One of the less horrible aspects of British colonialism I guess.
Being born a Cornishman I remember my father recounting a somewhat apocryphal tale of a grockle* visiting a pub and asking for chips (fries) with his pasty. The landlord looked at him somewhat aghast and asked him if he was sure? The tourist replies that he was hungry and always has chips with his pasty back home.
A little while later the landlord returns with the customers lunch. A small crowd of locals had now appeared as the customer is presented with a a standard 12 inch long pasty occupying the whole plate and a basket of chips. Very sheepishly the customer eats the pasty and eventually the chips, pays and then proceeds to very slowly walk out moaning and groaning.
* Cornish (derogatory) term for a tourist
For those wanting to know the proper Cornish recipe it is simply pastry (rough puff style typically) and declining quantities of potato (shredded), swede (also shredded) and onion (shredded again). Topped with beef (preferably skirt) and seasoned with a little salt and pepper. The pastry is then folded up over the filling and crimped. In the oven for about an hour (for a proper sized pasty)
I have never sat down and worked it out but those bog old handmade pasties must be 2000 calories minimum, certainly it's a struggle to eat anything else... Perfect if you have to spend hours down a mine though.
The crimp was originally not eaten as the miners would want to avoid eating the toxic metals, but those knurls of pastry are one of my favourite things.
Such a shame most pasties sold now are tiny, over seasoned and full of rubbish meat.
sigh - nearly all true 8) The pasty is widespread across the entire south west of England. To be fair the Cornish one is what most people have heard of (including most Brits).
Nominally the modern Cornish version has a side crimp and the Devon version is a top crimp ("dinosaur"). Then there is the Somerset (I live in Yeovil) pasty which cashes in on the real thing!
My mum was from near Dartmouth and my step mum is from St Awful. I'm in my late forties and have eaten a lot of pasties of all shapes and sizes. The home made beast that overhangs your plate is the best. The pastry should be made with lard ...
Mines are really dirty, and modern sanitation doesn't exist in them.
Having recently gone on a tour of coal mines in eastern Canada, the way it worked was that a miner would put a pasty in their clothes (to keep you and then it warm), take it out and eat it (without washing your hands) when lunchtime came, then threw the crimp end that was covered in dirt/muck to the mine rats.
The crimp is like the crust of a pizza, the handle to hold your food if you will. If you didn't have gloves or access to running water and held your pizza by the crust with said hands, would you eat the crust?
Cornwall was home to a lot of mines: famously copper and rather a lot of arsenic as well.
I think the idea that the side crimp would be thrown away is pretty unlikely - there would be a fair few calories in it and the work done was backbreaking and demand every calorie possible.
Universal. Sort of. The 'traditional' cornish pasty includes 'swedes', i.e., rutabaga (which can be mistaken for turnips, since they're both similar looking root vegetables, though they have different tastes and interior coloring). But there are many places that vary it up. If ever in Vegas, Phoenix, or Flagstaff, try one at the Cornish Pasty Company (it's on my to-do list basically every time I go to one of those places).
No idea why we call them swedes and rutabaga has been mentally stashed away - thanks. If you find swedes/rutabagas a bit boring texture-wise and a bit sweet on their own - try mixing with carrot.
The rutabagas that we get around here are little bit stronger and tougher than turnip, so it adds a nice zing. Don't buy more than one unless you're really planning on making a lot of pasties.
I grew up in southeastern Michigan, but we took family trips in da UP eh, and my mom likes to reverse engineer recipes. So when we got home from one trip, she whipped up a batch of perfectly authentic pasties from just guessing what was in them.
I wonder how far you could travel, eating nothing but the traditional "whatever's available, wrapped in the local bread" in each country that you visit.
This is a funny coincidence. I'm eating this today in Guadalajara Mexico. Mine is filled with green mole and pork and my wife's is a mushroom one because she's vegetarian.
The A303 tunnel under Stonehenge should eliminate one significant bottleneck, at least. As well as bury the ugly, noisy road that spoils our world heritage site!
I was expecting this to be about the empanada (although in hindsight that would be an odd title for an article about empanadas). It says here that the key difference is that an empanada's filling is cooked before being wrapped, whereas a paste's is not:
Empanadas are said to originate from the region of Galicia, Spain. Thus Celtiberian navigators sharing recipes with the Cornish isn't beyond the realms of pseudo-history.
Being born a Cornishman I remember my father recounting a somewhat apocryphal tale of a grockle* visiting a pub and asking for chips (fries) with his pasty. The landlord looked at him somewhat aghast and asked him if he was sure? The tourist replies that he was hungry and always has chips with his pasty back home. A little while later the landlord returns with the customers lunch. A small crowd of locals had now appeared as the customer is presented with a a standard 12 inch long pasty occupying the whole plate and a basket of chips. Very sheepishly the customer eats the pasty and eventually the chips, pays and then proceeds to very slowly walk out moaning and groaning.
* Cornish (derogatory) term for a tourist
For those wanting to know the proper Cornish recipe it is simply pastry (rough puff style typically) and declining quantities of potato (shredded), swede (also shredded) and onion (shredded again). Topped with beef (preferably skirt) and seasoned with a little salt and pepper. The pastry is then folded up over the filling and crimped. In the oven for about an hour (for a proper sized pasty)
I have never sat down and worked it out but those bog old handmade pasties must be 2000 calories minimum, certainly it's a struggle to eat anything else... Perfect if you have to spend hours down a mine though.
The crimp was originally not eaten as the miners would want to avoid eating the toxic metals, but those knurls of pastry are one of my favourite things.
Such a shame most pasties sold now are tiny, over seasoned and full of rubbish meat.