Or perhaps the distinction should be between savory and savory WITH sweet. Allow me to explain. Back in the day, when workers relied on pasties for their daily sustenance, it was fairly common for Cornish housewives to tuck something sweet into one corner of a large pasty as a sort of “dessert”. Most often this […]
READ ONThis, if you can believe it, is another old pasty controversy. Sliced potatoes, it’s thought, release more moisture as the pasty bakes, creating a more succulent “gravy” in the interior (especially when half of them are placed on the top of the filling). Also, when laid down over the crust, they’re thought to protect the […]
READ ONYou might as well ask: what sort of ingredients go into stew? Or pot pie? Or hash? Traditionally it was whatever was on-hand that day: pieces of meat and root veggies if times were good (beef, pork, mutton, chicken, rabbit), just the root veggies plus other miscellaneous “stuffings” when times weren’t so good. What might […]
READ ONLast week I mentioned that most miners who ate pasties usually left behind a portion of their crust as an offering to the “knockers”. But what exactly is a “knocker”? In a nutshell, a knocker is a member of a race of spirits that are supposed to inhabit mines. A knocker can be either benevolent […]
READ ONI’ll go with large…ish. Granted, the vast majority of pasties one finds today in Britain, both within and outside of the West Country, are quite small. Usually about five inches long, more often than not reheated in pubs where they’re served with beer. As previously mentioned, though, a real working man’s pasty was a big […]
READ ONThough not as contentious as the crimping issue, the topic of glazing still raises hackles among some in the West Country. Miners as a rule aren’t rich folk. In fact, they’re often downright poor, which means little luxuries like eggs weren’t always available to them. Thus many, if not most, pasties weren’t painted with egg […]
READ ONThis is a contentious issue among the pasty congnoscenti in Cornwall. When it comes to sealing your pie, should the seam run down the center of the thing, or along the side? Top crimp advocates maintain that if the seam isn’t running down the middle, above the filling, you lose too much of the gravy […]
READ ONA good question. Purists claim that the true pasty crust is a white flour pie or “short” crust. And indeed if you look back forty or fifty years, the simple short crust is the most common. But why stop there? Travel back in time another few decades and you’d discover that a white flour-based short […]
READ ONThe modern packaged foods industry is on fire for what it calls “hand-helds”: foods that can be consumed with no muss or fuss while walking, driving, operating heavy machinery, etc.. The hand-held is old news to the Cornish, who have become world famous for maintaining the tradition of the hand-held, pastry-enclosed supper: the pasty. So […]
READ ON…from — who else — Cristina of Mexico Cooks. There’s a reason the London Times named her the world’s #1 food blogger, you know. This article will tell you everything you need to know about Michoacán ice cream. What an amazing story of entrepreneurship and success it is. Thanks Cristina!
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