DARCI HANNAH: One of the things I love most about traveling the United States are the regional dishes you come across in every part of the country that are often associated with a particular state, city, or region of the country. Think of Chicago deep dish pizza, or Minnesota Hotdish--those comfort food casseroles famous in the Midwest containing a starch, a meat, frozen veggies, and canned soup. Oh, and cheese! Don’t forget the cheese. We’ve all had one of those, right? There are biscuits and gravy from the South, which are now a staple on every good breakfast menu, and pimento cheese, which looks interesting but I have yet to try it. Today, however, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite regional dishes, the pasty, a favorite comfort food from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
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| My husband's famous Chicago deep dish pizza! |
My new release, MURDER AT THE CAMPFIRE COOKOUT, is set in the beautiful forests of the Upper Peninsula. My main character, Lindsey Bakewell, her mother Ellie, and their friends decide to take a girls’ glamping trip to the U.P. to find inspiration for a new clothing line for women glampers. I say glamping because the ladies are told they’re not going camping, they’re going glamping, or glamorous camping. They’re convinced that it’s nothing at all like camping, and they’re really enjoying the experience… until one of the women glampers is found dead in a camper! That really throws a wrench into their weekend plans.
While putting together the recipes for this book, I knew that I just had to include my favorite pasty recipe. The pasty, which is essentially a handheld meat pie, are a staple in the Upper Peninsula. This regional dish was brought to the area by Cornish miners from England, (think Cornish pasty) and adopted by the Finnish miners who came after them to work in the copper mines. There are still plenty of little shops and restaurants that serve pasties in the U.P. If you ever visit there, you have to stop and try one. Until then, here’s my recipe!
Mr. Gus’s Famous U. P. Pasties
Prep time: 30 minutes. Refrigerated time: 1 hour. Bake time: 60-70 minutes. Makes 8 pasties.
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| Ingredients: |
For the pastry:
4 ½ cups all-purpose flour
13 tablespoons butter, chilled
4 ½ tablespoons lard (or Crisco) chilled
1 ½ tablespoons kosher salt
1 ¾ cup whole milk
For the meat filling:
2 pounds of good quality ground beef.
3 cups of Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced into ½ inch cubes
1 cup Rutabaga, peeled and diced into ½ inch cubes
¾ cup carrots, peeled and diced into ½ inch cubes
1 ¼ sweet onion, diced
1 ½ tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground pepper
1 ½ teaspoons beef, Better than Bouillon mixed into 3 tablespoons of warm water. (May substitute beef bouillon cubes instead).
8 teaspoons of butter (for assembly)
Warm water and a pastry brush (for assembly)
Directions:
For the pastry:
Place dry ingredients into a large bowl or food processor. Cut the butter and the lard into the dry ingredients until the butter is the size of peas. If using a food processor, place the mixture into a large bowl. Using your hands, gently incorporate the milk until a nice, soft dough forms. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
While the pastry dough is chilling, in a large bowl, mix the ground beef and the diced vegetables together. Add the salt, pepper and prepared beef bouillon. Mix until well blended. Cover and keep in the refrigerator until ready to use.
Assembling:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
On a floured cutting board, roll out half the dough until about 1/8 inches thick. Cut out an 8-inch circle. This can be done by using an 8-inch salad plate as a guide. If you can cut two at a time, you’re doing good. Place one cup of meat on the bottom half of the circle, leaving at least an inch-wide rim of crust. Put one teaspoon of butter on the meat mixture. Using a pastry brush dipped in warm water, brush the edges of the dough. This will help seal the crust and make a nice pocket for the meat filing. Once the edges of the dough have been moistened, fold the top half of the dough circle over the meat filling and press edges together on the bottom half, sealing the meat in the pasty. At this point, you can either crimp the edges with a fork, or fold it over in small sections, making a braid-like edge. Using a knife, cut a little X on the top of the crust for the steam to escape. Place the finished pasty on the prepared baking sheet.
Continue this process until all 8 pasties are made, or however many pasties you can get out of the dough.
Place pasties into the preheated oven and bake for 1 hour, or until the crust is golden brown.
Serve with either catchup or beef gravy. Enjoy!
Print a copy of the recipe here!
*To enter to win a copy of my latest release MURDER AT THE CAMPFIRE COOKOUT please let me know what your favorite regional dish is. Don’t forget to leave your email in the comments.
**Continental U.S. only please.
Darci Hannah is the bestselling author of the Beacon Bakeshop Mystery Series, the Food & Spirits Mystery Series, the Very Cherry Mystery Series, and two works of historical fiction, The Exile of Sara Stevenson, and The Angel of Blythe Hall. Darci grew up in the Midwest and currently lives in a small town in Michigan with her husband and two dogs. Darci is a lifelong lover of the Great Lakes, a natural wonder that inspires many of her stories. Passionate about family, dogs, food, baking, history, books, lighthouses, laughter, good conversations, coffee, and the paranormal, Darci feels especially blessed to have found a way to combine her interests in the stories she writes. It brings her great joy to be able to share them with you.
Murder at the Campfire Cookout
By Darci Hannah
Book #7 in the Beacon Bakeshop Mystery Series
When Lindsey Bakewell leaves behind her lighthouse bakeshop, her boyfriend, Rory, and her Newfoundland dog, Wellington, for a glamping trip with her mother in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the bears leave them alone—but a killer doesn’t. . .
Converting the old Beacon Point lighthouse into a bakery is as adventurous as Lindsey cares to get. Her mother, Ellie, a former 80s fashion model, likes her creature comforts even more—until she sees a business opportunity for her Beacon Harbor fashion boutique when she’s invited by the Mitten Kittens Glamping Club on a woodsy getaway.
Far from roughing it, the ladies will be warm and cozy in chic vintage campers. Ellie insists Lindsey come along to win the campfire cookout contest. Campfire cooking has come a long way from bacon and beans. Soon Lindsey is making pizza, berry cobbler, and gooey Carmelita camping bars.
But the festive spirit is soon dampened when a body is found in Ellie’s camper. It seems like an accidental death until everyone’s tires are slashed and it’s clear the glampsite has become a crime scene. With no cell service to call for help, it’s up to Lindsey to smoke out the killer around the campfire . . .
Because no one is out of the woods yet.
A Spirited Supper at Dundoon Castle
By Darci Hannah
Book #2 in the Food & Spirits Mystery Series
When chef Bridget “Bunny” MacBride got a role on the reality show Food & Spirits, she thought “spirits” meant cocktails. Instead, she’s cooking up dinners meant to tempt the departed to appear. And to her surprise, she’s discovered abilities to connect with the beyond—and crack murder cases . . .
Now that Bunny’s entrées come with a side of the Other Side, it comes in handy to have a grandma who’s friendly with the elderly owners of a haunted Scottish castle. During Bunny’s childhood she heard all about Dundoon’s bloody history and the “ghostly piper” who roamed the grounds—and soon she’ll be visiting the ancient place with her ghost hunter and psychic co-stars. The annual bagpipe competition in the late piper’s honor will make for some good footage as well.
After Bunny serves a feast fit for a 17th century king, including lamb chops with plenty of fresh herbs, she heads outdoors for the ghost hunt. But in the dark, dense fog, someone fatally plunges from the clifftop over the loch. The sound that follows is a mournful, otherworldly bagpipe . . . and once the body of another perished piper is retrieved, Bunny is determined to solve this Highlands homicide—and prevent a killer from getting off scot-free . . .
Trade Paperback Release!
A Fatal Feast at Bramsford Manor
By Darci Hannah
Book #1 in the Food & Spirits Mystery Series
While filming at a haunted English manor, chef Bunny MacBride’s big break on her first reality TV show may be cut short by an unscripted murder in Darci Hannah’s new Food & Spirits cozy mystery series . . .
It isn’t how chef Bridget “Bunny” MacBride imagined her own cooking show unfolding. But, if preparing historic meals with a modern flair is what it takes to get her cooking on the air, she can deliver, even if her dinner guest is a ghost. That’s the premise of the new reality TV show Food & Spirits, where Chef Bunny teams up with ghost hunter Brett Bloom and psychic medium Giff McGrady to visit haunted locales around the world and tempt lingering spirits back to the table with a beloved meal. For their first episode, the Food & Spirits team sets off to investigate Bramsford Manor, a historic house turned famously haunted hotel, in picturesque Hampshire, England. The sprawling estate is said to be home to the Mistletoe Bride, a young woman who died in the 18th century, the victim of a tragic accident on her Christmas wedding night.
Bunny leaves the spectral search to the pros and focuses on the feast, creating a traditional English holiday wedding dinner, complete with a gorgeous prime rib, Yorkshire pudding, and rustic apple tarts. But Bunny’s task is made more difficult when someone steals a boning knife from her custom kit. Alas, when the blade finally turns up again—in the chest of an all-too-human dinner guest—Bunny’s woes only grow as she is named a lead suspect in the case! Now, with a haunted house full of living residents, staff, and crew, Bunny will need the help of Brett, Giff, and her clairvoyant Grandma Mac, to solve this murder before the manor gains another ghost!
