CityBeat - Te Waha Nui Online

Vege pie takes out top prize

vege-pie-takes-out-top-prize

by Angela Norton

It looks like the traditional Kiwi mince or steak pie with a blob of Watties on top isn’t up to competition standard these days.

A (shock horror) vegetarian pie has taken out the top award at the 11th annual Bakels New Zealand Supreme Pie Awards, earning its Havelock North creator a whopping $7500 in prize money.

This is the first time in the history of the competition that the main prize has been given to a vegetarian creation.

Neville Jackson’s concoction of silverbeet, carrot, red capsicum, broccoli and cauliflower in a creamy sauce, was selected out of more than 3000 entries across 11 categories.

After doing some quick voxpops around the streets of Whangarei, it appears that although the veges have marked up a win for the non-meat team, the good old Kiwi pie still has a strong following.

According to the Maketu Pies website, the humble Kiwi pie has evolved from a “reasonably dubious item, famously made from whatever was cheap or leftover” to an “epicurean art form”.

During the voxpops, however, it did strike me that perhaps us non-epicurean Kiwis may be suffering from a lack of imagination where pies are concerned…

General response:
Me: “If you could make your dream pie, what ingredients would you put into it?”
Interviewees: “Meat”.

That’s it? Meat? That’s all anybody really wants in their pies? Yes. And usually the red variety.

Perhaps just in Whangarei.

Ironically, there were also a good many responses from people saying they didn’t even eat pies any more (although that possibly could have just been their way of getting the crazy pie-obsessed journalism-student lady to stop asking weird pie questions).

Despite the apparent lack of Whangareian support for pie-eating and recipe variations, the New Zealand pie market is still worth more than $120 million each year with Kiwis eating around 70 million pies a year.

1 Comment so far

  1. Amy Williams August 1st, 2007 10:49 pm

    Mmmmm…PIE.

Leave a reply