more.

3 comments:

  1. sounds great! i pine for the cinnamon honey i found in ithaca...

    i'm well-looking forward to learning more about your gastronomic explorations. keep us posted!

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  2. if only i could help you out with the cinnamon honey - i believe it's still illegal to import honey into australia. have you tried queen vic markets for honey? there is a honey place in milawa too, if you're ever exploring north.

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  3. I likes pies!!!! Yous should feed everyone pies.

    And I'll have some cherry pie for dessert, cos no one makes good cherry pie round here.

    Caity J

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