Australia and Texas. I'm sure you have associations with both of them. I'm there are a few associations you have with both of them. I'm sure the most prominent is that they are both havens for criminals. Perhaps this mystic bridging is what caused a large population of Australians to emigrate to Texas in the early twentieth century.
The first generation of Texans-begot-by-Aussies came of housekeeping age in the forties and fifties, which was a time of small and easy foods, like casseroles and twinkies. As such, it is natural that the Australian foods their forebears had lain upon them would get treated to a small reformatting.
Today's dish is based on the result of this situation: the Tex-Mexification and muffin-tin redesign of the classic Australian meat pie. I used things we had in the kitchen (in fact, I embarked primarily because my mother had put some Tex-Mex themed fake meat in the refrigerator). As such, there are a lot of things that I would do differently, and my instructions will reflect that, so if it looks like I'm recommending a thing I'm not doing, that's why.
First, gather things in two piles.
Pile number one (the outside):
Flour (a cup)
Masa (two cups)
Cornmeal (a half cup)
Salt (enough to make the powder taste like Fritos, actually slightly less than that)
Baking Powder (two teaspoons)
Butter (two sticks, warm)
Corn oil
Pile number two (the inside):
Meat (ground beef or something, or a pouch of fake meat, as I had; a cup)
Black beans (a cup)
Salsa (I dumped some in, but you should make your own; a cup)
Then mess around with it. I also had red peppers and little spicy peppers. I would recommend also some spices; cumin is pretty necessary.
Also, you ought to, if you're into it, use cheese in both piles (though I had none). You can mix it in the filling and put it on top of the final product before (or midway through) baking.
Mix the powdery stuff in one bowl, and the innards in another. Use a fork to mash the butter into the powders, and if it's still too dry moisten it with corn oil until it's around the consistency you would use to make tortillas.
Now it's an issue of just greasing up a muffin tin, mushing some crust into a shell (I would refrigerate it for a while first), spooning some filling into the middle, and then putting a little hat on each one (I ran out of dough; don't do that).
Bake it at 325 for half an hour or so. Start checking at probably twenty minutes. When they're done let them cool for a while, then pop them out and eat. Get sloppy.
While I was cooking this I was listening to: NPR's All Things Considered
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