How to make a pasty at Michigan Tech
Being a half Cornish I had an earlyappreciation of pasties as it's one of
my ponder childhood food memories and wejust made some pasties with the folks
here and just like my grandma did it andit turned out to be a lot of fun. Pasties
were brought here from Cornwall Englandto the copper country in the mid-1800s.
1840s to be exact I believe, and theywere food that could sustain the miner
all day. The wife would make the copperminer big pasty and he will put in his
lunchbox and on thebottom a lunch box he would have black
tea, and a black tea would keep the pastyhot and he would have a hot meal, and
some of the miners even had the wivesmake three quarters of their pasty
savoury and a small portion sweet, and sothe miner could enjoy a dessert as well.
So it was basically a one crust meal. Wewould make the crust and typically it
would be what pastry chefs call it threeto one dough, the pie dough. Basically all
that means by three to one is threeparts flour, two parts fat, whether it be
butter lard or a combination of and onepound of water, one part water.
One ounce of salt also just to give it aflavor enhancer. Basically you just
incorporate it very very minimally as tonot overwork it, creating a tough crust,
you cover it and refrigerate it. While it's refrigerating that would be
optimum time to dice all your vegetablesto create your rutabaga and to finally
fine dice your potato. You make a mixtureand a little salt and pepper
that is a pasty, and then you can rollout your crust that's been sitting
around for 20 minutes. Put a cupof cup and a half, however hungry I guess
you are,and roll up nice and tight crimp it
around the edges. A little egg, a littlewater and poke a hole and couple holes
in. Bake it at four corner grease forapproximately 45 minutes and you have a
Cornish pasty. There are so manydifferent variations, but and their
research will even tell you differentthings if you look it up. I think it's a
safe bet to say that the Cornish pastywould have skirt steak cut up, nothing
grown up. They would historically frownupon putting carrots in the pasty. They
would use what they call Swedes or whatwe call rutabagas or Swedish - turnips.
And those are the ingredients that werein there that the rutabaga, the potato
the steak. Although over here we'veadapted we use flank steak as opposed to
skirt because it's more readilyavailable, and butter and a basic crust
that was it.
Missing that Copper Country cuisine? Now you can make your own pasties at home! Just watch this...