Cornish Pastie

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hidecote01, Jul 31, 10:26pm
Always wanted to make these. Does anyone have tried and true recipe?

245sam, Jul 31, 10:48pm
From the former Trade Me Cooks.

"Easy Cornish Pasties Easy Cornish Pasties
Saute an onion in a little oil,add mince and mix well while cooking. Add to this a couple of tsp of Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce.When cooked through,make up some "Bisto" gravy powder with a little water to make a thick paste. Add this to mince mixture. You want a good thick consistency. Roll out some ready made flakey puff pastry Use a saucer as a template forcutting out the pastry circles with a knife.Add a spoonful of cooled meat mix to a circle of pastry. Fold pastry over in half and pinch edges. Brush each with beaten egg and bake in hot oven-200c until puffed & golden. Serve with creamy mashed potato and vegetables.
posted by brianmac

My Version - I do these the way my nana used to - the meat is cooked first and chilled. Brown mince (good mince - she used to mince steak herself but premium mince is fine), add grated swede and potato and continue cooking. Add seasonings/herbs etc to taste if wished. Once cooked place in the fridge to cool. Cut circles of puff pastry, add generous dollop of meat mixture, shape firmly against meat, brush edges with beaten egg and pinch. Brush pastry with beaten egg and bake about 20 mins mod oven until browned and cooked through.
posted by jaybee2003

This is what my Cornish great-granny did (born 1870).Used cold meat (leftovers). Diced it and added a spoonful of left over gravy to keep the pasty moist. Slice your peeled potato and add it to the meat in the proportion of "one piece of meat to a 'undred pieces of tater", according to granny, but we like more meat these days. Salt and pepper. Some people like a bit of onion added, some don't. Put in a pastry crust. She made her own short pastry but her descendants prefer to use flaky. She cut rounds of pastry and did the traditional frilly pinch across the top - we lazy descendants use ready-cut sheets of pastry and make the frill round the sides, getting an oblong result. We also add dried basil, which probably has her spinning in her grave. Cook in a hot oven till brown, say 180C for half an hour, but check your individual oven. Cornish pasties can also contain turnip/swede. It's a poor person's dish so more veg than meat was common.
posted by daleaway

Cornish Pasties
My Grandmothers recipe was: Raw mince, add chopped onion, grated carrot & potato and peas and salt & pepper. Mix all together. Put a saucer on pastry and cut shape. Add some mince mixture across middle of pastry and then bring up the pastry and curl together. Cook for about 20 mins on Fanbake 180 or until pasrty is well browned. These are not the true cornish pasties but my family does love them
posted by linda22

I make mince ones
I use a good quality mince which i brown in a non-stick pan with sauteed chopped onion, the I add a few dashes of Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce. I then use a Bisto gravy powder(lazy I know, but quick) making it thick and pouring into the mince mix. You can also add finely cubed carrot and potato and even peas if you wish. Season with a little freshly ground pepper (you wont need salt because of the gravy powder)Roll out an Ernest Adams or irvines flakey pastry and using a saucer turned upside down. trace around saucer with a butter knife. You may have to re-roll the pastry again - you should get about 6-7 "rounds" when meat mixture is cool, place a spoonful into centre of pastry and fold over, pinching edges together with your fingers. Brush each pastie with beaten egg and bake at around 180c till puffed and golden. They freeze well cooked too and are yummy cold. Serve with creamy mashed potato or kumara and other vege on the side. posted by cookessentials" :-))

hidecote01, Jul 31, 11:05pm
Tks looks great. Always look at recipes with raw meat put into pastry and can't see how they would be cooked enough.

brouser3, Aug 1, 9:48pm
http://www.cornishpastyassociation.co.uk/about-the-pasty/
bollocks about all the other crap and precooking that goes on. They are so simple to make, straightforward to cook and yes the meat does cook properly and is tender.

brouser3, Aug 1, 9:53pm
How can you even contemplate calling any of these a Cornish Pasty when, apart from all the adulteration going on, you only include one of the main ingredients as an afterthought in one of the options. No pasty can be considered a real pasty without SWEDE.

socram, Aug 1, 9:56pm
A real Cornish doesn't have gravy either. It is generally, chunks of meat, potato, swede etc. with plenty of pepper.

I'd also suggest that as a working man's dish, the pastry would usually have been made with lard or beef fat, but probably not butter. Ready bought shortcrust? No way.

clair4, Aug 1, 9:58pm
Thanks brouser3 for the genuine recipe. I agree with the swede.

buzzy110, Aug 2, 12:06am
I'm glad you said it and not me. But please don't blame 245sam. She went to a lot of effort to find and quote the recipes. They weren't her recipes. Two of them came from the same poster btw and both of them were crap.

245sam, Aug 2, 1:38am
Thank you buzzy110.
I don't eat Cornish pasties and certainly don't distinctly recall ever making them although I have vague recollections of having to make them at Manual Training 50+ years ago.
OP asked for "tried and true recipe" and who was/am I to dispute if they are "true" but they are obviously "tried" and surely it's up to OP to decide if she considers them "tried and true" enough to give any or all of the recipes a try, even if the end result is not the genuine Cornish Pastie. :-))

socram, Aug 2, 1:55am
There is a lot of talk in various countries now regarding the genuine article, from Champagne to Cheddar cheese, Melton Mowbray Pork Pies and yes, Cornish pasties. The Scots are also now on to it regarding the Whisky. By all means call it a pastie, but not a Cornish pastie.

My pet hate is being offered a Devonshire cream tea or Cornish cream tea - with whipped cream or heaven forbid, aerosol cream. Again, by all means call it a cream tea, but unless it has clotted cream, it is a total rip-off of the real thing.

No, I am not from Devon or Cornwall but please don't dilute the real thing.

hidecote01, Aug 2, 1:58am
Sorry I could have used wrong wording in question. Just a recipe that someone uses and enjoys. How's that.

socram, Aug 2, 2:10am
That'll do me!

schnauzer11, Aug 2, 11:39am
Am I correct in thinking that the original Cornish Pastie was made as a lunch for men in mines. One end was a meat-filling, the other sweet. It was optional to eat the pastry, which was only really intended as a container for the lunch?

ruby19, Aug 2, 8:40pm
Yes I think originally this was true.

socram, Aug 3, 8:00am
Just to add to that, bearing in mind the conditions down a Cornish tin mine, (or any mine for that a matter) snap time (local coal miner's term for lunch) would be down the pit. They wouldn't have access to washrooms and probably had to stay down for the whole shift.

With grubby hands, they'd hold the pastie by the top, crimped part, eat the savoury part, then the fruit filling and just biff the grubby top. The pastie would have to be strong enough to not fall apart, just being held by the top, so no definitely no flaky pastry!

sarahb5, Aug 6, 9:06am
Which begs the question - jam first or cream first - that's the difference between Devon and Cornwall so far as cream teas are concerned .

socram, Aug 6, 9:28am
Cornish cream tea as I remember it was a Cornish split - not a scone as in Devon. The split was a light, slightly sweet dinner roll.

Jam on first seemed to be the norm in Devon and Cornwall - and neither used butter!

sarahb5, Aug 6, 9:40am
Both scones last time I checked - cream first then jam in Devon, jam then cream in Cornwall

illusion_, Aug 6, 10:02am
the double ender was a "Bedfordshire Clanger"

juliewn, Aug 6, 10:54am
I've seen Cornish Pasties in several cafe's between here and Wellington recently, among other old favourites - Eccles Cakes and Old-fashioned Cheesecakes - with their little curl of pastry on top, perfect warm from the oven. :-)

sarahb5, Aug 6, 7:49pm
Cornish pasties were made like that too

hidecote01, Aug 6, 7:52pm
Yum anything with fresh whipped cream. Not good for my figure though

socram, Aug 6, 10:18pm
Stayed at a small village in Cornwall 1968 & 1969 and they baked their own splits every day. (Ditto even further back in St Ives in 1960.)

What I suspect has happened is that many in Cornwall have opted for scones as they are quicker and easier to make. In a cafe situation, if they are running out, they can whip up a batch of scones very quickly. Can't do that with bread! For the guest houses, they know exactly what the daily demand is going to be.

As a 14 year old, I remember vividly that very first afternoon tea in a guesthouse, where they just kept the splits coming (and 14 year old boys have huge appetites) and they told us jam first, then clotted cream.

I haven't spent much time in Devon, so can't say I have ever seen it the other way around, but maybe some use the cream instead of butter and then add the jam - as they use less cream?

I'll stick to the Cornish method.

sarahb5, Aug 6, 11:33pm
Good for you - those Cornish splits you refer to are sold as Devonshire splits in Devon (and elsewhere) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/22/nigel-slater-cream-tea-recipes - always been scones and jam for a cream tea as far as I'm aware in both Devon and Cornwall.

I've been to Devon and Cornwall many, many times but never been served splits with a cream tea. My mum lived in Devon and honeymooned in Cornwall in 1954.

sarahb5, Aug 7, 12:01am
There's even a Cream Tea Society - http://www.creamteasociety.co.uk/ They do mention the Cornish split (which I've only ever had as a Devonshire split from elsewhere in the UK) but it appears that the popularity of the scone has eclipsed the use of the split.