Recipe for "meat-pie-2"

NAME

     MEAT-PIE-2 - Cornish-style meat pies from the UP
     The pasty (PAH-stee) is a kind of English meat pie.  It  was
     brought to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan by Cornish miners
     in the  mid-nineteenth  century.   The  UP  version  differs
     slightly from the original Cornish pasty in that it has more
     vegetables and less meat and crust.
     You can eat pasties hot, warm, or cold.  If you wrap them in
     aluminum  foil  when they come out of the oven, they'll keep
     warm for hours.  Or, you  can  refrigerate/freeze  them  and
     reheat them later.  (Maybe the original ``fast food''?)
     Most people who live in the UP don't bother  to  make  their
     own  pasties;  they  buy  them from bakeries and pasty shops
     (which are as common as hamburger joints are in other  parts
     of  the country).  As a former resident, though, sometimes I
     get homesick and resort to making them myself.  This is  the
     recipe my mother sent me.

INGREDIENTS (Serves 4)

          CRUST
     200 g     flour
     100 g     shortening
     50 g      lard
     50 g      scraped suet
               water
          FILLING
     600 g     coarsely ground beef
     4         medium potatoes, diced
     1         large onion, chopped
     50 g      rutabaga (swede), diced
     1         carrot, diced
               salt and pepper

PROCEDURE

          (1)  Put the flour in a bowl and cut in the shortening,
               lard,  and  suet.  Add just enough water to make a
               soft dough.
          (2)  Divide the dough into four parts and roll out each
               piece  into  a  circle  about the size of a dinner
               plate.
          (3)  Crumble the meat into a bowl and stir in the pota-
               toes, onion, rutabaga, and carrot.
          (4)  Divide the mixture into four parts,  putting  some
               on one side of each piece of dough.  Sprinkle gen-
               erously with salt and pepper.
          (5)  Fold the pastry over the filling to make half-moon
               shaped  pies.   Seal the edges and cut a couple of
               small slits on the top.
          (6)  Bake on a cookie sheet at 190 deg. C for 30 to  35
               minutes,  then  reduce heat to 175 deg. C and bake
               15 more minutes.

NOTES

     These have a high cholesterol content.  I've tried using  an
     ordinary  vegetable-shortening  pie crust, but it invariably
     turns out too dry and crumbly to hold  together.  (Authentic
     UP  pasties  have  a  crust that's thin, moist, and somewhat
     chewy, not a flaky crust.)  If anyone  has  any  ideas,  I'd
     love  to  hear about them.  You can also cook the filling by
     itself in a casserole dish if you're feeling lazy about mak-
     ing the crust.

RATING

     Difficulty: moderate.  Time: 30 minutes preparation, 1  hour
     cooking   and   cooling.    Precision:   measure  the  crust
     ingredients.

CONTRIBUTOR

     Sandra Loosemore
     Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation, Salt Lake City
     {decwrl, utah-gr!uplherc}!esunix!loosemor