I never expected to become a Cornish pasty-maker. My
only previous catering experience was waitressing in a
vegetarian restaurant in Notting Hill, West London, over
30 years ago, to help me through art school. I'd never
even made a pasty till about 20 years ago, even though it's
something, which all the women in my mother's
Cornish family traditionally did.
I learnt in an emergency, I was summoned by my mother,
Hettie Merrick, a professional pasty-maker, to a Breton
agricultural fair, where demand was dramatically and
unexpectedly outstripping supply at a stall mother had set
up. At the end of a day of pasty-making, I could crimp
them as fast as my mother, which was the perfect
confidence boost and eye opener into the fact that there
was a business to be had producing a good Cornish pasty.
Soon afterwards I began making pasties for my neighbours,
who'd bring gifts of fresh fish they'd caught or vegetables
they'd grown, and who treated my living room like a
waiting room, sitting around gossiping over cups of tea if
the pasties hadn't come out of the oven yet.
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Inspired by the response, mother and I started selling our
wares from a stall at the nearby market town of Helston.We
soon found business good enough to graduate to a shop in
Porthleven. But when juggling family and pasty shop became
too much, my husband transformed the garage of our house
at the lizard into a pasty kitchen, where I am able to crimp
with one eye on the family.
Whist crimping away we started to attract some welcome
press attention. Jenny Aggater praised our pasties in an
article for the Mail on Sunday and we were snowballed into a
lot more media attention. I have featured on radio and
television several times since.
However the ultimate accolade must come from my mother,
Hettie Merrick. "I can easily recognise one of my daughter's
pasties." she says, "Every mouthful is a piece of Cornwall - a
dream folded in heaven."
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