Justin’s Pies: Popularizing Australia's national dish in Israel - review

According to omniscient Google, the meat pie is the culinary symbol of Australia and its national dish. How appropriate then that Justin Winderbaum, of Justin’s Meat Pies, is from down under, although he’s been a Ra’anana resident for 14 years since making aliyah with his wife, Sandra, in 2009.

Since starting his pie business, he’s built up a large clientele of pie-eaters, not just among the Anglo community but with plenty of native-born Israelis as well.

It seems everyone likes a meat pie – it’s such a compact, neat way of dishing up one’s dinner, meat and vegetables nestling together in a crispy dough casing, with a puff pastry top keeping it all together.

Sampling the meat pies

We received a sample of Justin’s pies one day last week and as they are delivered frozen, we were able to assess the pie concept over several days of tasting.

The chosen pie can be brought back to life in the microwave oven, but Justin strongly recommends doing it in a hot oven.

Since we last reviewed the pies, several new flavors have been added with the emphasis on vegan and vegetarian. He has also produced a new line in the shape of sausage rolls which have been very well-received.

“Parents tell me their kids are finally agreeing to eat meat because they love my sausage rolls,” he says.

By the way, the Hebrew for sausage roll is Moshe ba Teiva or “Moses in the basket,” which just shows how creative the Hebrew language can be.

Among the pies we sampled were the plain vegan, the vegan curry, chicken curry and beef mince. You know which pie is which from the different toppings. For instance, the vegan curry has a yellow spice topping, the chicken curry has black seeds, and so on.

Lentils are the main ingredient in the vegan pies, and, as every vegan, or someone who is required to cook vegan, knows, lentils are the magic ingredient in vegan cooking. As the curry is very mild, I can’t imagine anyone finding it too spicy.

Prices are NIS 26 for a small pie and NIS 115 for a family size.

A new item on the menu is the apple tart which is very good, sweet and filled with cubed pieces of apple. It really does taste like the one mother used to make.

All-in-all, Justin’s Pies offers a handy mid-week solution when you have to dish up a mid-week meal and are running out of ideas.

Justin’s Pies.052 4119176Kashrut – Rav Machpud.

The writer was the guest of Justin’s Pies.