Jo Barrett wants to popularise the eating of wild meats in Australia, so she’s making moves in the genre she thinks is most likely to move the dial: pies. Her new company, Wildpie, makes pies and sells them ready to bake to cafes, restaurants, bars and enthusiastic members of the pie-loving public. And thanks in part to the fact that Barrett is a bloody good chef with a killer track record at the Oakridge restaurant in the Yarra Valley and more recently at Little Picket in Lorne, these pies sound completely delicious.
We’re talking goat in a fragrant Sri Lankan curry, we’re talking chunks of venison in a red wine and rosemary gravy, and we’re talking wild boar in sausage rolls. We’re also talking about interpreting the “pie” brief broadly enough that the range includes a play on the Little Picket dim sim: a dimmie fashioned from boar and cabbage swaddled in hot water pastry, ready for the steaming or (yes) the frying.
Barrett is getting into the game with fellow wild food enthusiasts Louise Daily, former Three Blue Ducks chef and partner Mark LaBrooy, and Victorian company Discovered Wildfoods, and they’re united not just by their love of pastry.
Wildpies are more than pies, Barrett says, they’re pies with purpose. The purpose being to make best use of invasive species that are free range, organic and full of nutrients, providing an alternative to more intensive forms of meat production. “The simple act of eating a pie can be both delicious and impactful.” She says the combination of rough puff and regular puff pastry makes for pies that bake from frozen to sublime state of flaky crispness.