Cornish Pasties

Cornish Pasties are a familiar friend to the London drinker. Whilst their origins lie in the Cornish tin mining communities of yesteryear, pasties (basically a pastry case filled with meat and vegetables) are incredibly popular here in the capital. Companies such as the West Cornwall Pasty Company operate small bakeshops strategically placed near to all of the mainline train stations.

These tiny shops seem to exist with one kind of customer in mind – the post pub commuter who, having “forgotten” to find time for dinner, now needs to sober up quickly before heading home to bed and (possibly) an unforgiving husband or wife. For this purpose, the pasty is unbeatable – all that thick pastry and starchy potato work together to make the perfect “beer sponge”. I’m sure the Cornish would claim that these fast food versions of their favourite snack are a poor imitation of the real thing, so I was looking forward to making some from scratch and judging for myself.

The ingredients for the pasties are pretty simple, being just beef, potato, swede, onion and a mix for short crust pasty.

My first job was to make up the pastry dough. I added flour and butter to my food processor and blitzed it quickly until the mixture resembled coarse breadcrumbs.

I then added some cold water and brought the dough together to form a rough ball. This was wrapped in clingfilm and popped in the fridge to firm whilst I worked on the filling.

For the filling I cut the beef and the vegetables into a rough 1cm dice. I seasoned the beef and seared the meat in a frying pan with olive oil and butter.

Once the meat was browned I removed it to a bowl, added a little more butter to the pan before frying off the raw vegetable mix.

After about six minutes I added back in the juice from the rested meat and continued to cook the vegetables until they began to colour and became a little softer, though not yet quite cooked through.

I then recombined the mixture with the beef and set aside to cool whilst I rolled out the pastry. I was expecting trouble working the pastry but things seemed to go quite smoothly. I rolled the dough out and used a dinner plate as a guide to cut out two large rounds.

The beef and veg mix was then seasoned liberally, using lots and lots of freshly ground black pepper to give that authentic peppery zing to the pasties. I filled each pastry round with half of the mixture and, using a silicone brush, lined the edges with beaten egg. The rounds were then folded in half and pinched around the edge to make a tight seal. The edges were then twisted all the way around the seal giving that familiar pasty look.

I applied some more egg wash to the top of the pasties and baked them in a hot oven for ten minutes. The heat was then turned down a bit and  the pasties cooked for another 25 minutes or so until they began to brown on top. Although they can be left to cool and eaten later I decided to tuck into mine straight away. You can see a pasty served below with a well earned pint of London Pride.

So how did they taste? Well, pretty damned good if I’m honest. The pastry case wasn’t as heavy as the post pub “beer sponge” fast food versions. I think that the thinner crust helped the peppery beef and vegetable filling to really stand out. Would I make them again? Well, the thing with a pasty is that the time that I really want one (after the pub) is also the time  I am  least likely to want to (or be able to!) make one, so maybe not. But I was more than happy with the way these turned out, and I’m glad to have got my Great British Pub Food project officially underway.