The (un)simple pieman

Heaps of Aussie treats with some unique
flavours to discover at Tourtière Australienne

by MATHILDE RABBAT

What do you get when you mate a Kiwi with une p’tite fille de chez nous? TA, short for Tourtière Australienne, a wee eatery with a great logo. This little gem, the brainchild of a New Zealander and his Québécoise better half, is creating quite a buzz since it opened about a month ago, where Sengalese joint Djoliba once stood.

What’s all the fuss about? Aussie pies, pies and more pies! “Deliciously different” is how they’re described on their website, and I’m inclined to agree.

The terms “tourtière” and “australienne” do, at least at first glance, seem to make strange bedfellows. Mini puff pastry pies, fashioned into oval, round and square shapes, stuffed with meaty ingredients, would be an adequate way of describing them. The selection is extensive enough that you could eat here, say, every Thursday for a couple of months without ever sampling the same pie twice. Frozen pies available for take-out go for $4, while those enjoyed in-house will set you back an extra 50 cents.

The ingredients used to produce the dough is simple enough: flour, filtered water, butter and salt. What isn’t so simple is the time-consuming, labour-intensive process involved in turning out those little pockets of goodness. With the help of an impressive, refurbished, antique pastry dough maker, and lots of elbow grease, the dough is pressed and folded over and over again, interspersed with periods of rest, till hundreds of layers are created for the right consistency.

Seen one pie, seem ‘em all? Not quite. As names like butter chicken, and curried vegetable and sweet potato, clearly suggest, some pies work decidedly Indian influences into their tasty fillings. The lamb rogan josh, for example, is spiked with detectable amounts of cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, turmeric and ginger, infusing tender cubes of lamb to form a tomato and yogurt-based curry bursting with flavour. That having been said, it’s a relatively mild dish, which would have benefited from a hot chilli pepper kick.

A potent smoked fish pie with smoked mackerel and baby spinach, topped with a thick layer of mashed potato and melted cheddar, is flavoured with onions, garlic, thyme and a splash of white wine for an interesting and pungent flavour. Though the quiche-like spinach, tomato, portobello mushroom and ricotta variety proved to be enjoyable, it was the sausage roll (best enjoyed with “tomato sauce,” aka ketchup), that knocked it out of the park, with its generous portion of minced pork, shredded carrot and onion, imbued with thyme, sage, onion, garlic, polenta and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

TA’s desserts are a small collection of typical sweets hailing from Down Under. Top a chocolate meringue with a few fresh fruits, some chocolate shavings and a ring of sweeter than sweet whipped cream, and you’ve got a Pavlova; so termed to honour the Russian ballet dancer of that name who visited Australia in the 1920’s. Lamingtons (named after the governor of Queensland in the late 19th century) are rectangular pieces of vanilla sponge cake with a thin layer of berry jam, iced with chocolate and shredded coconut. Another featured dessert, the ANZAC (aka the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) cookie is an oat and brown sugar-filled biscuit that were consumed by troops in WWI.

Tracks by Acadaca, Midnight Oil and other Australian favourites shape the soundtrack. To further set the mood, plastic ketchup dispensers shaped like plump tomatoes, jars of Vegemite, Marmite and Milo stacked like pyramids adorn a back wall to form a pop-art montage of Australian clichés. In addition, Australian ex-pats will be thrilled to find Cherry Ripe chocolate bars and Tim Tams, biscuits used to perform the infamous Tim Tam Slam, where hot beverages are sucked through the biscuit after the ends have been bitten off, then slammed in one’s mouth before the whole contraption collapses.