Recipe origin: Australia
Ingredients
- 1 head of lettuce
- 1 medium carrot, grated
- 1 medium red apple, chopped fine
- ¼ cup raisins
- 1 Tablespoon coconut, flaked
- Juice of lemon
Procedure
- Carefully remove several firm leaves from the head of lettuce, and arrange in a bowl.
- Mix the remaining ingredients in a bowl.
- Mound mixture in the lettuce "cup." Serve with cottage cheese, chicken, or lean cold meat.
Serves 6.
A typical breakfast may consist of fruit, toast with Vegemite (a salty yeast spread), fried eggs and bacon, and juice. Lunch may be an apple or a salad (such as Grated Carrot, Apple, and Raisin salad), a sandwich filled with tuna or deli meats, and an ANZAC biscuit for a treat. (ANZAC is the acronym for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. No one knows for sure, but many people think these biscuits were first prepared for troops—and for Australian and New Zealand families—around 1915 during World War I.) Dinnertime often brings leg of lamb or barbecued prawns (shrimp), roasted vegetables, a salad, and a custard or tart for dessert. Damper, a simple homemade bread, and billy tea, named for the pot it is heated in, both remain a staple for any meal.
Meat pie is considered the Australian national dish. One newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, reported some statistics about meat pie consumption in the country:
- Almost 260 million pies are consumed every year, or almost 15 per person
- Men eat meat pies almost twice as often as women
- 62 percent of meat pies are filled with chopped steak (ground beef)
- 36 percent are filled with steak and onion, steak and kidney, steak and potato, or steak and mushroom
- Just 2 percent are filled with chicken
