Ann Muller is the Cornish pasty's most passionate defender - so malign it at your peril, warns Paul Richardson.
The little seaside town of Lizard lies at the very southern tip of Britain,
in a dramatic landscape of windswept moors and towering sea cliffs. As you enter
the town, a yellow sign reads Ann's Famous Pasty Shop. To the casual observer,
in a part of the country where every petrol station and post office sells a
version of the Cornish pasty, this doesn't indicate anything out of the
ordinary. But the shop the sign points to has become a place of pilgrimage for
those who believe in the honest virtues of our traditional national cookery.
The shop's owner, Ann Muller, was born just along the coast in the fishing
hamlet of Gunwalloe and learned the art of pasty-making from her mother, Hettie
Merrick, author of The Pasty Book. The family's business interest in the dish
began 16 years ago, at an agricultural fair in Brittany where Hettie and Ann set
up a pasty stall, which proved incredibly popular. Ann's Lizard shop has been
open for 12 years and at the height of the season she makes and sells more than
500 pasties a day. In a county that produces three million pasties a week, Ann's
are acknowledged to be among the very best.
When I arrive she is busy with the first batch of the morning, and happily
explains to me the basics of a good pasty. First, she rolls out a circle of
dough made with strong organic flour, kneaded a little to make it slightly
stretchy. "The constitution of the dough is crucial - if it's too flaky
or fragile you'll have the pasty leaking all over the place," she says.
Then there's the filling. Whatever anyone says - and even Ann makes a
variety of alternatives - the classic Cornish pasty contains just four
ingredients: beef (usually a cheap cut such as chuck or skirt), potatoes,
onions, and swede (known in Cornwall as turnip). The meat and vegetables are
layered and then seasoned with nothing more exotic than salt and black pepper.
The edges of the pastry are then taken up and sealed together with a series of
twisting movements - the so-called 'crimp'.
Brush them with milk, and that's that. "It's really very
simple," Ann says. "These famous chefs, they don't seem to find it
credible that with a few basic ingredients this wonderful flavour is created.
They seem to think that you need to add things - like Worcestershire
sauce," she adds knowingly.
Ann is referring to a recent television show, in which Antony Worrall
Thompson added dripping to pasty dough, and then Worcestershire sauce and thyme
to the filling. The shock-waves of that outrage are still being felt throughout
Cornwall. "What he made was indescribable," says Ann, with
ill-concealed distaste. "Goodness knows where he got that recipe from. It
was so nasty, I think he must have been trying to be deliberately
provocative."
Whenever the pasty is maligned or misrepresented, Ann is quick to rush to its
defence. She recently described Nigella Lawson's pasty recipe as
"heinous" because of its pre-cooked filling. And when William Grimes,
a food critic on The New York Times, claimed that the Cornish national dish was
"no better than a doorstop", Ann was pictured in the local press
burning the American flag.
Few British dishes inspire such passionate loyalty, either among their
producers or their consumers. With the decline of tin-mining, fishing and now
farming, it is no exaggeration to say that pasties have become one of Cornwall's
biggest earners. Recent figures put total turnover (excuse the pun) within the
Duchy at £150 million per year, with 90 per cent of the pasties produced being
sold beyond the Tamar Bridge.
Like many things Cornish, the history of the pasty is wreathed in myth. Put
simply, a pasty is a pie without a dish and according to Ann's mother Hettie,
jam or meat pasties were once found all over the north of England. By the 19th
century, however, they began to be associated with the West Country, and
Cornwall in particular. They made ideal 'lunchboxes' for miners, and there
is a blurry photograph from 1893 showing a Cornish farm worker tucking into a
pasty with gusto. In 1905, The English Dialect Dictionary defined the pasty as
"a meat and potato or fruit turnover (Cornwall)".
Until now, no one has come up with a clearer definition of the authentic
item, nor attempted to prevent companies outside the county profiting from the
production of 'Cornish' pasties. But that may well be about to change.
Thanks to a package of new EU laws, the pasty may shortly be raised to the
coveted status of Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), thereby recognising
its uniquely Cornish heritage. According to Liz Carveth, of Made in Cornwall,
which is managing the process of applying to the EU, if PGI status is achieved
"any commercial pasty sold inside Europe with the name 'Cornish' would
have to be made in the county". In addition, any pasty so entitled would
have to conform to a basic recipe.
A team of researchers is currently roving the Duchy in search of material to
back up the pasty's claim. They should visit the Famous Pasty Shop. If anyone
knows about Cornish pasties Ann Muller does, and she's sure to give it to them
straight.
"Take one for the road," she says kindly as I head for home. For
half an hour it sits beside me, filling the car with its savoury aroma, until I
can stand it no more, and pull in to a layby to scoff my pasty straight from its
bag, in the traditional local fashion.
It's a triumph: the pastry golden and crispy on the outside, meltingly
tender on the inside where the juices of meat and vegetable have been drawn in.
The chunks of beef have cooked so thoroughly that they almost fall apart, and
the sweetness of the swede - sorry, turnip - is perfectly offset by a
generous seasoning of freshly ground black pepper. This is one fast food that's
well worth protecting.