A Trip to Anglesey

Off we went: me, Greg, Joff, Charlotte, Kate and Pete to Newborough in Anglesey, Wales. I’d never been and was looking forward to it; Charlotte had just got back from Australia and it was her birthday. I idea was to have a picnic on the beach, and it was up to me to bake a cake. It wasn’t a Grigson however, but a milk chocolate cake, a Buttery family favourite from my Mum’s Be-Ro book (a staple for anyone’s recipe book shelf in my opinion). The day started out rainy and miserable, but as promised, Newborough has it’s own microclimate and we were sunbathing and swimming in the sea, with rather severe burning of the face and corned-beefing of the legs.

I did get a chance however to redo the Cornish pasties. This time they turned out much better; it seems I was correct in my review, you need to incorporate the lard very slowly into the flour. In fact, I made it in two half-sized batches just to be on the safe side. The pastry was delicious and was very different to a normal butter or half-butter-half-lard pastry. I’m not quite sure why – it just had a more appropriate flavour. It’s difficult to describe, I suppose it’s like comparing chips cooked dripping to those cooked in vegetable oil: you can’t taste beef dripping, but they taste so much better.

Because of these revelations, the pasties are being promoted from a score of 2/10 to 7/10.

FYI: there is much debate as to how the word pasty should be pronounced. Should it be with a long ‘a’ or a short? Griggers reckons a long ‘a’ since Cornish pasties come from ‘Down South’, but I think it should be short as it makes them sound more homely. Rick Stein agrees, apparently.