THE MAGNIFICENT PASTY: Upper Michigan's Gift To Human Taste Buds

OPENING REMARKS

Hello again folks, Chef G. here, and it is my pleasure to get The Chef G. Cooking Channel off to a great start with a personal favorite.  I'll be featuring a most distinctive midwestern meal, and I can't wait to get started. 

It's a delectable dish directly from the State of Michigan, and there's a bonus:  The delectable dish just happens to be one of my favorite foods in all of food-dom.  If you're familiar with Upper Michigan pasties, you already know where I'm coming from.  If not, I assure you that once you've cooked this recipe, it will become one of your favorites as well.

SO, WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED A PASTY?

Very basically, a pasty is a meat pie, but deep down it is so much more than that.  It also includes root vegetables and some spices.  More importantly, however, it's a way of life.  So if a meat pie with root veggies doesn't exactly turn you on, please don't stop reading quite yet.  This article might just provide you with a lifetime of pasty memories, if not pasty ADDICTION.

The history of the pasty is most commonly associated with miners from Cornwall, which I've heard is in England.  According to legend, the Cornish miners could bring their pasties to work and heat them up on their shovels over a candle flame.  To those hard working men, the pasty was a complete, nutritious, inexpensive and delicious meal enclosed in a compact crust.  What more could a miner want?  (Well, maybe cleaner, more humane working conditions, I suppose.)

When England's mining industry went into decline, many Cornwallers migrated to other mining areas throughout the world and they brought their pasty expertise with them.

Look, I'm not a historian, I'm a chef.  I don't know Cornwall from WalMart.  But I DO know regional cuisine, and I know the best pasties in the world are now made in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  I apologize to pasty lovers from other parts of the world who may claim otherwise, but your denial will not erase the facts.

The Upper Peninsula attracted miners from all over Europe because of its rich deposits of copper and iron ore.  To be sure, there were plenty of Cornish miners, but miners from Italy, French-speaking Canada, and Finland took pleasure in heating up meat pies on their shovels too.  And they all contributed to the lore--and the deliciousness--of the U.P. pasty.

THREE PASTY ANECDOTES

#1:  I lived in the U.P. until the age of seven.  The first time I can remember eating pasties was in a big city park in Marquette, Michigan in the 1960s.  I remember my parents and grandparents being there.  I remember it being a sunny day and we were at the picnic grounds overlooking Lake Superior.  More than anything, I remember how tasty those pasties were.

A year or so later my family moved to Iowa, but we made annual trips back to Michigan, during which we would frequently get pasties from one of the many local pasty shops.  On one of those trips I performed a feat that might be my greatest claim to fame.  As an 8th-grader who weighed only 80-pounds, I ate two-and-a-half pasties.  According to my calculations, that would be the equivalent of a 200-pound man eating ten McDonald's Big Macs.

Subliminally, I think one of the main reasons I chose to attend Northern Michigan University a few years later was so I could eat thousands of pasties over the course of the next four years.

#2:  One day I saw a food truck parked outside of the Fulton Brewery in Minneapolis and, while consuming a couple of porters, my mouth drooled at the thought of going out there and ordering a pasty.  I walked up, looked at the menu, and saw that their pasties contained such ingredients as spinach, ginger, and apples.  FRUIT?  In a pasty?  That's just plain WRONG!  There wasn't a normal U.P.-style pasty to be found.  Sometimes foodies can get a little too creative for their own good.  I walked away, unfulfilled.

The food truck.  Too fancy for their own good.

#3:  Every couple of years, Mrs. Chef G. and I drive from Minnesota to Washington to visit relatives.  Along the way we always stop at a city with a deep mining history--Butte, Montana.  We stop there because it has a pasty shop called Joe's Pasties.  The first time Mrs. Chef G. and I visited Joe's Pasty Shop (which we found by pure chance after missing a turn to our Motel 6) we told the server we were big fans of pasties because, years ago, we lived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Recognizing a couple of fellow pasty lovers, she said, "so you probably like ground beef and rutabaga in your pasties."

"YES," we said in unison, impressed with her regional pasty knowledge.

"Our pasties have chunks of sirloin steak," she announced, as if that was an upgrade, "but, sorry, no rutabaga."

"That's okay," I replied, trying my best to hide my disappointment, "I'd like to try one of your pasties anyway."

"I'll have a pasty too," said Mrs. Chef G.

"Would you like gravy with that," asked the server?

Oh my!  We looked around and saw that all of the other patrons were pouring gravy on their pasties.  We've seen that kind of behavior before in our travels.  The further one gets from the northwestern part of the U.P., the more likely one is to see people ruining their pasties with gravy.  That true in Butte, in Michigan's lower peninsula, and even in Mineral Point, Wisconsin which falsely claims to be the "Pasty Capitol of America."  It's possible that the Cornwallians and Finlanders used gravy too, but that doesn't make it right.

If a pasty condiment is needed at all, it should be ketchup.  I know there are some diehard gravy-heads who will try to convince you otherwise, but who are you going to believe--somebody who slathers a slurry of flour and liquid fat over his meal . . . or ME, America's Satirical Celebrity Chef?

Despite the overly thick crust, the paucity of onions and spices, and the inferiority of sirloin steak chunks vs. ground beef, we keep going back to Joe's Pasty Shop because, after all, they serve pasties and pasties are a pretty rare find in the United States.  True, they aren't U.P. pasties, but they're still pasties, and even a Montana pasty is better than no pasty at all.

The only pasty shop west of Minnesota (that I know of.)

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WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?  LET'S COOK!

PART 1:  Don't Be Afraid to Make Your Own Crust Instead of Using That Pre-Made Crap In The Grocery Store Aisle

The first time I made my own pasties I followed a hand-me-down recipe, and my greatest fear was mixing up a batch of dough and rolling it out to make a pie crust.  I was not a baker.  I was a griller of meat, a stir-fryer of vegetables, a boiler of corn on the cob, a scrambler of eggs, a flipper of pancakes, a user of Hamburger Helper.  But once I summoned the courage to make my own crust I found it wasn't difficult at all.

2-1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup lard
3/4 cup ice water
1 pinch of salt
That's all you need to create a nice flaky crust.

There does seem to be some controversy among pie makers as to which fatty product to mix with one's flour--lard, butter, or shortening.  I don't know the correct answer, but why take any chances.  For this recipe I used two parts lard and one part butter.  If I had any shortening in the house, I would have used one-third of each.

No matter what you decide to use for fat,
make sure you sift the hell out of your flour.
  

Mix the sifted flour, the lard, the butter, and the salt in a big bowl.  I prefer to mix with the tender love of my hands and a wire pastry cutter, but you COULD use an electric mixer if you want.  When it starts clumping up, slowly add the ice water.  Keep mixing the ingredients until they form a nice ball of dough.

When thoroughly mixed, place your ball of dough in an air-tight plastic bag and refrigerate it for about one hour.  I don't completely understand why bakers do this--I'm a chef, not a physicist--but I guess it needs to be done.  During that one hour of waiting time, you can move on to phase two of the pasty making process.

PART 2:  Preparing the Pasty Innards

The set of ingredients for the inside of the pasty are also quite simple.  For this recipe I thought I'd try a unique 2-to-1 blend of ground beef and ground pork.  There's lots of potato, which might be the most flavorless vegetable on earth.  Then, to counteract the potato there's the most flavorful and aromatic vegetable on earth--onion.  The most interesting ingredient is rutabaga, a terrible root vegetable that I would never eat except in a pasty.  How something so awful can be transformed into something so awesome can only be described as "pasty magic."

Taken individually, those ingredients might seem pretty bland, but put them together inside of a pie crust with liberal amounts of salt, pepper and paprika, and they become MAGNIFICENT.  Check 'em out. 

2/3 lb. Ground Beef
1/3 lb. Ground Pork
1-1/2 Cups Diced Potato
1/2 Cup Diced Rutabaga
2/3 Cup Diced Onion
1 Tbsp. Salt
1/2 Tbsp. Pepper
1 Tsp. Paprika (not pictured)

Chop the root vegetables into 1/4" cubes as seen above.  Then smoosh all of the ingredients together in large bowl and refrigerate the mixture until you're ready to form the pies.

[A quick note on alternate ingredients:  Carrots, parsnips, and turnips are sometimes used in pasties.  They're root vegetables and, as such, I guess they are acceptable.  I'll leave it up to the discretion of the pasty chef, but I'd never use them.  To me, potato, onion, and rutabaga are the holy trinity of Upper Peninsula cooking, just as onion, green pepper and celery are the holy trinity of Cajun cooking.

Meat is another subject.  Back in the day, Cornwallers, French Canadians, Finns, and other pasty aficionados used chunks of lamb, goat, fowl, cow, pig, deer, and fish in their pasties.  I suspect some of them, being underpaid miners, occasionally used less refined chunks of meat, but I'm only speculating because I've never seen an official pasty recipe that used squirrel, pigeon, or opossum.

Regardless, I don't know of any reputable U.P. pasty shop that uses anything other than ground meat, and rightly so.  I don't care for meat chunks in my pasties no matter what animal they came from.]

Let's move on.

PART 3:  Get That Dough Out of the Fridge and Assemble Your Pasty

Cut the dough into four even pieces and form them into balls.  Here is where you get to test your rolling pin skills.  Roll each dough ball into a very thing crust.  Next, put a big dollop of the rutabaga/potato/onion/meat concoction onto one half of the crust.  Then fold the other half over the mixture, trim the excess dough, and press the edges down with a fork.

Rolled out dough with meat & veggie
mix on half, and ready to be folded
over like the other ones on the pan.

Pre-heat your oven to 350-degrees.  Slice three slits into the top of each pasty to release steam.  Place them onto a pan lined with parchment paper.  Bake for about 45 minutes or until the crust is golden-brown.

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SERVING YOUR MASTERPIECE (Your Pastypiece)

When it comes to pasties, presentation is over-rated.  There is no need to fret over placing the food in exactly the right position for optimum viewing pleasure.  No colorful side dishes are needed to enhance the appearance.  Nope.  The pasty is a complete meal in itself, and white, beige, and pale brown are the colors of pasty magnificence.  All you need to do is toss your pasty onto a plate with a spatula, squirt with ketchup (optional) and chow down.

The pan of pasties (with one removed)

 

The one that was removed

I've been a celebrity chef long enough to know that a lot of gourmands like to have wine with their meals.  I've also been a pasty freak long enough to know with great authority that wine should NOT be paired with a pasty.  Instead, I would recommend a high quality beer--preferably one that is brewed in the Upper Peninsula.  The one I chose for today's meal is actually brewed in Michigan's Lower Peninsula, but it has a definite U.P. connection.

Bell's Two Hearted Ale is named after the Big Two Hearted
River--an Upper Peninsula trout stream made famous by an
Ernest Hemingway short story.  Perfect!

The fresh, fruity flavor and the heavily-hopped goodness of the beer brought out the Cornish character of the pasty very nicely.  A distilled grape beverage could never do justice to this dish in the same way.  Plus, for some reason I had a vision of myself eating pasties and drinking beer while on a trout fishing trip in the U.P., which is pretty weird because I'm not a fisherman.

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There is only one more thing that needs to be discussed, and that is how to prepare leftovers.  My advice is to get into the Cornish miner mindset.  Bring your pasty, a candle, and a shovel to a dark cave or, better yet, an abandoned mine shaft.  Turn on the headlamp of your mining helmet.  Light the candle.  Then heat up your delicious meat pie on the shovel.  I've never actually done that, but I cannot imagine a more authentic pasty experience.

I couldn't find a single candle in the Chef G. household.
I guess this is the next best thing.

IN CONCLUSION:

I LOVE PASTIES!  I grew up on pasties and I am clearly biased toward U.P. pasties.  Almost every Yooper (U.P. citizen) has a favorite pasty shop.  Some of those pasty shops are tourist attractions.  Pasty lovers and the pasty-curious from all over the U.S. head to the U.P. to experience this unique regional cuisine.  I know of at least one U.P. pasty shop that has been featured on a nationally televised morning news program.

Yet, there are some pasty deniers out there.  I have a friend who is one of them.  He lives in a southern state.  When he tried an authentic U.P. pasty several years ago, his reaction was something like this:  "Well, they're OK, but I don't see what the fuss is all about."  I almost unfriended him, and that was before Facebook and un-friending somebody was even a thing.

I hope you found this article.  I hope you found it informative.  I hope you try my recipe.  I hope you ENJOY my recipe.  I hope I don't have to un-friend you.