Milda’s pasties will save you a trip to the Iron Range
Jeff Nelson makes a batch of 20 pasties for Milda’s each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Photos by David Pierini
By David Pierini Staff Reporter
Jeff Nelson is elbow-deep in a Milda’s Cafe classic, and the bits of dough, beef and potato stuck to the hair on his arms prove it. Nelson works in the middle of the night and never gets to meet the foodies, restaurant bloggers or out-of-state customers who travel for his sturdy meat pie on the menu Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
When his day ends before 8am, “I go home looking like a pasty.” Nelson, 67, has made pasties off and on for Milda’s since 1979. Milda Hokkanen, the late founder of the North Minneapolis diner, made pasties at the restaurant and later hired Nelson for bona fides he acquired at a cooking school in the Iron Range, where pasties are beloved.
Hokkanen couldn’t turn over the making of pasties (pronounced Pass-Tees) to just anyone. If the pasty didn’t make Milda’s Cafe, it certainly got her the money to start the restaurant.
Banks were hesitant when Milda Hokkanen, then a widowed mother with less than $1,000 in the bank, came in requesting a loan to open a restaurant. She convinced one loan officer to try one of her home-made pasties. Afterwards, Hokkanen walked out of that bank with the loan.
The pasty was not only a hit with the bank, it was a popular menu item when the restaurant first opened in the Harrison neighborhood thanks to its Finnish residents, who made up a community informally known as Finn Town.
Pasties were perfect meals for Iron Range miners. Brought over by the Cornish miners who helped establish operations, it is a filling, self-contained meal with contents that stay warm for extended periods. It was also something miners could eat with dirty hands. The crimped edge of crust on a pasty served as a handle that could be discarded.
Even as mining operations die out, the pasty remains a regular meal in those communities. The ingredients are simple, but to make a batch of 20 pasties takes time, patience and muscle. Nelson, one of handful of reliable pasty makers to pass through Milda's kitchen, was part of an assembly line in school, where he learned to make them. At Milda’s, he is on his own.
“They’re easy to make. It’s getting them ready that take all the work,” says Nelson who measures ingredients by sight and feel and can make 20 near-identical pasties at a time. “It takes a real commitment to make them.”
Nelson mixes the dough the day before and forms them into patties that get cooled overnight. When he gets to Milda’s at around 1:30am, he takes the dough out of the refrigerator to warm. He then fills a tub with meat, finely diced potatoes and carrots, using his hands and part of his forearms to mix the filling to go inside the crust.
He rolls out each patty of crust into a thin, oval-shaped pancake, places a scoop of the mixture slightly off center. He swipes a little butter next to the mixture and folds the dough over the filling. Nelson is careful to not pat down the dough. This could flatten the pasty and crack the crust.
To close it off, he crimps the open sides into a ridge or handle.
Nelson makes sure each pasty gets 11 ounces of filling, which consists of ground beef and pork and diced carrots and potatoes.
“I have a special touch when I fold them, otherwise they will crack,” he says. “If they crack, I can repair them, I know the tricks to patch them up.”
He also knows where every knife, spatula, scoop and pan should be and is prone to a quick flash of anger when other kitchen staff take and misplace his essentials. He apologizes later but the unwritten rule is clear: Don’t touch Jeff’s stuff.
In his early days at Milda’s, he made 300 pasties a week. But that number is greatly reduced nowadays, suggesting to Nelson that the restaurant has lost pasty customers to “natural causes.”
“We served them right out of the oven as fast as we could put them on a plate,” he says. “I’m not sure why they don’t catch on with younger people. You can eat them like fast food. Just put a little ketchup on them and go.”
Orders for frozen pasties ramp up around the holidays. Customers who want frozen pasties should their orders in three days ahead. Nelson is not sure how much longer he will be able to work. He has neuropathy in his feet. Except for a break around 4:30am, he is in constant motion in the kitchen.
In addition to pasties, he makes the cinnamon and caramel rolls, two other doughy delights for which Milda’s is known. Growing up, Nelson used to cook in a home where both parents were always working. He learned to scratch cook from his grandmother.
“I take care of people, I always have,” he says.