Salt & Pepper, though they don't have the substantial dough handle, those are some fine looking pasties. You make me want to run right out and purchase the required ingredients to make some. I do love pasties.
CharlieD, my friend, a pastie is a filled pastry created in England by the wives of miners. The filling is made of diced potato, rutabaga, diced onion, salt, pepper, garlic, and coarsely ground beef. The crust is a simple 3-2-1 pie crust, though some people use a short crust, while others use a flaky pie crust.
Traditionally, the pastie was made from an 8 to 10 inch round of dough, folded over the filling to make a half circle of filled pastry. The edges were rolled inward to form a thick, pastry handle so that the miners had something to hold onto with their dirty hands, as they typically didn't have washing stations in the mines. The handle was discarded.
Some ambitious wives would place a dough wall two-thirds across the pastie so that savory filling would be on one side, with a desert filling on the other, both enveloped by the same dough. That's what I do with my pasties, after reading about the history of the pastie, online.
At the dinner table, most pasties are made with a single filling, and served with hot, beef gravy, or ketchup. Both are very good.
From what I understand, in parts of England, pasties can be obtained with new and different fillings. I prefer the traditional filling, myself.
In my home town, an enterprising pizza maker decided he could take a 12 inch pizza, and fold it like a pastie, using a yeast-risen pizza dough, and typical pizza toppings. It's still made, still called a pizza pastie, and is one of the finest culinary creations on the planet. It is definitely not a low calorie food item.
I've had empanadas, and the Italian equivalent, calzones. They don't even come close. The Food Network should feature these babies on "The Best Thing I Ever Ate!" They are spectacular, even if they aren't real pasties.
Anyways, now you know what pasties are. Oh, and there are two towns in England that claim to have created the original pastie. One is Cornwall, hence the name, Cornish Pastie, and I can't remember the name of the other town. But one of them makes the handle on the side, while the other folds the pastry so as to form a seam on top, where the edges come together.
It has been said that it isn't a proper pastie unless it can be dropped down a mine shaft, and survive intact. Personally, I want a more tender crust. (;-)>
The Upper Peninsula is famous for pasties, as we used to have a significant number of mines, and immigrant miners. The immigrants brought pasties to the region. But I now know that many areas, including Mexico, feature pasties in their local cuisine. These places, of course, have mines of one type or another.
Seeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North