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I've already marvelled at that incredible sausage-covered, deep fried egg called the Scotch egg, and raved about HP Sauce, both of which I encountered at an English pub in Santa Monica, CA, Ye Olde King's Head.
Well here's another first that I loved during my happy hour there: Cornish pastie.
Wait! It's not what you think. It's pronounced "pastie" with a short "a," i.e. it rhymes with "nasty." It most certainly is not one of those tiny, round, nickel-sized stickers that "dancers" use to *ahem* cover up certain parts. The pastie is a type of savory pie, like a pot-pie, but it's held in your hands without the pot. I guess that makes it a hand-pie.
The pastie we ordered was very pretty, and to be quite honest, I couldn't figure out how the bar's kitchenwas able to bake such a perfectly domed pastry, filled with ground beef and vegetables in the little time that it seemed to take. Theycouldn't have used a microwave, because the pastry was dry and flaky.
The filling was very simple - just ground meat and vegetables, with no complicated spices or herbs. It seemed to have been mostly flavored with the natural juices from the meat. Of course,after I cut it open, I poured HP sauce into eachhalf.
The pastie originated as a way for tin miners in Cornwall to easily carry their lunch with them. The miners, whose hands would be covered with dirt from the mines, could hold the pastie at one end, eat it without touching the rest of it, then just throw away the little corner of the pastie that they had been holding.
I might have to add the Cornish pastie to my short list of things-that-are-like-wontons to try to make this year (one of my resolutions).
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1-04-2006 @10:33AM gusset said... Not a bad looking pastie there.
It was originally intended as lunch for Cornish miners, so they could eat it with blackened hands. You hold it by the join in the crust (which is a little unsubstantial looking in the one photographed) then that part is discarded at the end.
There are a lot of British food posts around here. Are there any British contributors?
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1-04-2006 @10:37AM gusset said... Oops, sorry, you'd already said that.
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1-04-2006 @11:54AM Andrew said... Well you havent been reading MY posts then! I'm in the UK.
The PASTY - I am sure there is plenty on the web about it if I looked - had the savory bit at one end and the dessert bit at the other originally.
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1-04-2006 @2:20PM Ed Fisher said... Yes, pasty, not pastie, definitely.
My mom grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where there are, or were, a lot of Cornish miners working in the iron mines. So there is a huge pasty tradition up there, and I grew up with 'em.
Frankly, I'm not particularly fond of them now. They're just so damned bland. Add a little hot sauce and they're fine, but why bother?
The big question for your pasty in the UP is: Rutabaga, or no rutabaga?
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1-04-2006 @2:53PM kevin said... Here's a pasty recipe, for them's as wants to try it.
http://seriouslygood.kdweeks.com/2005/07/cornish-pastie.html
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1-04-2006 @5:51PM Alex McLeod said... My mom's from cornwall and we've lived in the states (MA) for 44+ years now. Now I make the pasties... Yep she always told us the miners (tin miners I think) would just drop em down the mine, we always said we'd use em as wheel chocks under the car's wheels to stop the car from rolling down the hill. They are always a bit heavy ya see... Poop mom and the pastie jokes.
We have stories of 'chair pasties', pasties SOO big that half of if sat on a chair outside the oven while the other half cooked inside. Pasties with lunch in one end and and desert in the other (never made those). And even "Belbin's" pasties which were heaven to my dad but hell to my mom (some shop in falmouth or penryn best I can tell).
Lots of memories in pasty-wise here...
Ours have evolved over the years as mom has gotten older to premade pie crust with sliced potato and turnip and hamburger with a bit of onion. I make mine 'dirty' by using pepper to roll out the dough instead of flour. Mmmmm, but mom thinks I'm nuts.
Great to see them on here.
Thanks!
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1-04-2006 @10:32PM M-L said... Growing up one of the Finns in the Northern Illinois community, the church ladies made pasties once or twice a year. And we always got them when we went to Northern Wisconsin or the UP to go camping. Unfortunately the church ladies got the idea that salt is bad and so stopped salting them at all. Ugh.
This summer was back in the UP for a trip to FINN FEST and of course, we stopped for pasties. Found this sign quite amusing (posting on flickr pool.) The pasties, while not the idealized deliciousness of my childhood, still pretty dangy tasty. My brother ordered some delivered to Philly...cheesesteak? Nah, pass me a pasty!
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1-05-2006 @12:43AM sarah said... 1. friends of mine from wisconsin have told me about the pasties in northern WI and the UP of MI. cool that they have kept it in those areas
2. is it really pasty with a "y?" then that really does sound like "pasty," as in "the dough was glue-y or pasty"
:)
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1-05-2006 @7:06PM Robyn said... I just moved to MI, went up to the UP where i had three pasties in five days. another thing I thought was interesting was they all had differently shaped pastry. Like one just had pastry on top while the other two were encased. And the two that were completely wrapped up were wrapped differently too. I think one looked more "finished" and one looked more... unprofessional.
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1-08-2006 @9:04AM ~J~ said... To confirm (from someone who lived in Cornwall)...
The "Pasty" has two official forms.
The first is a meat, potato, swede and carrot 'mix' with pepper and spices. Average price is a mere £1 for an average sized pasty, some can be found for as little as 60p or as much as £2 for a variety of meats like venison, lamb, prime steak, etc.
The 'original' pasty was indeed a two-sided affair and was given to the tin and copper miners of Cornwall. The pasty was a rather large shape with two 'segments'. One half was filled with the meat and veg content, the other half filled with apple or other fruits like berries if in season.
The 'miners' would break off the meat half first before consuming the fruit half. The pastry that seperated the two segments was thick enough to seperate the two halves thick enough.
Because of this, there was no waste, no plates, no knives or forks, no nothing left in the mines.
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