Dr Mobeus
Cornish Pasties
A proper Cornish pasty is a whole meal engineered for a working day: raw beef, potato and swede sealed inside shortcrust, so the filling steams in its own juices while the thick crimped edge gives the miner something to hold with dirty hands, and the story goes that the handle was thrown away afterwards when the arsenic made it a bad idea to eat. At home you use cheap stewing beef instead of skirt and value margarine instead of butter, and four proper pasties still come in around £2.45, which is about 61p each against £3 and upwards from a bakery. The only rule that matters is cutting everything small and even, so the beef cooks through in the same time the pastry needs. Done right you get pastry, then potato, then gravy, all from one tray.
Cornish Pasties
Ingredients
Method
- Rub the butter into the flour and salt until it resembles breadcrumbs, add enough cold water to bring it together into a firm dough, wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
- Toss the beef, potato, swede and onion together in a bowl with a good pinch of salt and a very generous amount of black pepper. The filling goes in raw and cooks in its own steam.
- Divide the dough into 4 and roll each piece into a round about 22 cm across. Pile a quarter of the filling down the middle of each round, leaving a 2 cm rim clear.
- Wet the rim, fold the pastry over into a half moon and crimp the edge by folding it over on itself in small tight twists all the way along, working to one thick seam.
- Brush with beaten egg and bake at 200C (180C fan) for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 170C (150C fan) for another 20 to 25 minutes until deep golden. Rest for 10 minutes before eating, as the inside is molten straight from the oven.
Tips and Variations
Rest them a full 10 minutes or the filling will take the roof of your mouth off. Freeze them uncooked and bake from frozen with an extra 15 minutes. A beef stock cube crumbled over the raw filling deepens the gravy if your beef is very lean. The veggie version with potato, swede, onion and grated cheese is a genuine old variant, not a modern apology.
