The end is in sight!

Here's a photo of the veggie filling :

You know how I like to mess about and hopefully make – in this case a pasty – a bit different. I've added a mornay sauce to the veggies, a stiff mornay sauce, you don't want it leaking through your pastry.

If you're interested, here's the recipe :

Mornay Sauce

20g unsalted butter

20g plain flour

300ml of milk – I use semi skimmed

75g mature Cheddar cheese

(or a combination of Cheddar and gruyere)

salt and black pepper

¼ tsp Dijon mustard - optional

Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour. Cook gently for a minute, stirring – make sure you don't brown the mixture. Gradually add the milk whisking constantly and eventually bring to the boil, whisking until it's smooth and thick. Lower the heat and simmer for 2 minutes, then add the cheese, mustard and season. I'd taste before you add salt – there's salt in the cheese – adjust accordingly.

This recipe will give you 420g of sauce – add 2 heaped tablespoons to your veggies and fold through. Cover and fridge until required. You'll have 280g of sauce left – the world is your Cornish pasty – serve extra sauce warmed in a jug on the side or freeze it – ready to use with another dish on another day! A fish pie gets my vote.

Back to the pasty

Flour your pastry board. Cut your pastry into four equal pieces. Roll out one into a circle, flip your pastry and turn it as you go, re-flour if you need to. You want a circle of 8-9” (21-23cms). If you're not good at rolling pastry measure the diameter of either a bowl or a plate to the size given and use, upturned, to get a perfect circle.

Step by step pastry photos next.

The Cornish pasty recipes – the filling

The traditional filling – per pasty

50g/2oz onion

50g/2oz turnip or swede

100g/4oz beef skirt, blade or chuck steak

150g/6oz sliced potatoes

salt and black pepper

Make sure the meat is free of fat and cut into similar sized pieces ¼” (6mm) and ensure that the turnip and onion is too. Cut your potatoes into quarters and then finely slice. You can submerge the potatoes in a bowl of cold water until you're ready to mix your filling together – drain and pat dry. Slice the onion and turnip to a similar size.

You have two options, layer each of the ingredients and season as you go then complete with a layer of potato. Don't salt the last layer, you'll affect the taste of the pastry.

Alternatively place all your ingredients in a large mixing bowl, season and mix well, cover and set aside to rest whilst you're rolling out the pastry. This option allows the ingredients to absorb all the flavours.

That's the recipe for a pasty with meat, here's mine without :

Veggie Pasty filling

sufficient for two pasties

100g/4oz leek

100g/4oz onion

150g/6oz sliced potatoes

celery salt

black pepper

dried parsley

As with the previous recipe, ensure that the veggies are sliced to a similar size – ¼”/6mm. I used a new potato – the Gold, a Charlotte would be perfect too. The reason I used a new potato is that I wanted there to be evidence of the potato with the other veggies and not a mush. It's more appropriate with the meat and potato that an “old” variety of potato is used to combine with the meat and other ingredients. Mix the veggies together and season well.

More photos up next and the end is in sight!

The Cornish pasty – pastry photo guide

I've been careful to photograph each step for this iconic delicacy and rather than bombard you with heaps of photos at the end I'm giving you them in stages, which I think you'll find more helpful and less likely to make you want to throw in the towel and give up!

Hang in there, it's worth it.

your veggie alternative to lard

ready to rub in

 

it looks very strange!

now it looks like dough

 

ready to wrap

safely gathered in

the clean bowl speaks for itself

Now for the filling!

The Cornish pasty – the recipes

Here's the basic pastry recipe :

Pasty pastry

This recipe will give you four eight inch (21cms) pasties

450g/1lb strong white bread flour

large pinch of salt

100g/4oz of margarine

100g/4oz lard

175ml/3^rd pint water

cling film

Place the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. Add 25g/1oz of lard and rub into the flour. Grate or slice the rest of the fats into the bowl and stir, using a round bladed knife. Pour all the water into the bowl and mix together with the knife. Keep the dough in the bowl and using your hand bring the dough together and knead using the heel of your hand. Tip the dough onto a sheet of cling film and use the film to bring the dough together in a fat circle. Wrap the dough twice in cling film, bag and fridge. Chill it for at least 30 minutes.

Before we go any further I can hear you exclaiming – LARD! - what is she thinking. You don't have to use lard, for me and other vegetarians out there, use either Trex or Cookeen – panic over! The lard is part of the original recipe. I used unsalted butter instead of the margarine.

For those who are used to making pastry, no matter how basic, this will seem an odd method. I promise you it works. Not only does it work I'd say it's the best result I've ever had.

For example, it doesn't matter if you fridge it to chill for 30 minutes and, surprise surprise, you get distracted and remember two hours later. It does not affect the end result.

A tip – as you can see the recipe gives you four pasties from the batch of pastry. When you're ready to roll (sorry!) cut the pastry into four equal portions. At this stage you can please yourself – make two pasties and then wrap the remaining two separately in cling film, bag and freeze for another day.

Take the frozen pastry out of the freezer the night before you want it and fridge it.

It behaves impeccably – just as if freshly made.

Next up, a pastry photo guide so far.

The Cornish Pasty – the golden rules

This series may seem a tad long winded but these culinary masterpieces should not be rushed!

The filling is always raw and is baked at the same time as the pastry. The pasty is a meal in itself and in Cornwall it's actually considered an insult to serve them with anything else.

The meat content should be diced, never minced. The beef should be either chuck steak or skirt – also known as blade. A pasty should contain 12.5% beef. The vegetables should be finely sliced of a similar size so they cook evenly and the potatoes should be an “old variety” which will “fall”. Use strong plain flour – the sort used in bread making. As you can see, this is not an expensive meal – at it's roots the pasty evolved from humble ingredients that were plentiful and nutritious. The meat element was the most costly which is probably why the percentage of meat is as small as it is.

Think of the pasty as a pressure cooker – you need to release steam – place a small hole in the top of the pasty. Don't be tempted to tuck into your pasty straight from the oven – trust me – the inside stays hot for a long time.

Pasties are usually personalised with initials – top left, others say top right – who knows! It does however date back I think to the miners when some owners provided large ovens at the surface to keep the pasties hot for the men. A useful tip for today if you're tweaking the filling to suit your family and friends' preferences!

You'll read all sorts of “do's and don'ts” about pasty pastry and to be fair, there's no right or wrong way, all I can tell you is what follows works.

Recipes up next!

The Cornish Pasty

Cornish tin miners eventually had to search elsewhere for work when the mines closed. They moved around the UK and all over the world too – for example, between 1861 and 1901 it's estimated that 250,000 Cornish migrated to Australia. It's not surprising therefore, that you'll find pasties, or versions of them, all over the world. There's a very successful company in Australia “Cousin Jacks Pasty Co.”. In case you were wondering where “ Cousin Jacks” comes from – it's an affectionate nickname for Cornish people – “Cousin Jennies” too.

Legend has it that there are “Knockers” or “Knackers” - mischief making leprechaun like creatures who lived deep in the tin mines, knocking on the walls and supports. They could be good or bad depending on your point of view. To some, the knocking served as a warning of impending disaster and so protected the miners, to others these mischief makers caused cave-ins. Which brings me to the “end” of the pasty. The miners would save, literally, the last bite - the end of their pasty and throw them deep into the mine to either appease the bad knockers or thank the good. A help or a hindrance?

Not to be confused with the “end” of a pasty - there's also a “corner”. A “corner”, is said to be a portion of a pasty saved to eat later on in the long shift – larger than we'd call a corner, probably about a third of a pasty.

The iconic crimped crust of a pasty isn't there for decoration. Mining was a dangerous occupation and arsenic poisoning was not unusual. There were no bathrooms – you couldn't just pop off and wash your hands before lunch, the miners' hands were ingrained with dirt and chemicals, arsenic being one of them. The miners held their pasty by the thick crimped crust to prevent being poisoned. How smart is that.

Iconic is the word – a delicious, complete meal in a pastry blanket.

Coming next – the golden rules for the contents and the making of the pastry!

Portable Summer food …

… it could be for a picnic, a survival kit whilst travelling, part of your al fresco summer parties or an impromptu get together. In other words, food that is easily or conveniently carried or moved around. Some may say that packing a survival kit whilst you're on the move is not worth the effort. For me, I've been disappointed and ripped off at Services for poor food and expensive snacks – the coffee has improved but that's about it! I take a “kit” for a long journey – 4 hours plus. Similarly if you holiday in the UK and choose a self catering option, unless you want to spend your holiday in a supermarket – that you have to search for – the more you think ahead, even in a small way, the better. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting you cook up a storm and spend your holiday serving it all, far from it.

My plan is that if I'm away for seven days I take the basics, condiments, staples, breakfast bits, a few treats and the wherewithal for two meals – ish.

The ideas and recipes that follow are all portable and suitable for any of the above occasions!

On that note - have you ever made a Cornish Pasty?

They've been around “recently” for about 200 years but history says that they were with us well before in some form. A Cornish pasty has to be the ultimate in “portable” food. Cornish tin miners took a pasty to work every day – it's hard to comprehend that they walked long distances to the mine, then down the shaft for a long shift. It was hard, gruelling work and the pasty provided sustenance.

There are loads of stories and superstitions and golden rules too for the contents of a pasty and the making of the pastry itself.

It's difficult to know where to begin – some of the stories are based on fact, some fiction and others somewhere in between – I'll give it my best shot and hope you enjoy the read – who knows you might have a go at making a pasty!