Cornish Recipes

This is a famous Cornish recipe - so called because the fish are placed in the dish with their heads facing the sky....!

This was in a parish magazine produced at the small village where we visit at least once a year! I've never cooked it, but it is often on the menu in the local pub - I'm not sure whether the locals eat it or whether it is just for tourists eat This recipe has no fish poking skywards, just round the rim!

STAR GAZEY PIE

1 lb shortcrust pastry
1 tsp. ground cloves
Freshly ground black pepper
1 egg
4 tsp. single cream
6 oz brown breadcrumbs

1 tsp. allspice
1 small onion
3 chopped, hardboiled eggs
4 tbsp. chopped parsley
6 pilchards (or 8 sardines) gutted and filleted. Remove tail fins but leave the heads on.

Set oven to 425 degrees or gas Mark 7.

Wash fish, pat dry and open out. Make the stuffing with breadcrumbs, cloves, spice and pepper, mixed with finely chopped onion, bound with beaten egg. Fill the opened fish with the stuffing mixture, close and reshape, and leave in a cool place.

Grease a flat pie dish and line with half the pastry. Arrange the stuffed fish around the edge like the spokes of a wheel with heads facing out and tails facing center. Cover with sliced, hard-boiled eggs, cream, parsley and pepper. Finish with the rest of the pastry. Pinch the pastry layers together between the fish heads, but roll back the pastry around the heads so that their eyes gaze skywards. Brush with beaten egg. Bake for 15 minutes, reduce to 350 degrees F, gas Mark 4, and bake for a further 20 minutes, until the pie is golden brown.

Cornish pasty (pronounced Paaah stee!)

Tradition has it that these individual meat pies were takenn down the tin mines as a lunch - the thick pastry on the crimped side could be used as a 'handle' and then thrown away - a little more hygienic than coal-dust covered hands! There is a good photograph of exactly what I'm talking about here on the Warren's bakery site. http://www.warrensbakery.co.uk/pasty.htm

There are lots of recipes - all claiming to be 'authentic' - but like lots of regional recipes, I believe that everyone thinks their recipe is best... This is one that I got from a friend in Cornwall. Some people use lamb instead of beef, but I think beef is more traditional.

Nowadays, you can get pasties in an endless variety of flavours - everything from vegetarian to curries to fish....

Set oven to 400°F, 200°C, gas mark 6 /
(then turn down to 350°F, 180°C, gas mark 4 after cooking pasties for about 15 minuts or so)
Pastry ingredients
8oz plain flour
good pinch of salt
6oz of lard
5 tablespoons of chilled water

Filling
1½lb of rump steak
2oz onion
6oz potatoes
3 oz swede
1 small teaspoon of salt
½ a level teaspoon of pepper
1 egg


This is a quick method of making the pastry and appears to be common throughout Cornwall. Put half the flour, salt, lard and five tablespoons of chilled water in a bowl and mix with a fork. When it is well blended, stir in the remaining flour. Knead well, wrap in clingfilm and chill for one hour.

Cut the beef into ½-inch cubes. Skin and chop the onion into small dice. Peel and slice the potatoes and swede into small pieces. Mix all the filling ingredients together and season with salt and pepper.

Cut the pastry into eight pieces and roll each one into a round, then cut out a six-inch circle. Put an eighth of the filling in the centre of each one. Moisten the edges with water. Press seams together and crimp, making two cuts, one-inch long, on top of each pasty. (They should look like half-moons) Beat the egg and brush the pasties with it. Bake for fifteen minutes at the high temperature shown above, then for thirty minutes at the lower one shown above.

Mead

Commercially produced mead is available all over the West Country (the counties of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall) - and can be bought in pretty little bottles as souvenirs.

This is a home made version - I'm not keen on mead, it's far too sweet for my palate, but lots of people seem to like it!

Cornish Mead

3 lbs honey
1 oz yeast
2 oz root ginger
1 gallon water

Boil the water for half an hour before use, then add the honey and boil for one hour more, skimming off any scum that may arise.

Cut up the ginger and bruise it. Place in a muslin bag and add to the liquid. When almost cold add the yeast.

Remove the muslin bag containing the giner root. Bottle, and when the yeast has finished working, cork tightly.

Keep in a dark place.

I was wondering how long the fermentaion period is? I have a friend that LOVES mead. (I think it's far too sweet. But ok ta have a sip now and a again.) But i thought this would make for a nice wedding Ann. present for he and his wife.
This seems much easier than m'beer recipes...

Thanks for posting it, Cat.

Hmmmmm
I'll have a look to see if she ever wrote it down.... I have never made the stuff, it's not to my taste at all, Jason... But I'll do a check!

Many thanks....

I rang Jenny!

She says leave it about 5 or 6 days before bottling....

Here's another Cornish Mead recipe I found on the net
http://recipeview.com/Corn/Corn39.htm

Great!!! One more question I should have asked. What is the aging period after bottling? I know some are about 6-8 weeks ( for beers, ales and stouts), but for mead I am not sure since it is similar to a wine.....

The second recipe I printed said 2 months!
Edited by Cat to add this comment

The pasty has become a standard for Finnish in the upper penisula of northern Michigan. The Finns worked the iron and copper mines along with the Cornish. Now you can find pasty shops all over the place run by Finns. The only change to the basic recipe is the addition of rutabaga, reducing the amount of potato. My relatives have passed down pasty recipes from the turn of the century.

See Pasty Central for a commercial Finnish pasty concern.

'Rutabaga' is the name that Americans give to what we call 'Swede' turnips (as in my recipe)! How fascinating that Finns worked in the mines with Cornishmen and that the pasty is alive and well and being baked in Michigan! The smell when walking round Falmouth, for instance, whilst the pasties are being baked is just so 'moreish' as we would say - ie the more you smell the more you want to eat it!

The South-West and North coasts of Cornwall are studded with the Wheel Houses and Chimneys of ancient tin mines. The Wheal Houses aer still extant in many places. The mines had names like Wheal Jenny, etc..

Hi Catriona!

Do you have any good recipes for Cornish Games Hens?

I'm almost one hundred per cent certain that 'Cornish' Game Hens is a term used in America.... I've never knowingly eaten any dish using them... I think Shadows has printed a couple of recipes in the Scotland forum somewhere for Cornish Game Hens...

Sorry, in this instance, I admit a request has me stumped!

Cat,
You are correct! Cornish Game Hens are a breed of fowl raised for their small size ( even though I have raised some that were bigger then the regular chicken ) and tender meat ( they must be slaughtered while young or they get tough). They are found mostly here on this side of the pond, they are some what compairable in size to squab or grouse. Supposedly they come from a breed started in Cornwall many centuries ago. I will look for the history and post it when I find it.

Here is my favorite recipe using these birds; it is not Cornish in origin , but an original recipe from me.

http://www.celticradio.net/php/forums/inde...?showtopic=2783

Here is a link with a brief history of the Cornish hen breed:

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0813600.html

Saffron Cake

A traditional Cornish recipe.
Saffron colours the cake bright yellow,
and gives it its distinctive flavour.
Saffron comes from the autumn-flowering
crocus sativus and is expensive to buy
- the saffron is the stigmata of the crocus,
and over 4000 blooms are required
to give one ounce of saffron.


Ingredients:
a little boiling water
a pinch of saffron
2 lbs flour
1 lb butter
2 oz candied peel
pinch of salt
4 oz sugar
1 lb currants
1 oz yeast
warm milk
Cut up saffron, soak overnight in boiling water,
Rub the butter in the flour, add the salt, sugar,
finely chopped peel and the currants.
Warm a little milk, pour it over the yeast
and one teaspoonful of sugar in a basin.
When the yeast rises, pour it into a well
in the centre of the flour.
Cover it with a sprinkling of the flour,
and when the yeast rises through this flour
and breaks it, mix by hand into a dough,
adding milk as needed, and the saffron water.
Leave in a warm place to rise for a while.
Bake in a cake tin for about 1 hour at 350F.