Your Pie Awards

Sheffield Pies...definitely a compulsory stop on the way to the Coast folks! My mouth is watering just thinking of the delights we sampled there last Easter. They didn't stop the kids getting chicken pox a few days later though! If we are heading down Highway 72 inland between Christchurch and Mt Hutt coming back from the olds house we usually divert to the Hororata pub and get a few takeaway pies for tea. The chicken pies are to die for!

So, another Pie awards has come and gone, and what a great show put on by the incomparable Catherine Saunders. We heard last night to gasps and "oh no"s that it was the last awards she will be involved with. One of those "oh no"s was mine. Congratulations to Catherine on putting on the best awards in the land for so many years.

The supreme award went to Pat Lam from Bethlehem in Tauranga again this year... and this time it was his bacon & egg! That must be one hell of a good B&E, and we know that there are NO PEAS in it.

Gold Award for commercial Mince & Cheese (60,000 per week minimum) this year went to Murray Blair Swetman of Gourmet Foods Ltd in Tauranga. Gotta get one. Good for you Murray. We'll be playing an interview with him from the awards night on Sunday at 10:30.

80% of the winners were asian immigrant bakers... and guess what.
Here's what I heard on a radio station today (I can't remember what one)... "I'm not a racist but... what happenned to the good old Kiwi pie?".

OK. I'll tell you.. immigrants have come here and raised the standard of our pies, thus improving our quality of life... and you are complaining??? And in any case these people ARE Kiwis... they just don't talk or look like you, and that's the only thing you're pointing out.

I'm not racist but.... Yeah right.

THANK YOU and congratulations to our immigrant pie-making geniuses. We are glad you chose New Zealand (if you even had a choice) as your home.

for any pie, I stopped in at the noisy leaf cafe in takinini and had a steak and cheese. It was FULL of lovely, tender steak, not the odd lump of chewy meat and grissle amongst watery gravy. She also has boil-up pies, which i tried at at later date. Wow!! Unique in concept, and really yummy. kumera, watercress... Yum!

You'll be pleased to know that Oxford Pies won the best commercial wholesale Mince & Cheese last year. To enter this most worthy category you have to be making more than 60,000 pies a WEEK.
John Newell is the man behind Oxford pies and will be our guest, live at 10:30am this Sunday, July 25.

Have to agree with Sarah! Oxford Pies are the best, you can't their Mince and Cheese.

Gotta be an Oxford Pie from Hamilton! They are the best....especially the Mince & Cheese!!!

I personally cannot go past a Nada Bakery Pie in Johnsonville, Wellington. The quality of meat, melting pastry in the mouth, and the range is incredible. Honestly you have not eaten a true pie until you have eaten a Nada pie. Go their Steak and Cheese, and if that is not good enough for you chicken and vegetables are the best thing out. Go Nada!!!

Good luck to you and your Portage Pies. I will be there at the awards of course so if you make the final please say hello. Yes, I can see the fidelity of the pea in the roast chicken, vegetable & gravy scenario.

All best.

Graeme

Portage Pies in New Lynn are new on the scence but super delicious, Beef & Red wine fantastic and my personal favorite is the Roast Chicken Vegetable & Gravy!!! mmmm (this one has a few peas as representive of the the kiwi chicken roast). But my husband does make them so I may be biast, its always been his dream to establish a business based on the memorable pie. Yes we are entering this year, hes working this weekend futher perfecting the puff in his pastry after the feedback from your show, THANKS!

Coupland's pie man Scott McKean will be interviewed on air around 10:30 Sunday July 18th as well.
Jimmy's Dennis Kirkpatrick will be a special guest on July 25th.

Keep 'em coming.

Graeme