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Recipe Name: Cornish Pasties Category: 18TH CENTURY Serves: 4
SOURCE Shadows
1 Medium Potato, 1/4 inch dice 1 Medium Onion, chopped 8 Ounce Blade of beef or rump steak, 1/2 inch cubes 8 Ounce Flour 2 Ounce Butter, diced 2 Ounce Lard, diced Cold water - to mix Beaten egg of milk to glaze
Cornish pasties originated as portable lunches for tin miners, fishermen and farmers to take to work. Housewives used to make one for each member of the household and mark their initials on one end of the pasty. These complete-meal pasties, which vary slightly in content in different parts of Cornwall, were popular in other parts of the country too. In Bedfordshire, for instance, they put fruit in one end of the pasty, for dessert; these were called "Bedfordshire Clangers". A prime cut of meat, such as rump, is often used in Cornwall for the pasties but, because of the high price of rump, you can use blade.
Pre-heat oven to 220 °C / 425 °F / Gas 7.
Place the potato, onion and meat in a bowl and mix well.
Place the flour in a bowl. Add the butter and lard, rub in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add about 2 tablespoons of water and mix to form a firm dough.. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead lightly.
Divide the pastry into 4. Roll out each piece to about 6-7 inches. Trim by cutting round the edge of a small plate.
Divide the filling between each round. Brush the edges with water and draw up the pastry on each pasty, in a line over the centre of the filling. Seal well. Flute the edge with your fingers.
Place the pasties on a baking sheet, fluted edges up. Brush each with a little beaten egg or milk. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until golden brown.
Serve hot or cold.
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Shadows I visit Cornwall at least once every year, and one tradition in our family is to buy pasties from the small fisherman's tea shop on the quay at St Mawes. They are baked by 2 local housewives and are, without doubt, the best in the whole of Cornwall (in my opinion!)
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I have never had the pleasure of visiting Cornwall, nor any of the Isles for that matter, but it is a priority in my life! But I must agree with you about these pasties being very,very good, I make them often and they are much better then the Americanization of them called "Hot Pockets", I would not feed those to my dogs!
Interestingly, your recipe does not have the usual swede (or usual in the Roseland Peninsula area of the Duchy, an area I know very well).
In the pasties that I love, the meat is cut much smaller than in your recipe, and the potatoes and swede and onion are cut into thin slivers - but not thin enough that they 'melt' together during the cooking time. The short-crust pastry is nice and thin and is made by the 2 women, not shop-bought and just rolled out, like in many of the larger pasty shops in Cornwall. There is a chain called 'Oggy, Oggy' who make all sorts of exotic and non-traditional pasties, vegetarians ones, curried ones, apple and blackberry ones.... Here's the URL to the Oggy, Oggy site - as you can see by the pasty the model is holding, the edges of traditional pasties is plaited, not crimped - legend has it that this was done for the tin miners to hold the 'filled' portion by, and to be discarded when the filled bit was eaten! http://www.oggyoggy.com/about.html
The smell, in the pasty shops, is just heavenly.... And to see row upon row of the half-moons of pastry is a sight to make your teeth water!
You really should try to visit the UK - you will be amazed at the differences, in just a matter of miles.... For instance, I'm an East Coast person - but I speak differently to someone who comes from only a few miles away - and as for people from Fife - well, just ask AD - her boyfriend and his family live there.... ! Glaswegians are Westies, but they speak differently to people from Paisley or Dumbarton, again only a matter of miles from their City.
The same in England. The Duchy of Cornwall is only connected to mainland England at one place, ie the Tamar at Plymouth (yes, from where the Mayflower sailed to America!). We always say the air on the opposite side of the Tamar Bridge smells differently! The Cornish speak with a distinct 'burr' as do the Devonians (people from Devon) - but only a little bit of water separates them....
The same with people from Bristol... which is only a few miles from Wales. Yet the people in Bristol speak with a West Country burr and the Welsh..... well, have a guess.....
Cornwall-the forgotten Gaelic culture of all Celtic festivals. From someone with a Cornish ancestry it's nice to see it represented once in a while. Here, in Upper Michigan, especially with all the mining, it is Cornish country. Pasties are probably sold as much up here as the Big Mac is for McDonald's. But you're missing one ingredient and that is rutabagas. Can't have a good traditional Cornish pasty without them.
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