Join twowildtides on the country challenge. Each week, we’re going to be heading to a new country (in spirit). Primarily, we’ll be cooking a meal from each country; but we’ll also be watching travel documentaries, reading travel blogs, and listening to music. During the global pandemic, travel is largely inaccessible. We want to reignite our wanderlust, satisfy our travel bug as much as we can, and learn some new things along the way. I have a feeling our bucket list will have a number of items added to it through this experience as well. We created a simple alphabetical spreadsheet with all the countries of the world, and each week we will draw a random number that corresponds with a country on the spreadsheet.
This week, we headed to the land down under. Yep, Australia! While I haven’t had the opportunity to visit this country yet (although it is high on my list), Linds has. Check out these thorough and exciting posts about her experiences: Hopped on a Plane to My 5th Continent, Beachin’ in the Land Down Under, Gold Coast Surfing, Brisbane Travel Diary, 3 Day Trips from Brisbane, and Finding Nemo in Real Life.
Australia is a huge country with many different cultural and Indigenous groups. While there are many great contenders, there is no official national dish for the country. As usual, we explored some blog posts listing ‘must-try’ foods for the country, and here’s what we found: meat pies and Lamingtons made every single list. Both of these dishes are highlighted on this list by Better Homes & Gardens Australia, this list by Skyscanner, this list by New Idea Food, this list by CNN Travel, this list by Nomad’s World, this list by Global Storybook, and this blog post by Good Food.
We decided to make both. As usual, 196 Flavors has our backs. They had excellent recipes for both of these dishes.
We started by preparing the dough and filling for the meat pies, as each had to sit for an hour. While they braised/rose, we made the sponge cake for the Lamingtons. This was hands down the most successful from-scratch cake I’ve EVER made. The recipe was perfect.
Next, we rolled, filled, and baked the pies while the Lamington cake set in the freezer. As the pies crisped up in the oven, I made the icing for the Lamingtons and coated them. While we cooked, we listened to this playlist on Spotify:
Both dishes turned out so good. The recipes were really easy to follow, especially for the meat pies which were kind of complex to make. The meat pie filling was savoury and the crust crispy. Truly a comfort food. I understand why Aussies love these so much! While they were absolutely scrumptious, they were A LOT of work, so they probably won’t make it into my weekly meal rotation. I would love to make these for dinner parties with family and friends.
The Lamingtons were fluffy, rich, and so tasty. They weren’t too sweet but hit the spot just right after a salty meal. I would absolutely use this recipe and make Lamingtons again.
Australia really followed through on yummy and satisfying food. Have you tried either of these dishes? What is your favourite Aussie delicacy?
Let us know what you think!