Sunday, December 17, 2006

Another recipe!

This one for Pasties (rhymes with, uh, nasty-s). I make these all the time and they're GREAT! Like meatloaf in pastry. Serve with tons of ketchup. I've lost the URL where this was originally posted. My changes are in italics.

From: TMeyers@darkwolf.demon.co.uk (Terry Meyers)

Sorry that I'm a wee bit slow getting this posted, but I had to dig through my SO's recipe cards. (maybe someday I can convince her to put them all in the computer 8-) ). Anyway, this comes from Freda, Mi. Freda is a small village about 15 miles from Houghton. My Mum's parents were born there, so let's date this somewhere around the turn of the century.

Read this to yourself in a merry rural British accent.

We use this recipe and it works fine, but you have to be *carefull* [sic] with the dough.


Copper Country Pasties
Pastry:
3 c. flour
1 1/2 sticks butter (cold and cut into bits) Use margarine! It's cheaper!
1 1/2 tsp. salt
6 tbsp. water I wind up using double this. Just keep adding tablespoons until you get something resembling dough.

In a large bowl, combine flour, butter and salt. Blend ingredients (with a pastry cutter!) until well combined and add water, one tablespoon at a time to form a dough. Toss mixture until it forms a ball. Kneed dough lightly against a smooth surface with heel of the hand to distribute fat evenly. Form into a ball, dust with flour, wrap in wax paper and chill for 30 minutes.

Filling:
1 lb. round steak, coursely [sic] ground I guess this is how they have to order it from the butcher in the UK. Anyway, hamburger.
1 lb. boneless pork loin, coursely ground ground pork
5 carrots, chopped I find this leads to carrot overload. Try 3.
2 lg. onions, chopped
2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 c. rutabaga, chopped (can substitute turnip)
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper Aw crap, I already put them in the oven and I forgot to add salt and pepper. Well, I let you know if they turn out tasting like crap.

Combine all ingredients in large bowl. Devide [sic] the dough into 6 pieces, and roll one of the pieces into a 10-inch round on a lightly floured surface. Put 1 1/2 cups of filling on half of the round. Moisten the edges and fold the unfilled half over the filling to enclose it. Pinch the edges together to seal them and crimp them decoratively with a fork. Transfer pasty to lightly buttered baking sheet and cut several slits in the top. Roll out and fill the remaining dough in the same manner. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Put 1 tsp. butter through a slit in each pasty and continue baking for 30 minutes more. Remove from oven, cover with a damp tea towel, cool for 15 minutes.

That's all there is to it. Trust me, these are *good*. As a sidebar to this recipe, my Grandpa told me how the miners used to bring pasties into the copper mines and heat them on a shovel with a candle underneath. It seems a pasty was once the cause of a mine fire in the 1890's. A miner forgot about his meal warming upon a shovel. The pasty caught fire and spread to the timber holding the walls up. (I guess this is another one for alt.folklore.coppercountry, eh, Dan? 8-) ).

Killed 60 men, as I recall. Ah, the stories I could tell you. Frigging hair-raising. Remember to douse with ketchup liberally when serving these suckers.

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