Cornish pasties: healthy fast food option?

[misgabi]

We make a very homegrown version in our house from leftover roast beef. This works best if the beef was rare (obviously!!)

Make thin slices of the cold roast beef and cut into strips. Mix with satay sauce (either homemade or a really good quality jar one) and with steamed cubes of potato, pumpkin and sweet potato. Stir in enough coconut cream to thin slightly. At this point (due to the pastry) I add extra cummin and a little extra chilli.

Make rounds of puff pastry and spoon the mixture into the middle. Fold in half after brushing all round with egg wash. Crimp well. Paint each pastry with the egg wash and bake.

These are equally good as tiny canape size or really big main meal size. I serve with yogourt.

If you like them hotter, make the satay sauce hotter. Also rather good when deep fried (an experiment - honestly)

[andiesenji]

Is the Malaysian (not just Malay, and more Indian than anything else) thing you're thinking of a curry puff?

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No, they are called (I think) roti murtabak and are made with roti dough, filled with spicy beef or chicken and fried on a griddle, however sometimes they are deep fried. There is a Malay restaurant in the San Gabriel valley either in Covina or West Covina, where I have had them.

This is a Malaysian staple according to the folks at the restaurant.

Edited January 13, 2006 by andiesenji (log)

[Pan]

Murtabak is not exactly a staple throughout Malaysia, I don't think, certainly not near the way roti canai is. Murtabak are more popular in certain parts of the country, like Kelantan, than other parts. I don't remember ever having been served murtabak in Terengganu when I was living there in the 70s. Yes, it is Muslim cuisine, yet another Malay food that has origins in lands further west. Murtabak can also be filled with bananas and, if I remember correctly, coconut, if you want sweet versions. I searched for further information about murtabak in the Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific forum, but didn't find much. Perhaps it's time to start a thread on them.

[andiesenji]

Murtabak is not exactly a staple throughout Malaysia, I don't think, certainly not near the way roti canai is. Murtabak are more popular in certain parts of the country, like Kelantan, than other parts. I don't remember ever having been served murtabak in Terengganu when I was living there in the 70s. Yes, it is Muslim cuisine, yet another Malay food that has origins in lands further west. Murtabak can also be filled with bananas and, if I remember correctly, coconut, if you want sweet versions. I searched for further information about murtabak in the Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific forum, but didn't find much. Perhaps it's time to start a thread on them.

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The only reason I know about it is because of my two visits to that particular restaurant and when I asked about the "turnovers" the server told me she and her siblings would carry them to school and at the time I was interested in "portable" foods. She showed me a little set of three stacking bamboo containers which would be lined with banana leaves and one would contain rice, one the roti or similar item and the third would be a sweet of some kind. They were sort of like the bamboo steamers except the bottom one had a solid bottom and they were held together with cords. I wanted to buy a set but they were for display only.

There were seven or eight in our party and the person who was familiar with the place ordered a selection of several items, sort of like a sampler platter. I had long been familiar with Indonesian food but that was my first visit to a Malay restaurant. Some of the foods were similar but some were quite different and interesting.

[Richard_D]

In Yorkshire (which by rights should be a country of its own ) a portable feast can be bought at many takeaways that is known as the calzone kebab. Basically, and as the name implies, you take your pizza dough and add doner kebab meat, chilli sauce, tomato sauce and cheese, fold it up and bake it before sitting back and enjoying its chilli, meaty, cheesey, heart clogging goodness.

[BarbaraY]

Pasties actually spread with the Cornish primarily as they populated newly industrialized areas around the globe in the 19th century.  If you look at those places, you will still find pasties on many menus.  In the UP of Michigan, Cornish miners populated the copper mines from the 1850s and Wednesday is 'pasty day' at Mich. Tech University.  The same can be said for other areas of the country, especially as new mining areas in the West were developed.  Also several mining towns of Austraila also serve them.

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I live in California's Mother Lode Country. Many Cornish came here during the gold rush and their descendants still make pasties. One small town makes pasties for the annual church fund raiser. Order in advance if you want to get them because they sell out quickly.

Oddly, several times people have tried opening pasty shops here and found that it just didn't work out.

[srhcb]

I live in California's Mother Lode Country. Many Cornish came here during the gold rush and their descendants still make pasties. One small town makes pasties for the annual church fund raiser. Order in advance if you want to get them because they sell out quickly.

Oddly, several times people have tried opening pasty shops here and found that it just didn't work out.

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The situation is similar around here. Several times over the years pasty shops have opened and closed. I think the problem is that up until recently everyone's wife/mother/grandma made the "best pasties", so they were kind of a tough sell.

Some of the local bakeries offer pasties, and church and social organizations make them for fundraisiers. Oddly enough. two of the best places are the Italian Bakery and the Slovenian Home.

SB (talk about culinary cross-pollinization)