3 posts tagged “pie”
But every once in a while I get a bee in my bonnet to make some real food from scratch. I discovered a great blueberry pie recipe last summer that I promised I would blog about, and I have been dying to make now that it's blueberry season again. My mom coming to visit us for the 4th of July was the perfect excuse. Normally I would mean that in the sense of, a perfect excuse to bake something special for a guest visiting, or to top off a holiday menu. In this case, however, I mean that it was a perfect excuse for me to sit in the kitchen with my extremely swollen feet up on a chair, reading the recipe out loud while my mom followed instructions and basically baked the pie by herself. I actually think it tastes even better this way, so if there is a good baker who loves you, try sitting with your feet up and having them prepare it for you. If you're not that lucky, then just know that those you serve it to will be having a heavenly experience. And it doesn't taste too bad to the pastry chef either!
There are many reasons why this pie is the greatest blueberry pie you will ever taste. First of all, there is excellent pie crust a la Rose Levy Berenbaum, which is savory, flaky and perfectly rich. Then, there is the layer of cream cheese filling under the fruit - it's like a smidge of cheesecake tucked in your blueberry pie. This genius idea comes from Helen Getz, the grandmother of my favorite prissy food writer, Amanda Hesser. And most of all, there is Helen's fantastic half-cooked filling, which mixes a deeply sweet and juicy syrup of cooked blueberries with a pint of fresh, uncooked blueberries to create an intensely blueberry flavored jelly topping packed with plump berries that burst between your teeth.
A word to the wise - you may think of this pie as a nice thing to serve for dessert. Which it is. But I can attest that it also makes a great breakfast. And dinner. Oh, and lunch too...
Greatest Blueberry Pie You Will Ever Taste
Adapted from Rose Levy Berenbaum and Amanda Hesser's grandma, Helen Getz
Ingredients:
For the crust
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
3 oz chilled cream cheese, cut into quarters
8 Tablespoons (1 stick) frozen, unsalted butter cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 Tablespoons heavy cream
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
For cream cheese filling
4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
For blueberry filling:
3/4 cup sugar,
3 Tablespoons cornstarch
a pinch of salt
1/4 c water
4 cups (2 pints) fresh blueberries
1 Tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 Tablespoon butter
Instructions:
In a food processor, combine flour, sea salt and baking powder. Process to combine. Add the 3 ounces of cream cheese, cut into quarters and process until coarse. Add the frozen butter cubes and process until butter is peanut size. Add the cream and vinegar and pulse until butter is the size of small peas.
Transfer mixture to a bowl and mix swiftly with a fork until dough holds together, about 5 minutes. Roll into a ball and press the ball into a smooth, flat disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 450F. Roll out the dough between 2 pieces of lightly floured parchment paper to a circle about 1/8 inch thick. Line a 9-inch pie plate with the dough. Trim the edges, leaving about 1/2-inch overhang. Fold under this overhang and crimp the edges. Prick the base of the dough with a fork. Line the pie dough with foil and pour in pie weights. (You can also use dried beans or loose change.) Bake for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat to 350F and bake for 10 minutes more. Remove the foil and pie weights and bake another 5 minutes to dry the surface. Let cool completely before filling.
Prepare the cream cheese filling: With a hand mixer or whisk, blend the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and heavy cream until light and smooth.
Prepare the blueberry filling: Put the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a medium pan. Add the water and 2 cups (1 pint) of the blueberries. Cook over medium heat, stirring often. This is the most exciting part of the recipe to watch. The liquid will turn lavender, then magenta, and then it will seize up and thicken, and after a minute or two, turn to a deep translucent blackish purple. Take it off the heat and stir in the lemon juice and butter. Pour in the remaining blueberries and stir until coated.
Assemble the pie: Spread the cream cheese mixture over the bottom of the cooled pie dough. Drop the blueberry mixture over the cream cheese in large spoonfuls, then gently spread them around, trying not to mush the cream cheese layer. There should be two distinct layers. Chill in the refrigerator for half an hour to set. Let it come to room temperature before serving.
Serves 8
Probably the top hit recipe of my Thanksgiving tryouts has been the pumpkin pie from the November issue of Martha Stewart's Living. I've always viewed pumpkin pie as a vehicle for whipped cream (or in some cases, cool whip, depending on whose house you're at). Martha knows this too, so she snuck a little bourbon into the accompanying whipped cream for extra flair. But the pie itself is delicious too. Mixed in with the traditional pumpkin pie spices (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg) is a little kick of chipotle pepper! It gives the pie a nice little heat and zing without overpowering the pumpkin flavor. I substituted my own crust recipe (read - Russ Parson's pate brisee crust that I have been devoted to since my first pie effort) but I took up a suggestion from Martha's pecan pie recipe: substitute some of the flour in the crust with ground pecans. A terrific nutty crust, and the presentation of this pie, with a vertical free form crust made in a cheesecake pan, is outstanding. Worthy of the Thanksgiving table, or as in my case, just a random Tuesday when your friend Brendan the electrician comes over for a light fixture consultation and quick lunch.
Chipotle Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Crust and Bourbon Whipped Cream
Adapted from Martha Stewart and Russ Parsons
Pecan Pie Crust
Ingredients:
1/2 cup whole pecans
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1 stick butter, well chilled
2-3 Tablespoons ice water
Instructions:
Pulse the pecans in the food processor until they are ground to a fine powder. Measure out 1/4 cup of the ground nuts, set it aside, and reserve the rest for another use.
Cut the butter into 1/4" cubes. Place the cubes on a plate in the freezer for a few minutes while you measure and blend the dry ingredients.
Combine the flour, 1/2 cup ground pecans, salt and baking powder in a food processor and pulse 3 times to mix. Add the butter cubes and process, pulsing about 8 times at 1-second intervals until the pieces of flour and butter are
no bigger than peas.
Scatter 2 tablespoons of the ice water over the mixture and pulse a few times. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and stir with a fork until the dough holds together easily. Form into a 6-inch disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour. (You can make the crust a few days ahead and keep it in the fridge, or even freeze it, where it will keep for a couple months. Thaw in fridge before rolling out.)
On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into a 12-inch round. Fit dough into bottom and up sides of a 9-inch springform pan. Tear away any dough that hangs over to creat a jagged edge near rim. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 425. Prick bottom of crust all over with a fork. Freeze until firm, about 15 minutes. Line with buttered parchment paper, and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake until edges begin to turn golden, about 15 minutes. Remove weights and parchment. Return to oven and bake until center is golden brown, about 15 minutes more. Let cool completely on a wire rack.
While that's cooling make the filling:
Chipotle Pumpkin Pie Filling
Ingredients:
flour for dusting
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon chipotle-chile powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
Instructions:
Whisk together granulated and brown sugars, spices, and salt in a large bowl. Whisk in eggs, vanilla, and pumpkin, followed by the evaporated milk. Pour filling into pie crust and smooth top.
Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack. (Pie can be covered loosely with parchment and then foil, and refrigerated for up to 3 days.) Unmold pie. Serve with bourbon cream:
Bourbon Whipped Cream
Ingredients:
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon bourbon
1 teaspoon sugar
Instructions:
Whisk cream until soft peaks form. Add bourbon and sugar and whisk gently to incorporate. Serve immediately.
Serves up to 12.
Linguist Deborah Tannen says: "There is a special intensity to the mother-daughter relationship because talk -- particularly talk about personal topics -- plays a larger and more complex role in girls' and women's social lives than in boys' and men's. For girls and women, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together -- and the explosive that can blow it apart. That's why you can think you're having a perfectly amiable chat, then suddenly find yourself wounded by the shrapnel from an exploded conversation."
For her book, You're Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation, she interviewed dozens of women of varied geographic, racial and cultural backgrounds, and had informal conversations or e-mail exchanges with countless others. The complaint she heard most often from daughters was, "My mother is always criticizing me." The corresponding complaint from mothers was, "I can't open my mouth. She takes everything as criticism."
This sheds light on what happens when my mom and I get in the kitchen together. The most recent instance was
when I went down to visit her a few weeks ago and thought it would be fun to bake a pie together with nectarines we bought at the farmer's market. For the filling, I used this recipe from Bon Appetit, which calls for " 3 1/2 pounds firm but ripe peaches, peeled, halved, pitted, each half cut into 3 wedges." So as we begin preparing the ingredients, my mom asks, "Do we have to really peel all these peaches, or can we just blanch them and slip the skins off?" Now if I had been alone and thought to google peeling peaches for pie, I would have found that this is a time tested method for easily peeling stone fruit. But since it was my mom suggesting it, what I heard was, "Are you really going to be so prissy and ignorant as to peel this fruit by hand??" So of course I had to get all, "Mom!!! Can we just go by the recipe???" Yes, that's right, I made my poor little mom, who has arthritis in her thumbs by the way, peel 3 1/2 pounds of nectarines with a little veggie peeler out of pure defensiveness.
And that's nothing - you should have seen what happened over Christmas!
I had this big plan to make a 5 course Italian-style seafood feast for Christmas Eve dinner and then roast a duck for Christmas. The duck recipe involved boiling the duck in a ginger broth the day before and then letting it chill in the refrigerator overnight before crisping the skin in the oven the next day. So on December 24, while my mom and I were shucking oysters and preparing smoked salmon hors d'oeuvres and searing scallops to go over a balsamic frisee salad and cooking linguine with clam sauce and sauteeing garlic green beans and baking crab-stuffed shrimp, I also had to boil a duck.
Did I mention the duck was frozen? The recipe had instructed us to defrost the duck in the refrigerator the day before. But after 24 hours in the fridge, that duck was still rock hard. No biggie, since I was going to boil it anyway, but it did present a challenge extracting the packet of giblets and innards from the cavity. I used a combination of warm water and tongs to pry the bird open a few centimeters and wrench out the plastic packet before slipping the duck into the pot of boiling water. About 20 minutes later, in the midst of my seafood machinations, I came across the packet in the sink. "Orange Sauce for Duckling," it said on the front. "OH SHIT!!" I yelled. "That wasn't the giblet packet it was some dumb sauce! So now the giblets are probably still in there and the plastic packet is going to melt in the boiling water and wreck the whole thing!!" I grabbed the tongs and started fishing inside the boiling duck for the errant giblets.
Have you ever tried extracting a hidden packet of organs from the cavity of a duck submerged in boiling liquid? It's not easy let me tell you. "Just take the duck out of the pot, Robin!" my mom shouted. "But it's all wet and hot, it will fall apart if I try to take it out! I have to just do it like this!" I grabbed a silicon oven mitt and tried to grab hold of the duck to stabilize it. "Robin, get your hand out of that pot!" she yelled. Now in hindsight I can see that my mom actually had much better common sense than I did in this situation. But in that moment I did not want to hear criticism of an endeavor that was already on the brink of failure. "Mom just GET AWAY FROM ME AND LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!" I yelled. And then, you won't believe this, but my mom actually spanked me on the butt. Furious, I gripped the duck harder and plunged my tongs deep into the cavity. Just as I realized that it was empty, there was apparently no giblet packet at all, boiling water and duck fat surged over the rim of the silicon mitt and down my hand.
Fortunately my injuries were treatable with aloe and some bandaids and did not merit a trip to the ER. Cause that would have thrown my whole cooking schedule off for the night.
Compared with that episode, in the incident of the peach-bitching, we both came out relatively unscathed. And the pie was totally worth it. In fact, I think I'd willingly scald my hand for this pie. The caramel sauce is an absolutely divine touch. And on this my mom and I both agreed: this was the best peach pie we'd ever eaten.
Peach Caramel Lattice Crust Pie
Crust recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum
Filling recipe from Bon Appetit via epicurious.com
Ingredients:
Pie Crust:
2 2/3 cups (13 oz) all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
6 oz chilled cream cheese, cut into quarters
16 Tablespoons (2 sticks) frozen, unsalted butter cut into 1/2 inch cubes
4 Tablespoons heavy cream
4 teaspoons cider vinegar
1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Filling:
1 cup sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon (scant) ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
3 1/2 pounds firm but ripe peaches, peeled, halved, pitted, each half cut into 3 wedges
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
2 tablespoons whipping cream
3 tablespoons all purpose flour
Instructions:
For pie crust:
In a food processor, combine 2 2/3 cups flour, sea salt and baking powder. Process to combine. Add cream cheese and process until coarse. Add the frozen butter cubes and process until butter is peanut size. Add the cream and vinegar and pulse until butter is the size of small peas.
Transfer mixture to a bowl and mix swiftly with a fork until dough holds together, about 5 minutes.
Place dough on a lightly floured surface and divide into 2 equal halves. Roll each piece into a ball and press the ball into a smooth, flat disc. Wrap each disc in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 45 minutes.
Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375°F. Place foil-lined baking sheet in bottom of oven to catch any spills.
Roll out 1 pie crust disk on lightly floured surface to 13 1/2-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch-diameter glass pie dish. Trim overhang to 1 inch. Fold edges under and crimp decoratively, forming high rim (about 1/2 inch above sides of dish). Chill crust 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, line another baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll out second pie crust disc on floured surface to 13 1/2-inch round. Cut into 3/4-inch-wide strips. Place strips on prepared baking sheet. Chill while baking crust.
When well chilled, line crust with foil; fill with dried beans, pie weights, or even spare change. Bake crust until sides are set and pale golden, about 35 minutes. (While it’s baking, you can prepare the filling, below.)
Do not turn off oven. Transfer crust to rack; remove foil and beans/weights/change. Separate the egg, setting the yolk aside. Beat the egg white to blend, and brush it over the warm crust. Cool completely.
For filling:
Combine 1/2 cup sugar, cinnamon, and salt in large bowl. Add peaches and lemon juice and toss gently to coat. Let stand 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, stir remaining 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water in medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat; boil without stirring until syrup is deep amber, occasionally swirling pan and brushing down sides with wet pastry brush, about 11 minutes.
Remove from heat. Add butter and cream (mixture will bubble vigorously); stir caramel until smooth. Strain juices from peaches into caramel; cool to lukewarm.
When filling and crust are cooled, add caramel and flour to peaches in bowl; toss gently. Transfer filling to crust, mounding in center.
Prepare lattice crust. You can do this two ways.
The easy way is, arrange 6 of the chilled pie crust strips diagonally across the top of the pie, then place the remaining 6 pastry strips diagonally in opposite direction atop first 6 strips.
Of course, since my mom suggested this, I had to do it the hard way instead: for a woven lattice crust, arrange 6 dough strips in 1 direction across top of pie, spacing apart. Working with 1 strip at a time, arrange 6 more strips in opposite direction atop first, lifting strips and weaving over and under, forming lattice. (Pillsburybaking.com has a great diagram showing the easiest way to do this, as well as tons of other pie crust decorating tips.)
Gently press ends of strips to edge of baked bottom crust to adhere. Trim overhang.
Mix the egg yolk you set aside earlier with 2 teaspoons water and brush lattice strips (but not crust edge) with egg yolk glaze.
Mix together 1 Tablespoon sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon to make cinnamon sugar, and sprinkle it over the egg-washed strips.
Bake pie 35 minutes. After 35 minutes, tent pie loosely with foil to prevent overbrowning and continue to bake pie until filling bubbles thickly and lattice is golden brown, about 25 minutes longer. Cool pie on rack.
Serves 6-8 and creates mother-daughter harmony and possibly global peace. Or at least global peach.
