My mother’s family followed the coal from Cornwall, England, through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia. Pasties made the trip with them—scratch pastry crimped around a neat stack of meat and potatoes, kept warm tucked into pockets, taken down into the mines.
Generations later, and even further south, we make pasties together on holidays, an assembly line of meat trimmers and potato peelers, a trained few willing to lace the pastry closed over the filling. This is the delicate job, where everything can come apart, poke through, tear if you’re not careful. We teach our kids how to do it, and we remember being taught ourselves.
Ingredients
SERVINGS: 5-6 pasties
- 1½ lb. steak
- 4 medium potatoes
- 1 medium onion
- 1 yellow turnip or carrot
- salt and pepper
- butter
- pastry for 5-6
Instructions
Cut vegetables as for stew. Cut meat in strips about 2”x1”. Roll pastry in about 8”x9” circle. Spread butter on pastry. Put a few pieces of meat on pastry. Putting vegetables on next - about a good handful. Cover with meat. Before closing, put a ½ tsp. butter, salt and pepper. Moisten edge of pastry with ice water. Bring edges together and lace. Put hole in top. Bake 1 hour on cookie sheet at 425°
From the kitchen of Mildred Stephens
