PIE FLOATERS

“What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.” – Lucretius

I am in Brisbane for work today and it has certainly been a very tiring week with Melbourne, Adelaide and now Brisbane all in the space of four days… However, I shall be spending the weekend here and relaxing a little. It is unusual that we have had searing temperatures in the South and then here in the North the temperatures are much cooler. It’s been interesting going around Australia and getting to see people in our organization face to face. It makes the travelling worthwhile, seeing the people one has been talking to and emailing across the table rather than their virtual presence. Although modern technology s great fro communicating efficiently and rapidly all around the world, there is still a lot to be said about sitting around a table together and conversing, being able to interpret body language, to work together on a table or a diagram and then have a cup of coffee together over which one may continue to work, but also there is a chance for more informal socializing and team-building.

In any case, seeing I have been travelling around this nation of ours so much lately, I thought I would share with you a typical regional Australian recipe: The South Australian Pie Floater. It is based on the old stalwart of the English cooking tradition the meat pie. A meat pie is a beef/gravy filling encased in rich pastry, baked to a crisp golden finish. Take this delicacy and drop it unceremoniously in a bowl of steaming green, split pea soup! Top with tomato sauce (ketchup, the less sweet it is ad the more savoury the better – some people in fact prefer Worcestershire sauce to the ketchup!).

I must admit that pie floaters look disgusting on first encounter with them, but really they do taste good! At least, many South Australians (and lesser numbers of visitors) think so. The meal is traditionally eaten at kerbside from a ‘pie cart’, the most famous being Cowleys’, which still stands alongside the GPO in Victoria Square in Adelaide. The name ‘floater’ may come from early English slang expression describing a dumpling in soup.

The South Australian origins date to early colonial times when vendors with horse or hand-drawn carts sold pies baked in a wood-fired oven, and soup from a simmering pot. 
These pie carts became a meeting place where cabbies, police, nightwatchmen and other workers rubbed shoulders with theatre patrons in formal evening wear, musicians, politicians and businessmen. So the pie floater actually was an egalitarian repast and thus may have important historical and social connotations.

The first pie cart was licensed in 1871 and by 1915 there were nine, sustained until 1942. In 1938 the City Council, prompted by other food traders’ complaints, decided to abolish pie carts as current owners ceased trading. By 1958 only two remained in the city - at the GPO site and the one now outside the Adelaide Railway Station. The pie floater’s curb-side consumption by people from all walks of life for more than130 years makes it an authentic and uniquely South Australian culinary tradition.

Bon Appétit!