Pie Crust

I’ve avoided putting a recipe up for pie crust, because I KNEW it wasn’t going to be easy. It is difficult to explain how to make a pie crust, because so much of it involves tactile senses (I wanted to say “finger feel,” but that seems kind of vulgar). However, my friend Kate kept saying that it wasn’t fair of me to post recipes that involve pie crust and not include the pie crust recipe. Fine. This one’s for you, Kate.



Pie Crust

2 sticks of chilled butter
2 2/3 cups of flour
½ cup of chilled water
½ teaspoon of salt
pinch of sugar (optional)

Combine flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Slice the chilled butter into the flour bowl, and using a pastry cutter, or your fingers, cut the butter into the flour, leaving some pea sized butter bits. When the butter and flour are incorporated, drizzle the water over the flour, tossing the ingredients together with a fork. Once you can form the dough into a ball, stop adding water. If the dough sticks to your fingers, and seems gummy, add a little bit of flour to the dough until it holds its form without being gooey. Once the dough is the right texture, divide it into two balls and flatten them into a disk about an inch and a half thick. Hopefully, there will still be bits of butter visible because these make the pastry flakey. If you are not in a rush, wrap the two disks in wax paper and refrigerate them for at least thirty minutes. Otherwise, sprinkle the rolling surface and the top of the pastry dough with a light layer of flour. Starting at the center of the disk working outwards, begin to roll out the dough. Continue rolling out the dough until it is about 1/8 of an inch thick, and then very carefully lay the crust in the pie plate. Cut away the excess dough on the sides, leaving only a ¾ inch overhang. If making a pre-baked crust, tuck the overhang under itself, and crimp the edges using a fork or thumb and forefinger. Poke the bottom and sides of the crust with a fork, place pie weights in the bottom of the plate, and bake the crust at 400f for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown. If making a pie with a top layer, do not tuck the overhanging dough yet. Instead, roll out the second disk of dough to the same thickness. Place pie filling into the plate, then very carefully put the top layer of crust onto the filling. Cut off excess crust, again leaving ¾ inch overhang. Fold the two overhangs together, tucking them as neatly as possible, and then crimp the edges. Using a sharp knife, cut vents into the top layer, to allow the steam to escape while cooking. Follow your pie baking instructions.

Makes two pre-baked shells, or one double crusted pie.

Rustic Love

Jamie broke her ankle while crossing an uneven street in lower Manhattan. She wasn’t wearing heels, either. The street just jumped up and got her. She fell into the middle of the crosswalk and no one helped her up.

“No one helped her up.” Those words and the images they evoked wouldn’t get out of my head. Angry at all the people who had passed her by, and wanting to comfort her in some way, I offered to bring her dinner. With righteous indignation as my guide, I set out to make a comforting dish that would let her know, “you are loved.”

I made a rustic tart. Leafy green vegetables, potatoes, and cheese enveloped in a flakey crust, the tart strikes a balance between health and richness. It is perfect with a simple green salad.



Rustic Tart
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Bunch of Swiss Chard, chopped
1 Whole onion, diced
½ Bunch of broccoli rabe, chopped
2 Cloves garlic
2 Boiled eggs, diced
1 Egg, beaten
½ Cup Chicken Stock
½ Cup Feta
1 Potato cut into ½ inch cubes

Saute onion until transparent, add chard and sauté until the greens are wilted. Remove from pan. Saute garlic until it starts to turn brown and add broccoli rabe. Cook until the leaves start to wilt. In a large bowl, combine Swiss chard, broccoli rabe, diced egg, potatoes, and feta. In a smaller bowl, mix chicken stock and beaten egg, then pour over the vegetable mixture, stirring well. Pour the mixture into an uncooked pie shell, then fold the edges of the pie crust over the vegetables. Bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes or until the filling starts to bubble and the crust is golden.

Chocolate Cure-All

I had been feeling a bit down. Not the stay-on-the-couch-all-day kind of down, but a mild funk. A funk brought on by the end of the summer? A breakup with a friend? The discovery that certain pants don’t fit the way they did last fall? A combination of all three? Who knows. I just hoped it was the type of gloominess that could be cured with a chocolate pie, a chocolate pudding pie with cream on top.

I wanted my mother’s recipe, but she was out of reach for the weekend, so I called my sister Emily. No, she did not have mom’s recipe. She had an even better one, she claimed. And that’s how I wound up making a punch-you-in-the-face-with-chocolate pie. Unlike my mother’s recipe that calls for 3 oz of chocolate, Emily’s demanded 6 oz. The result was one of dense, creamy darkness that had me clutching my stomach in defeat long before I finished the slice on my plate. It was delicious, but a powerful weapon that should only be brought out in the direst of circumstances. Did it cure my funk? Absolutely. Will I make it again? Hell yes, and then I’ll serve it to those who need some powerful healing.



6 Tbls cornstarch

1 Cup sugar

1/8 tsp salt

3 Cups whole milk

6 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1 baked pie shell


Combine cornstarch, sugar, and salt in a double boiler over medium heat. Slowly whisk in milk, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl to incorporate all the dry ingredients. Stir continually for 15-20 mins, and once the mixture coats the spoon, add the chocolate. Stir 2-4 mins until the pudding is smooth and thick. Remove from heat and pour into the pie shell.

Guest Appearance

My friend Kara asked me to make a guest apprearance on her blog, so for my thoughts on panzanella, head to http://anhourinthekitchen.com/.

Summer Salads

The summer's humidity has arrived. It took its time, but after weeks of autumn-like weather, the damp, sweat inducing days are here. No more turning on the oven for me. Until things cool down, I'll be having salads, cold pastas, and sandwiches. Here are two salads that are guaranteed to refresh.


Cantaloupe Salad*

1 cantaloupe
cilantro
half a red onion
feta
lime juice
salt and pepper


Peel and cube the cantaloupe, chop the cilantro and red onion, crumble the feta, and combine all in a bowl. Squeeze a fresh lime over the salad, add a dash of salt and pepper. Done.


Cucumber Salad*

2 cucumbers
1 clove of garlic
2 spring onions
plain yogurt
olive oil
salt and pepper
cumin
lemon juice

Chop the cucumber into one inch chunks. Mince the garlic and thinly slice the spring onion. Stir the yogurt and olive oil together in a salad bowl. Add salt, pepper, and cumin to taste. Once the yogurt sauce is to your liking, throw in the cucumber, garlic, and onion. Squeeze lemon juice over everything, stir to integrate the ingredients, and serve immediately.


*Don't let these salads sit too long, because the cantaloupe and the cucumbers start to get soggy.

Crisp or Pie?

I feel as though at some point, a person makes a decision that determines the course of their holiday feasts and dinner party desserts for years to come. The decision comes down to this: am I a pie person or a crisp person? I always assumed I would be a pie person. My mother is a pie person and I grew up watching her cut the butter into the flour, drizzle in the cold water as she tossed the buttery flour to delicately dampen it, then strew the wooden island with more flour before rolling out her crust. I made my first apple pie in my mother’s kitchen, with her at my side coaching me on when to stop mixing the crust so that it didn’t get overworked and tough. My mother always cut simple little designs out of the top crust –cute, practical steam vents. She would sprinkle the top of the unbaked pie with sugar so that when it came out of the oven it had a sparkled goldenness. I always thought my mother’s pies were the best part of any evening, and I wanted to be able to make them as well. And for years I tried. My pies were fine. Good, even. But I never felt the connection with them that it seemed my mother did with hers, and my pies never graduated from good to sublime.

After I moved to New York, I started cooking a lot with my friend Kara. Kara is a crisp person. Whereas my mother takes her time, measures carefully, and would rather err on the side of under seasoning rather than over seasoning, Kara dives into her cooking with the assumption that if she screws something up, she can fix it. She rarely measures anything with actual measuring spoons, preferring to eyeball the ingredients as they go into a bowl. She looks at a recipe to get the general idea of what it needs, and then usually doesn’t look at it again. This method of cooking doesn’t always pan out, but with a crisp, it works great because no delicacy is required. No amount of pampering is going to turn a crisp into anything more than a rustic, ugly duckling of the dessert world. The combination of fruit, flour, butter, and sugar is always going to taste good, and without the pressure of making a beautiful dessert, it is easier to have fun with what is being created. There’s an element of adventure to this way of cooking that gives me a bit of a buzz.

Recently, I decided to take a rhubarb crisp to a cookout, figuring that after all the burgers, hotdogs and chips had been eaten, a tangy fruit dessert would be welcomed. Plus, I had just gotten a pound of rhubarb from the farmer’s market and couldn’t wait for my first rhubarb dessert of the season. Once my rhubarb was in the pie plate, I realized that I needed more fruit, so I added a bag of frozen strawberries, and for good measure, one granny smith apple. I sprinkled the fruit with a couple teaspoons of sugar, and then started preparing the topping. After combining a cup each of rolled oats, flour, and brown sugar, I melted about a stick of butter, and stirred that into the dry ingredients along with a dash or two of salt, tasting small pinches of the mixture to determine whether more sugar was needed. Because I like the zing of orange, I added a spoonful of frozen orange juice concentrate to the topping. Once the topping stuck together in clumps, but wasn’t mushy with dampness and I was happy with the sweetness level, I piled it onto the fruit in the pie plate. After cooking for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees, it came out bubbling and slightly browned on the top. At the cookout, I watched as everyone spooned the dessert onto their plates, satisfied with my status as a crisp person and dreaming about the peach, blueberry, and blackberry possibilities still to come.

Pickled Pink Experiment

Because they are so bright and cheerful, and because they have a crisp juicy zing, I keep buying radishes. I use three or four of them in a salad, then put the rest in the refrigerator to save for later use. Within days, they degenerate into a wrinkled, saggy unappetizing mess, so I throw them away and then days later start the cycle again. This pattern gives me twinges of guilt every time I head to the trashcan with my lumpy brownish radishes, and so today I’ve decided to put a halt to the waste. This afternoon when I opened the fridge, there sat the radishes I bought two days ago, already losing their luster, already showing signs of the wrinkles to come. Determined to avoid the shameful trashcan walk, I pulled the radishes out, cut them into slices slightly larger than matchsticks, and put them in a Tupperware container. I gathered together sugar, salt, black pepper, coriander seeds, and two types of vinegar—cider and red wine, stirred everything together until I was happy with the flavor, and then poured the mixture over the sliced radishes. The radishes are pickling in the refrigerator, and later this evening I’ll do a taste test with my friend. Hopefully I’ll have managed to avoid yet another walk of shame.