Toastie pies aren’t real pies but by crikey they’re almost as good as a steak and mushroom. Let’s get this clear right now…, proper toastie pies are made in fires, not in electric gadgets bought at Briscoes.
A toastie pie iron is two hollow circles or squares that fold together. The iron thing is made of…, um…, iron (probably) and has long handles with wooden ends to stop you burning your hands and a clip thing to make sure the two halves squeeze together tightly enough to seal the bread edges and keep the good stuff from leaking out.
So you put some butter in the iron cavity, then a slice of thin-sliced white bread then the good stuff filling (not too much or it’ll make a mess) then another slice of bread on top, a gob of butter on that and then you close the whole tning and use the clip thing to do the important squeeze / seal action.
What’s the filling? Tinned spaghetti is at the top of the list. Creamed corn with some cheese is at number on the Toastie Party List. At #3… egg and bacon. Like any Party List, it can get controversial when you go lower… baked beans can burn your mouth and they spill down your face and shirt but they taste better than just about anything. Cheese and vegemite is OK until you meat a Marmite nutter.
It’s tempting to go all Parnell or Central Wellington on the toastie pie, you know salmon, leek and tarragon or roast duck, sage stuffing and blackcurrant sauce or lamb, peas and mint jelly… or roast pork, baby carrots and apple sauce – just don’t go down this path because if you do you’ll be stuck in the triplet-trio food portal forever and for pudding you’ll not able to have apple crumble and custard because that’s only two things and they’re both without exotic, multi-syllable adjectives. You’d have to go Honeycrisp apple, Iberian Pear and gluten-free vegan crumble with free-range duck-egg and Samoan vanilla custard. The mouthful should always be the food, and never the food’s name.
The only time it’s OK to sound fancy is when you’re cleaning out the fridge, so you might have corned beef, mustard sauce and some mashed parsnip and carrot. It sounds fancy, but it’s just leftovers. So is chopped sausages, mashed potatoes and onion gravy. And macaroni cheese. And mince with peas and mashed swede. All of which are made even better with some grated cheddar.
Toastie pies are only made in an open fire or in a coal range, on a Sunday evening with Disneyland on the telly, which, for authenticity should be switched to black & white and with Country Calendar looming. You have to make heap of toastie pies because there should be some for school lunch tomorrow. To speed things up you can have two or three or four toastie pie irons in the fire at once (that’s where the saying comes from, of course).
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