Madhatters Tea Shop- Launceston, Cornwall - gluten free

I ate at a cafe in Boscastle, The Spinning Wheel, which proudly announced gluten free foods, supplied by Mad Hatter's.

I ordered a cornish pasty.  I was pleased it was available, but when it came found it inedible.  The pastry had crumbled just in getting it to the plate, the filling was nasty, and the herb flavour of the pastry dominated everything.  Still, I was impressed it was available. As an incessant baker I was disappointed, but I am sure it is better than most of the gf foods available through stores.

However, what impressed me less was that I couldn't find out what was in the pasty.  I asked about the flour, as I am assiduous about avoiding baking levels of xanthum gum.  The waitress said they couldn't tell me what was in it - they asked but were refused.  I am sure this cannot be legal - as a part time baker of foods I have to supply clients with a full list of ingredients.  As it was, the waitress spoke to someone on the phone and they said there was no xanthum gum in the pastry.  The salad was bare as they did admit that the vinegar was malt, but I couldn't find out what the coleslaw was slathered in so I left that.

Trying to meet the needs of people with food intolerances is hard work.  Trying to protect recipes ( if they produce excellent food) makes sense.  However, you do need to list ingredients in quantity order as a producer, so why should this cafe not be told what was in the food they bought and advertised on a large board as being gluten free?

I went to the cafe in Launceston to talk to the staff - I was on holiday in the area for the day.  The shop was closed as it was Saturday afternoon.  I may email them and ask why the cafe they supply will not tell customers what is in the food - when I posted this I immediately got a note from a customer saying that they are very happy to talk about what was in their food at Mad Hatter's.

I am reminded of asking about the ingredients in a Butternut squash curry at a service station.  After a wait of at least five minutes the server came back and said the only allergen listed was shellfish.  Who would have thought the dish that looked like the only hot meal suitable for vegetarians in would have shellfish!

I have been in cafes before where the staff insisted that as the food was supplied centrally they did not know what was in each dish.  In those cases I left.  I do find this casual attitude to essential information in the food industry appalling.

Chili Pasty - gluten free

I had chilli leftover from yesterday.  I made pastry using half hard veg fat and half butter with my usual flour.  The pastry did tend to crack a bit when shaping the pasty but a quick repair of the holes worked fine.  The finished product was crisp and tender and delicious.  Good picnic food - you can tell where my thoughts are going now the sun is shining for longer!

Using half butter and kneading a little produced a more stable pastry than yesterday's made with all hard veg fat.

Gluten-free cheese, potato and onion pasties

cheese, onion and potato pasties - gluten free

Ate the last one of these a week after baking.  It was still good and held together well.  

I had kept it in the fridge.

Savory picnic type food can be hard to find if you can't eat gluten.  I made these pasties to test the new standard flour mix...how strange to ladle a single type of flour out of a jar rather than grinding, assembling, mixing a bespoke flour for each project.

Pastry
250g butter
500g flour (40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20% polenta)
2 eggs
c100-150ml cold water to mix

Filling
1 onion, cooked until soft and golden in olive oil
1 large potato, peeled, diced and boiled until nearly soft
100-150g cheese - I used mature cheddar, and added more until I thought the flavour balance was right
pepper

Cook the onion and potato ahead of time so that they have a chance to cool before you need them.

grated cheese, sauteed onion and diced cooked potato

Make the pastry by cutting the butter into cubes and blitzing in the food processor until the butter is finely dispersed.  Add the lightly beaten egg and blitz until evenly dispersed.

You can do the next bit in the machine but I like to mix the water in by hand so I can feel how wet the dough is getting.  Tip the mix into a large bowl, add cold water a little at a time.  I use a whisking action with my finger tips, and keep adding until the dough will just hold a lump when squeezed lightly.

Form into two balls, wrap in clingfilm, and put in the fridge to rest while you assemble the filling the filling.

Roll the pastry out to a medium thickness.  Don't aim for a very thin pastry as it needs to be able to hold the filling in place when cooking.  I made my dough too thin for this and some of the cheese escaped. Aim more for the thickness of a £1 coin rather than a ten penny piece.

Cut out a circle.  I used 25cm 8 1/2 inch side plate, which produced a good meal sized pasty.

Egg wash around the edge of the pastry and place a large handful of the filling in the middle.  The potato, cheese and onion mix holds its shape well so that you can put a big lump in the middle and it stays in place while you shape the pastry around it.

It is easier to make a flat pasty, where you bring one half of the pastry over the top of the filling and press it down onto the other half.   As I was testing the performance characteristics of this pastry I did the version where you bring both sides up and seal them down the middle.  It was a little difficult to do this neatly as the pastry did tear a bit, but a little patching fixed that.  Egg wash for a shiny golden finish.

Cook for 20 minutes in a hot oven, 180C, until golden brown.

These are good hot or cold.  They survived carrying around in a box without any sign of falling apart.

a slice through a mini test-pasty - had to be sure it tasted good!