For the past week or so we've been enduring an elongated winter. There is no snow on the ground at the moment, but it has been in the teens overnight and low to mid-thirties during the day. Our crocuses and daffodils and scilla are stalled after popping up a bit back in mid-March when we had a couple 60-degree days. And everyone seems to be under the weather and generally in a pretty foul mood. In the meantime I see photos of daffodils and lilacs posted on Facebook and blogs by well-meaning friends to the south. (Note to Southerners: this is very, very cruel and, quite frankly, we're surprised at your thoughtlessness.)
We Northern folk need comfort.
What better time to give our favorite comfort foods a last hurrah before getting back to grilling? In that spirit, I made homemade chicken pot pie a couple nights ago, I'll make chili in the near future, and I'm making pasties tonight.
Chances are good that if you're not from Michigan or Northern Minnesota you may not know what pasties are. Don't look "pasties" up on Wikipedia; you'll just find an article about those things some women (Lord knows why) paste to their breasts as though the only really immodest part of a woman's anatomy was the part she uses to feed a baby. They do have a fairly interesting article for the singular "pasty" though.
Pasties (pronounced "PASS-tees" not "PAY-stees") are a Yooper food (a Yooper is what we affectionately called someone who lives in the Upper Peninsula = U.P. = Yooper, get it?) that are sort of a cross between a meat pie and a calzone. Yes, they're Cornish calzones. They have a long history (thousands of years, apparently) as a staple dish of those who live in Cornwall, which is a county in the southwesternmost point of England. When Cornish people emigrated to other parts of the British Empire, most notably America and Australia, they brought the recipe with them. Cornish miners appear in the U.P. in the 1860s as the American Civil War is winding down and are followed soon after by Finnish miners who adopted the pasty so that now I think most Michiganders would tell you that the pasty is a Finnish food.
 |
| Making pasties involves a lot of chopping. A lot. |
Essentially, a pasty is made up of finely cubed beef, potatoes, rutabaga, and onions, (and sometimes carrots) plus some parsley, salt, and pepper, all wrapped up in a pie crust which is closed and crimped on the side to made a "D" shape. Easily eaten with one's hands and quite portable, the pasty would become a favorite food of miners (tin mines in Cornwall, copper mines in Michigan, and iron mines in Minnesota). They are dense, filling, and stay warm for a long time. It's likely that the meat in many of those miners' pasties was venison, which would have been more plentiful and far cheaper to procure than beef in the U.P. Some people eat them plain (as the miners probably did) but they can be a little on the dry side. Most people I know today enjoy them with gravy (meh.) or ketchup (yum!).
My mother procured a recipe for Cornish Pasties for my husband (who is a pasty enthusiast) for Christmas this past year, but apparently a true Cornish Pasty must be created in Cornwall. Ah, well. I'm not flying to Cornwall to make my pasties. They'll taste just as scrumptious and comforting made here in Michigan.
Here's the gist of it:
Finely chop and mix together 1 rutabaga, 1 or 2 potatoes, 1 largish carrot, 1 small onion, and 3/4 lbs stew meat. Add 1 T parsley, 1.5 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp pepper. Mix then place filling on one half of a pie crust. (Note: you'll need 4 to 6 crusts, either homemade or bought, depending on how much filling you actually make. I didn't measure mine and I ended up with enough filling for 6 pasties. Having only 4 crusts, I just froze the rest of the filling for another time). Dot filling with margarine and fold over the pie crust to make a "D" turning up the bottom edge over the top and crimping shut with your fingers (these seriously don't have to be fancy - remember, they're miners' food). Cut two slits in top, brush top with beaten egg, and bake on ungreased cookie sheets for about 30 minutes at 425 degrees.
These freeze well and can be frozen assembled but uncooked (do not thaw before putting in oven and increase cooking time to about 50 minutes), completely cooked, or you can just freeze the uncooked filling.
If it's still cold where you are, wrap just-cooked pasties in foil and stick them in your coat pockets to warm yourself while you toil in the frigid mines. Then when you get a hankering for food, there they are as convenient as anything. But don't fill your pockets with ketchup. Trust me, that never ends well.
Read more...
