Hi all, sorry its been far too long since my last blog, life as well as chef’s life has been happening, however, I now have a new lease of writing fire in me so I decided to start blogging again!
This blog is about how I was missing the pasties from Devon and Cornwall (UK) actually, so I decided to make them for myself and my wife Maria.Some of you may of had the pleasure of smashing down an amazing pasty, but if you haven’t, you really ought to make them as they are so easy and delicious.
The pasty has a huge history in the UK, it stems back from when the Cornish miners had to spend their time mining for tin or copper, and back then of course there were no plastic containers for packed lunch, so the amazing and loving wives made a thick buttery pastry and stuffed the pastry with some lovely beef, potatoes, onions and swede on one side, on the other they stuffed it with whatever fruit they had on the land at the time.
The whole thing sounds a bit weird I guess, but its actually genius because on one side you had the savoury, then on the other was sweet, so you had a complete meal in one.
The best part was that the edge of the pasty was made deliberately thick as a type of handle, which was then discarded, as mining was hard work and no time to have a nice formal lunch.
I have shown the basic steps of the pasty with photos, all I can say is, it's definitely worth making.The best thing is, you just cut the raw ingredients, then let the oven do all of the cooking!If you want different flavours of the pastry, you can actually make it from beef/chicken/ or pig fat, depending on your preference, and if you are feeling extra special, I guess you could make it with duck or goose fat.
Please have a go!