I Am A Pate Lover, September 22 Blog

By: aromaproductions on 6:23 PM

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  I Am A Pate Lover

I am not a chef, not even a fanatical cook who loves to hold dinner parties in order to display my culinary skills. I love to eat other people’s cooking. However, I am a lover of pates. The pate is a semicircular pastry that contains various fillings and spices baked inside a flaky shell, often tinted golden yellow with an egg yolk mixture or turmeric. It is formed by folding over the circular dough cut-out over the chosen filling, e.g. ground meat. I am willing to sacrifice the time to make them, not just ten, but fifty which I would freeze and serve when needed,

My love of pates began in my childhood in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands when we stopped at local pastry shops run by Miss Eddy, Miss Maduro, and Miss Annesta to buy beef pates for afternoon snacks. It was an after-school routine.  I became hooked and have never looked back.

 The variety has come a long way. Today you can buy all sorts: beef, saltfish, conch, pork, lamb, shrimp, chicken, lobster, fish and vegetables, and soy.

St. Croix, Virgin Islander, Tanisha Baily Roka says on her blog (https://www.uncommoncaribbean.com/st-croix/caribbean-beef-pate-recipe) that she is convinced that every culture has its version of meat encased in some form of delicious pastry. Spanish empanadas, Jamaican beef patties, French pastries, Spanish calzones, British meat pies…We all understand something special happens when dough and ground meats come together.

Jamaica lays claim to introducing Jamaican meat pates to the Caribbean. Meat pies were introduced to Jamaica by Cornish immigrants.  Cumin curry and cayenne pepper were added by indentured Indians and African slaves. Jamaicans brought recipes for the patties northward in the 1960s and 1970s when many immigrated to the United States as hospital orderlies, home health aides, and nurses. The patties are equally popular in British cities with large West Indian populations, such as Birmingham, Manchester, and London (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_patty.)

I am a Virgin Islander who lives in Switzerland, however, when I travel to the Caribbean, the pate hunt begins at the Miami airport. There are restaurants that offer a variety of Caribbean dishes. I once ate an empanada in transit in Miami and was deeply disappointed. That empanada, popular in Latin American countries, did not taste the same as a Caribbean pate. It just did not hit the spot. Perhaps it was my unlucky day.

However, I have been able to find delicious pates in Florida with the help of my daughter, Malaika who lives in that state. You can even find them frozen in large supermarkets.

And once while my sister, Arlene Romeo Ware, and I were visiting our uncle in Vancouver, Canada, his wife seemed to have read our minds and took us to a pate shop run by Jamaicans the next day. We were in pate heaven.

I have also eaten pates in Sacramento, California where my sister, Arlene Ware, knew where to find them. A pate a day keeps the doctor away…??? Probably not.

   In 2015 my sister, her daughter, Katysha Ware and family and I flew to St. Thomas US Virgin Islands for a family reunion. We discovered that there was a pate truck which parked daily not far from the hotel. It was within walking distance.  We were up early the next morning to visit the pate truck. Upon arriving, we discovered that there was already a long line. The pate makers were from the Dominican Republic but their reputation had preceded them and they lived up to our expectations.

  

      I first ate the closest thing to the Caribbean pate in Dublin, Ireland, while visiting there in 2018 with my other daughter Cassandra. We came across a shop selling Cornish pasties while being tourists in the city. The variety of its offering stopped us in our tracks and we had to go in to purchase a few. 

 It was difficult to decide on which ones to buy because the offering was so large ( including beef, potato and turnip, Cheese, leek and bacon,  bacon and egg, mackerel pasty, rabbit pasty, and lamb, cheese, broccoli and sweet corn, and parsley)  We sat down together and enjoyed our little feast.

A Cornwall food site tells us that the Cornwall pasty is thought to date back to the 13th century when it was not exclusively eaten in Cornwall. In fact, it was a dish more associated with the nobility than the working classes and often filled with game such as venison or salmon. It has been said that Henry VIII's wife, Jane Seymour was known to be partial to a pasty now and again.

         It was not until the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century that the pasty became the Cornish pasty. Being the ultimate hand-held convenience food with its crimped pastry to hold it by made it ideal for miners' "croust" or lunch as the rest of us call it! (https://www.cornwalls.co.uk/food/pasty.htm)

          In Cape Town, 2020, I rediscovered Cornish pasties while visiting my sister-in-law, Roslyn Weale who lives there.  I stocked up on them, ate them for lunch, and was quite satisfied. They are the next best thing to Jamaican pates. I am convinced of that. Empanadas come third. My opinion, of course. Passionate empanada eaters might disagree.

     There is now a shop selling empanadas at the train station in Basel, and I have been tempted to buy one, but the price has kept me away from temptation.

Here are some recipes for pates and empanadas if you are willing and patient enough to try making them. Enjoy!

https://tasty.co/recipe/virgin-islands-pates

https://www.orchidsandsweettea.com/spicy-jamaican-mini-beef-patties/

https://themodernproper.com/beef-empanadas

 

Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia, London, England, and Switzerland since 1991. Althea Romeo Mark is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New, If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German), three chapbooks, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer (chapbook), Two Faces, Two Phases (chapbook), and Palaver (chapbook) and a poetry collaboration, Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit.

Some recent publications include: Short Story,” Easter Sunday,” published The Sunday Observer, Jamaica, 24.04 2022, www.jamaicaobserver.com, previously published in The Caribbean Writer and Kariba Fortella: Karibishe Novella, Norway,  Poems, “She,” and “ Scalded Dreams” published in Shakti: The Feminine Principle, Energy & Lifeforce, an international anthology of poetry, KKPC Publishing, India, 2022; Short story “Wimmelskafts’ Hill,” published in Bookends, The Daily Observer, Jamaica, 30.01.22, www.jamaicaobserver.com; Three poems, “Dopo Di Te..” ( After you..), “Un Pinguini Si Congeda,” (A Pinguin Takes Its Leave,” and “L’Ultima Traversata,”(The Final Crossing) published in Antologia di Poesia, Contemporanea Internazionale, Universalia, Trento, Italy, 2021; Three poems, “Carrying the Spirit of a Siafu,” “Nyam,” and “The Endless Tugging,” published in Letters from the Self to the World, Abrazos, DoveTales 10^th Anniversary anthology, A Writing for Peace Publication, 2021