Cheater week and Old England inspiration
Sure, football is a game, but it’s not just a game. Football is an experience. The kind of experience that goes better with a little food. If you’re a Buffalo Bills fan looking for something special to go with your game-day activities, Buffalo Rumblings has you covered!
For this week, I steal and modify someone else’s work for cheater week…
Cornwallfield Tatty Cakes
Usually in the offseason I ask for ideas to crowdsource recipes for the upcoming year. I forgot that in 2024, but FLBillsFan451 had a great idea and sent it to me anyway. FLBillsFan451 got the original recipe from The Unofficial Poldark Cookbook, which is tied into a PBS show whose name you may have guessed from the cookbook title. I’ve never seen Poldark and my current backlog of shows suggest I may never get around to it, but Cornwall Tatty Cakes is something I’m glad the show brought to FLBillsFan451’s attention who then brought it to mine.
This week the expert is FLBillsFan451, whose tweaks to the recipe I’ve embedded below with a few optional things I did you might also want to try. If you’re wondering, the best pictures in the gallery aren’t mine either. My first attempt at this can’t hold a candle to the mastery of FLBillsFan451. I can 100% vouch for the flavor though. If you’re into scalloped potatoes or any cheesy potato variant, give this a try.
I almost forgot: I chose this week for the recipe for two reasons. Poldark is a British historical drama so Old England to tie to New England. Patriots weeks are always cheater weeks so this saved me from the effort of writing my own recipe (mostly). The original name is “Cornwall” but I tweaked it a bit for obvious reasons.
Cornfield Tatty Cakes
Serves: 4 – 6
Active Time: 40 min
Total Time: 2 hours
Ingredients
Pie Crust
1 1⁄4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp sugar (optional, see below)
1⁄2 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder (optional, see below)
1⁄2 cup butter, chilled and diced
3 – 4 Tbsp cold water
Filling
14 oz potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (Yukon Gold recommended)
1/2 cup chicken stock (or 1⁄4 cup stock and 1⁄4 cup hot sauce)
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1⁄2 lb of Huntsman cheese shredded or chopped (see substitutions below)
2 tsp fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
3⁄4 lb bacon
1 – 2 Tbsp brown sugar (optional, see below)
You’ll need: Mixing bowls, pie plate or tin, rolling pin, stomach empty enough for seconds
- Slice potatoes thin; add to mixing bowl.
- Pour chicken stock (or stock/hot sauce mix) over potatoes; gently stir. Refrigerate until ready to use.
- Make pie dough by combining dry ingredients (flour through the optional garlic powder)
- Cut in butter until the dough begins to clump together.
- Work in water starting with 2 Tbsp, adding up to two more if dough refuses to work into a singular ball (dough can be slightly tacky but if it’s sticky you’ve used too much water).
- Knead on a floured surface; wrap in plastic wrap or tightly sealed container and chill until ready to use (at least 30 min).
- Preheat oven to 375ºF, with rack just below center.
- Roll out dough as if you’re making a pie, because you are, and cover the pie plate with the dough.
- Drain potatoes and separate into three batches (I did about 40%, 40%, 20%).
- Separate onion, cheese, and thyme into two batches each.
- Add fillings in layers as follows: Potato (40% portion), onion, cheese, thyme, potato (40% portion), onion, cheese, thyme, potato (20% portion). Salt and pepper can be added into the layers to taste (with the cheeses, don’t go heavy on the salt).
- Do a basket weave of bacon to make your “lid” for the pie.
- OPTIONAL: Dust the bacon with brown sugar.
- Bake until bacon is thoroughly cooked. about 50 minutes, longer for crispier bacon.
Wingin’ It Tips and Prep Gallery
Peruse the gallery to get a glimpse of what FLBillsFan451 has done (magic) and what I accomplished (mostly presentable). There are also some tips on how to do the basket weave. If you’ve done it before it’s actually incredibly easy but if you don’t know one or two tricks it can seem overwhelming.
For the cheese, Huntsman cheese seems to be the official (Huntsman is a layered cheese made of Double Gloucester and Stilton cheeses). FLBillsFan451 can’t find that locally and uses a 50/50 blend of Stilton and cheddar. I too cannot find Huntsman locally. I also couldn’t find Stilton. So I used a blend of cheddar and Gorgonzola, and it was fantastic. I also think I used way too much, but I digress. If you want, swapping blue cheese crumbles in for Gorgonzola for a similar vibe.
FLBilsFan451 recommends Yukon Gold potatoes if you can find them or baking potatoes if not. I gambled on red potatoes (couldn’t find Yukon Gold) and I can assure you those work very well too.
If you have a mandolin or similar slicing gadget, that’s a great way to slice as thin as you need. If you don’t, rather than aim for full circle slices, what I do is cut the potatoes and onions in half which gives a flat side to place on your cutting board to make things stable for finer slicing (pictured in the gallery).
I don’t usually like the whole “Here’s a biography to go with the recipe” deal most sites use, but sometimes it’s a good idea. At least I have the courtesy to put it at the end though. Anyway…
When it comes to recipe writing it can be challenging to truly make something you can call “your own.” Especially when you’re deliberately copying other people’s work. In this case, FLBillsFan451 acknowledged where he got the recipe from and that’s why I credit the source up top. That said, we had a lot of correspondence with FLBillsFan451 giving me pointers along the way.
What you see above is NOT the recipe from the book just copied over. I integrated the tips FLBillsFan451 has learned from making this a bunch of times and passed along to me directly into the recipe. I also reorganized things in what I felt was the most efficient manner and also adjusted techniques to be more accessible.
For instance, the recipe passed along to me recommends a pastry blender for making the pie dough and that’s 100% a good idea if you have one. If you have one, my hunch is that when you got to the pie dough you immediately thought to yourself “Pffft… I’m going to use my pastry blender.” If you don’t know what a pastry blender is that’s OK too. I’ve worked pie dough with my hands to great results (wear gloves if you’re cooking for other people).
Going back to the idea of making recipes your own, I like to think this series has been successful in large part because many of you like the idea of “What insane thing is he going to do with THIS?” that I aim for. I sure hope that was FLBillsFan451’s motivation because I can’t just take his work and publish it. I could actually, but you know I won’t.
The first thing is always how to “Buffalo” it up a bit and the easy answer was to add hot sauce to the potato soak. Because the main pie was also family dinner and not everyone is up for the hot sauce, I did a smaller hand pie (picture in the gallery) for proof of concept before making it an official recommendation. Since it’s included in the gallery you’d be right in guessing that I felt it was delicious. Your pick on the hot sauce as it was fantastic either way.
The garlic powder in the pie crust is also one of my little touches. The sugar in the dough is part of what was sent to me and I made it “optional” not because it’s a bad idea, but because I added sugar elsewhere in the recipe. If you’re making it like FLBillsFan451, add sugar in the dough and consider omitting the brown sugar on the bacon. Slightly candying the bacon was another thing I added.
Speaking of the bacon, my wife and I prefer it on the crisp side so I cooked mine quite a bit longer than the 50 minutes. That resulted in the texture we wanted but as you can see it shrunk.
Finally, the biggest reason I started this series in the first place was to explore food and find new things to try. For this week that means a huge shoutout to FLBillsFan451 for sending this over. It may just have to be part of the rotation for my family going forward.