As a teenager, Adam Rickett trained as a chef in St Austell, Cornwall, and has spent more than 20 years working in professional kitchens. This experience included Wellington's The Matterhorn, The Boat Shed in Waiheke, and as executive chef at Auckland's Euro Bar & Restaurant. In 2020, during a Covid-19 lockdown, Rickett tried his hand at a childhood favourite, the Cornish Pastie, and never looked back.
"It was a light bulb moment. This was the thing that I remembered and loved. The 'Ansum Pasty Company was born, and here the journey began.”
Now, frequently selling out at Catalina Bay, Kumeu and Coastsville Farmers Markets, Rickett said the secret is in the pastry and doing the simple things well.
Pasties are not new or a trend; they have been around since the 1500s. They were initially made out of necessity for Cornish tin miners, and as a tasty snack, they stood the test of time. Unlike a pie, which typically has a pre-cooked braised filling, pasties have all the ingredients go into the pastry in their raw form and then hand crimped. All the juices from the meat and vegetables braise inside the pastry and cook into it, giving it a truly different taste and texture to a pie. Using real butter and high-quality vegetable shortening in the pastry, plus continuous testing and improvement, makes 'Ansum Pasties stand out.
The 'Ansum ‘Proper Cornish’ is batch-made by Rickett and as fresh as you can get them. The ingredients are simply beef skirt steak, potato, swede, onion, shortcrust pastry, salt and pepper. Every ingredient and each part of the process has to be spot on – any error will show up with the pastry being too dry, or even worse, soggy or flavourless. The art of a succulent pastie is practice and precision.
The range of 'Ansum Pasties' uses free-range meats and includes a Cheese and onion vegetarian pastie, too. The Pork Belly and the Chicken and Stuffing are Rickett's own creations – blending the traditional baked product with his own understanding of food from his twenty years in the restaurant trade. They seem to be striking a chord with the range now stocked in Farro, and Rickett is looking forward to distributing his gourmet pasties further throughout the country, utilising his new production facility on an increased scale.
They are taking orders for the holidays, and yes, at A Very Tasty Christmas Market, 'Ansum will have Christmas fruit mince pasties – taking the term 'pieties' awarded to them by a regular customer in Hobsonville.
Rickett's 'Ansum Pasties are one of more than 70 stalls at A Very Tasty Christmas Market from 2nd to 3rd of December at The Cloud on Queens Wharf. The event runs from 10 am to 6 pm on both days and features pop-up bars and eateries.
