Cornish Pasties
Photo: David Johnson [1], CC BY-SA 3.0
A Cornish pasty is a folded, crimped pastry case holding raw sliced beef, potato, swede and onion, baked until the filling cooks in its own juices. Nothing is precooked, so the meat and vegetables make their own gravy inside the crust. Dusting the beef with seasoned flour thickens it. The old habit of marking each pasty with the eater's initials, so a miner could find his half-eaten lunch, is worth keeping.
Instructions
Heat the oven to 400°F (200°C, Gas Mark 6). Peel the swede and potatoes, cut them into chunks and slice them thinly. Halve the onions and slice them thinly, then cut the beef across the grain into strips of roughly 1 by 2 cm.
If you like, toss the beef lightly in seasoned flour. This is optional, but it thickens the juices that stay sealed inside the pasty into a gravy.
Divide the pastry into 4 equal portions and roll each one into a circle.
Pile the meat and vegetables onto one half of each circle, stopping about 1 inch from the edge, and season generously. If you want, brush a little milk around the edge to help the seal.
Fold the empty half of the dough over the filling. Pinch and twist the edges together to seal them, then cut a couple of small slashes in the top so steam can escape.
Brush the pasties with the remaining milk if using. Traditionally, you would shape the eater's initials from pastry trimmings and press them onto one end, so each pasty can be told apart.
Set the pasties on a lightly greased baking tray, or on a double thickness of aluminium foil laid directly on the oven shelf. Bake on the middle shelf for about 45 minutes.
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![David Johnson [1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cornish_pasty_-_cut.jpeg){kind=link}