There’s a wonderful feel about egg and bacon pie – something reassuring about the sense of simplicity, old style homeliness and ‘tradition’. It’s unusual (for us anyway) to have things like this these days, but it’s an old blast drawn from the pages of the ‘Golden Wattle’ cookbook.
Chilli con carne, literally ‘chilli with meat’, originated in northern Mexico and the southern United States, specifically Texas, and I think it would be fair to say that it holds a much more significant place in American culture than it does here in Australia. The diversity of different types and recipes now available, some specific to particular dates like ‘game day’, and including vegetarian versions, different meats and chilli types is quite astounding. The variety is such that it gets referred to simply by the generic form ‘chilli’,. which makes some sense to me considering the vegetarian variants.
Every so often I come across a dish in my repertoire , often remembered from my childhood or early years of marriage, that makes me think ‘what the hell – how on earth has this stood the test of time’? The answer of course is that they taste great, and pretty much without exception are simple to make , as well as being family favourites that kids enjoy as much as adults. Even with that, how they ever got up in the first place remains a mystery and testament to our overall creativeness. Such a dish is ‘70s style chow mein.
