Happy St. Patrick's Day
Irish
Pasty
(the Cornish folk, we admit have no monopoly on pasties) A Cornish pasty (pasty, oggy, or hoggan), is, more or less, a delicious sort of single layer pie crust which is filled with diced meat, potato, and onion. In appearance it is more or less an oversized version of the American fried pie. The pasty's traditional size is larger and its traditional weight is around two pounds --- enough to fill up a hungary tin miner who needed a lot of high quality calories to keep up the heavy work of tin mining. While the Cornish pasties of Ireland are among the best known, along with the Bedfordshire County Clangers, in all fairness there are many other regions with similar traditional foods. Pasties are, traditionally semicircular in shape since they are a made from a round circle --- like an American pie crust --- and when folded over it becomes a semicircle. The traditional ingredients are uncooked before being put into the pastry. The ingredients are arranged on one half of the pastry circle, leaving room to seal the edges when the remaining half is folded over the filling. Once folded over the edges of the pastry are crimped together to form a tight seal before baking. If you do not use the traditional diced steak, finely sliced onion, and potato mixture, then it might not be a Cornish pasty or commonly an oggy (slang for pasty). Turnips may be used but skip carrots if you are serving Irish guests --- carrots are a sure indication of inferior quality due to the abundance of carrots in commercial oggies. Americans, whom some Irish think notorious for bad taste, have adapted carrots as standard fare in pasties. Good grief! Americans have been reported to use ground beef in pasties and, vegetarians are rumored to make pasties using only vegetables or only fruit. Though, in fairness to all, we should note that Cornish pasty has been noted to have traditional ingredients on one end and a fruit, such as plums, cherries, or applies on the other… a case of having your dessert with your steak. In older days, the pasty contained more vegetables than beef (due to the cost of beef) and served as the pre-modern lunch bucket; it was was a common (and delicious) meal for miners and field workers. The traditional pasty pastry calls for a fairly tough, strong crust, which could withstand rough handling in the Cornish tin mines --- there is no need for such a tough crust these days. Needless to say there is great deal of debating and plain arguing about how to make pasties, and pasty pastry, what are the proper ingredients, and the opinions on how to crimp the pastry (top crimp, under crimp, flat crimp, edge crimp, etc., etc., etc. If you have your own family tradition you are fortunate. The King’s Chef relies on a traditional recipe known as McGinley’s County Cork Pasty. The Bedfordshire County Clanger is a traditional pasty dish from the county of that name. It had meat filling at one end and a sort of jam filling at the other, comprising an entire course and dessert in one delicious wrapping. It was traditional food taken to the fields for lunch. Pasties are one of the earliest methods of cooking food and of carrying cooked food. Early Irish Catholic Priests are credited by some as the inventors of the pasty to help transport their meals as they walked about the countryside preaching and helping the people.
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