British · Main
Cornish Pasty
- Advanced
- 2 h
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- Pastry: 500g strong flour, 120g lard + 120g butter, cold, 1 tsp salt, ice water
- 400g beef skirt, chopped small, never minced
- 1 potato + ½ swede (rutabaga), sliced thin; 1 onion, chopped
- Salt, heavy black pepper, knob of butter per pasty
- Egg wash
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Firm pastry: it must survive a mineshaft; rest 1 h. 60 min
- Layer RAW filling on rounds: potato, swede, onion, beef, hard seasoning, butter on top.
- Fold and crimp along the side, 20 twists: the Cornish rope.
- Bake 200°C 10 min then 170°C 40 min. Rest 15: the inside is lava and gravy. 10 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pie crust & blind baking 29 recipes
- The shell goes into the oven cold and the oven is fully up to heat, so the structure sets before the fat has time to melt out of it.
- Lined and weighted right into the corners rather than heaped in the middle, so the sides are held against the tin as the fat softens.
- Docked where it is not meant to puff, and the base stays flat rather than lifting into a dome under its own steam.
- The weights come out and the base gets dry heat of its own before anything wet arrives. Pale and damp is not baked, and a filling will not finish it.
- The edges are set and coloured and the shell releases from the tin rather than gripping it.
Where it goes wrong It went in warm, or the weights only filled the middle. The sides slump down the tin before the pastry sets, so the case is shallower than it should be, the filling overflows it, and the base is still raw underneath: the soggy bottom, arrived at three ways at once.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
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