Devonne Brown

Pasty?

It’s pronounced PAST- E, not paste with an E like the strippers wear, but PAST+EEE, pasty. Someone told me there were pumpkin pasties in the feast scene in Harry Potter. I know it’s a sin, but I’m not a Potter Head, so I don’t remember. Yet, I’m sure a pumpkin pasty is a delightful culinary experience. Still, most folks will say “pasty” wrong at first, but we try so hard.

A Cornish Pasty is the original Hot Pocket, and manna from heaven. Each one is hand measured, mixed and kneaded, poked, crimped, then baked. They began as lunches for men to take in their buckets into the mines. They could be held by the crusty edges or crimps, to keep the main bit clean. The traditional ones had meat, potato, rutabaga, or swede, and onion. Pasties evolved with gravies and exotic spices in them.When I make them, they’re more traditional. I use various combinations of onions, beef, bacon, potato, and cheese in mine, sometimes sweet potato or sausage. I use garlic, a bit of butter, and a buttload of basil.  

The real treat of the pasty is the flaky, well browned, and laminated, buttery, pastry case around it with twenty even crimps on one single pastie. I have not developed crimping skills at this time.

I think I can crimp. In reality, I feel fortunate that my dough sticks together without bursting in the baking. I have learned that it doesn’t matter whether or not they burst wide open, my pasties are tasty, which does not rhyme with pasty. My crimping is an ugly work in progress, but I’ve come so far in the thirty years since my first one, that they are mighty fine, crimps or no.

A pasty crust is made with rough puff pastry, the cheater’s version of puff pastry. I can make that. I watched the Great British Baking Show with Paul Hollywood and Pru Leith until I figured out how to make the stuff. 

Rough puff crust has to be made cold. Ice cold. Two sticks of butter have to be frozen and grated and folded into a magic dough. I bought a food processor just to grate frozen butter for that purpose. Ice water with a bit of vinegar has to be added spoonful by spoonful into the flour, water, and butter in the beginning stages. Vinegar? In pie crust? I don’t know why, but it makes it better. A teaspoonish of vinegar in a cup of the ice water I use to mix butter and flour makes all the difference in the world. 

Mix it fast. Don’t fool around, get it to stick together, and roll it out in a rectangle. Put another cup of that grated butter on the rectangle. Fold the dough over and roll with the butter in it. Refrigerate. Take it out. Roll and fold again. Repeat three more times.

Now, roll, cut in circles, fill, crimp, bake, cool a bit, and enjoy your pasties. They don’t last long.

I use the crust for all kinds of stuff. I even use it by itself for crackers or croutons. When I want sweets, I sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on the pastry. It’s puff pastry, and it’s beautiful. It’s got layers in it, lamination, as Paul Hollywood refers to it. It’s gold and gorgeous when it rises. 

I make ugly pasties that get scarfed down as soon as they’re cool enough to pick up with your hands. The last time I made them, Paul Hollywood would have said they were under baked, illformed, and ugly.  The boys didn’t seem to mind. The handshake I got from the meant more than the Hollywood Handshake I didn’t get from Paul Hollywood.