PASTES

When we lived in the US, we used to make pasties (that's with a short "a" to distinguish it from those other things with a long "a."), a meat and onion and potato concoction baked in pie crust.  It's an inexpensive meal and the cooking process tenderizes cheap cuts of meat.  We understood them to have originated with immigrant Scandinavian miners working the iron and copper mines in the Lake Superior neighborhood.  Pasties were compact and nutritious and could be easily carried in a lunch pail and eaten cold, even underground.  The miners in West Virginia, primarily of Italian origin, had their own version

--pepperoni rolls.

This Scandinavian connection was confirmed when our hijo menor lived in the UP (the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on the shores of Gitchee Gumee) and el Sr J saw shops specializing in this ethnic delicacy in Houghton and Hancock.  The population was predominantly of Finnish ancestry; the principal economic activity had been copper mining.

It turns out that pasties were not unique to the Scandinavians:  Welsh miners had them, too, and carried the recipe wherever they went.  Famous for their mining expertise, Welsh miners were in demand wherever mineral stuff was dug out of the earth.  Including, of course, Mexico.  Pasties were brought here by the Welsh (centered mainly in Hidalgo state, adjacent to us) and pasties, like so many other things of foreign origin, were assimilated into the local culture.  In Mexican cuisine the spelling has been changed to "pastes,"  with a pronunciation that closely approximates "pasties."

Here is the pastes shop nearest us, across from the Mercado La Cruz:

The fillings might not be recognizable to the Finns (green and red mole, chorizo, tuna???), but the pie crust is made by hand daily and they are go-o-o-od.  We don't go down in the mine, but we do dig into the miner's lunch from time to time.