Ann's September Pie - Cornish Pasties

I've been interested in making a savory pie since the beginning of the year, despite my knowledge that Sue Anne , the pie maven, looks down upon them. However, I am devoted to a restaurant at home that has opened since I moved away called The Cornish Pasty Co., and decided to try my own traditional pasty. (Some of the best pasties at the restaurant are unusual variations like chicken tikka masala and carne adovada...seriously, this is one of the few things I look forward to when I go home).

So I invited my friend Ol' Blue Eyes over for some hand pie. He lived by an exclusive source of hand pies until recently and would often supply me with copious amounts of discount cherry pies during movie watching. I'm not sure if this was a good thing, but in any case, it seemed fun to make a theme out of the evening with both savory and sweet hand pies. It was also my first opportunity to premiere my new pride and joy:

"Jeg ønsker mig så'rn Foodprocessor!"
That is a joke for my brother.

Yes, my mother gave me a food processor for my birthday this month. I was soooo excited - no more grating butter for me!!!!!!

I looked for recipes for pasties online and found one from a blog called The Barefoot Kitchen Witch. I liked her step by step instructions, and I really love home food blogs. It seemed like a more authentically British story than many of the other recipes I found (most of them came from Michigan mining traditions, which is fine, but not exactly what I wanted). I decided to adapt her recipe to my own uses.

I got my ingredients at the grocery store (who knew that you couldn't find turnips in Kroger?) and went to work cutting up steak, potatoes, rutabagas, and onions. I mixed up my pastry, and got it to a consistency I thought would work. However....


I didn't put nearly enough water in the dough to make it form together, and rolling it out was impossible. I ended up pinching pieces together, placing bits of meat and vegetables on them, splashing it all with Worcestershire sauce, dried parsley, salt and pepper, and then pinching more dough pieces on top. You can see the filling peaking through in the picture. At one point, I was just pressing the crust onto the filling like I was making mud pies or something. This was the most frustrating pie I've made, and I was very afraid of the result.

The pie gods have once again smiled upon me, because these turned out surprisingly well. The dough had a nice flavor, and was crisp, flaky, and golden, and the filling was good. I've definitely had better pasties before, and I would have liked more of a gravy inside, but it was good enough to get a review of "if this were a girl, I would ask her out" from Ol' Blue Eyes.

Control had just returned from a performance of Sweeney Todd. I'm quite surprised she was interested in eating a meat pie afterward. I swear I didn't plan these events to happen the same night.

He is naturally suspicious. This is nothing new.

Me with dessert: apple hand pie.

Cornish Pasties

4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups chilled vegetable shortening, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
8-12 (or more) T ice water

Combine the flour and salt in the food processor, add the shortening, and pulse until the mixture looks like small peas of flour. Add the water in batches until the dough forms into small clumps. Pat it into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least half an hour.

Cut up 1 lb of steak into small pieces, slice 4-5 potatoes, 1 rutabaga, and 1 onion. Heat the oven to 325 degrees. When the pastry is ready, separate it into 8 even pieces, and roll out each piece into a 1/8-inch thick circle. On one half of each circle, place enough meat and vegetables to fill the pastry, but leave room on the edges to seal the crust together. Splash with Worcestershire sauce, and sprinkle with dried parsley, salt, and pepper. Fold over the other half of the pastry over the filling and roll the edges together to seal them. Place on a cookie sheet covered in parchment. Pierce with a knife to vent the dough, and brush with an egg wash for color. Bake for 30 minutes, checking every five minutes thereafter to see if they are done. They should be golden brown.

Elizabeth's August Pie - CUTIE PIE!

For the month of August, I finished growing a human in my belly. When he was done, I pushed him out. Here is my Cutie Pie:


What?? You say that's cheesy? Well, just think of what I could have written:

Take 1 cup cuteness, 2 tablespoons adorable, 3 1/2 teaspoons sweet cheeks, and a dash of grumpy. Bake for 9 months. Yield: One fabulous baby!

So thank your lucky stars, chump.


(Dedicated to Luke Nielson, one serious cutie pie, born August 12, 2008)

Ann's August Pie - Lemonade-Peach

I....have a confession. I didn't make this pie in August. Here's the thing: much like Listle, I had an eventful summer. Unlike her, I didn't birth a child. Or did I???? No, I didn't. But in August, I was dealing with my new church calling and getting things set up for the new school year, and I also moved into a new apartment. This combination created one of the more stressful months of my life, and thus I didn't make this pie until after the first of September. Deal with it! It was still awesome.

I wanted to make some more summery fruit pies, and I had a lot of choices in the pie book. Here is the one I picked. The lemonade helped to heighten the flavor of the peaches - it was bright and fresh, like a summer pie should taste.

The crumbly top was luscious! I love any pie that involves melting butter crumbles and fruit, so this, with it's sunset-colored filling, fit my craving perfectly.

Lemonade-Peach Pie

From Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie by Ken Haedrich

1 unbaked deep-dish pie shell

Filling:

4 cups peeled, pitted, and thinly sliced ripe peaches

1/3 cup frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed

1/4 cup sugar

2 1/2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca

Streusel Topping:

3/4 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, frozen

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Combine all the filling ingredients in a medium-size bowl. Turn the filling into the unbaked pie shell and smooth the top with a spoon. Place the pie on the center oven rack and bake for 25 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, make the topping. Mix the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in bowl. Grate the frozen butter over the dry ingredients and rub between your fingers to make large, buttery crumbs. Refrigerate until ready to use.

4. Remove the pie from the oven and reduce the temperature to 375 degrees. Careful dump the crumbs on the pie, spreading them evenly over the surface with your hands. Tamp them down slightly. Return the pie to the oven, placing it so that the part that faced the back of the oven now faces forward. Just in case, slide a large aluminum foil-lined baking sheet onto the rack below to catch any drips. Continute to bake until the topping is golden brown and the juices bubble thickly around the edge, about 25 minutes.

5. Transfer to the pie to a wire rack and let cool for at least 2 hours before serving.

Elizabeth's July Pie - Lemonade Pie

I went easy in July. I was super sick with Baby #4, and I couldn't make a decent pie of any sort.

The product of a bad pie month: Lemonade Pie!



Recipe
1. Make graham cracker crust. Cook it.
2. In a bowl, mix lemonade (6 0z.) and vanilla ice cream (quart). Pour into crust. Freeze.

Voila!

There are actually better versions of this pie, some of which involve whipped topping, cream cheese, and/or sweetened condensed milk. I know it sounds preposterous, but I couldn't even pull one of those off. It doesn't matter, though. My kids loved this, but my kids pretty much ate toast for all of July, so them loving this pie was the equivalent of the troops in Iraq loving a USO tour from Cher.

Ann's July Pie - Summer Fruit Crostata

It's been really important to me to take advantage of summer fruit for my pies while it's in season. I had planned to go fruit picking a few times (I did make it for blueberries!), but unfortunately had to be content with grocery store fruit for July. Lame! I didn't even get it from the farmer's market! Oh well, at least I'm staying true to my original plan by making a nice juicy fruit pie. I thought it might be fun to go with a crostata - free-form pie! And who better to turn to than the delightful Barefoot Contessa herself, Ina Garten. Listle and I are both MASSIVE Ina fans - so much so that we often call each other to talk about how much we love her, how we wish we were best friends with her, etc. In fact that a couple of years ago we gave each other her latest cookbook, just to say we had given them to each other instead of buying them for ourselves. So I went to her house for Thanksgiving, and we went to the bookstore and each bought a copy, and then were going to exchange them. BUT the joke was on her because I secretly switched out the copy for her with one of her America's Test Kitchen books so she would get all mad that I hadn't followed the plan. BUT THEN even better, when we passed the bags to each other, she took out the book and didn't look at it and then started dancing around, showing it to her husband and brother-in-law and singing something about how we had the same books. Oh man, she looked stupid!!!!!

This recipe comes from that cookbook, Barefoot Contessa at Home. I've never had bad results from an Ina recipe, and the streak still holds. This pie was AMAZING. I didn't have all the correct ingredients for the filling, so I used what I had, which I thought would be okay with Ina. I went with a filling of nectarines and blueberries, which I picked with my own hands!

The crust came together like lucious creamy velvelty goodness. I was told by more than one person that it was the best crust I'd made all year. The recipe actually makes two crusts, so I doubled the filling to make two crostate.

After placing the filling on the crust, you make a crumbly, buttery topping to cover the fruit. Once in the oven, it melted into the crannies of the nectarines, leaving the top crusted over the almost creamy inside. It's the perfect contrast against the juices of the fruit and the flaky pastry. Go, make this. Make it, friends!!!!!! After all, my best friend Ina gave me the recipe, so I'm just happy to pass it along.

Summer Fruit Crostata

Adapted from Barefoot Contessa at Home by Ina Garten

Makes 2 crostate

For the crust:

2 cups flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 sticks cold unsalted butter

6 tablespoons ice water

For the filling:

3 lbs. nectarines

1 pint blueberries

2 tablespoons plus 1/2 cup flour

2 tablespoons plus 1/2 cup sugar

1/2 grated lemon zest

4 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 teaspoons salt

1 stick cold unsalted butter, diced

For the pastry, mix the flour, sugar, and salt together in a bowl. Freeze the butter for 15 minutes, then grate into dry ingredients. Mix together until the butter and flour mix resemble course crumbs. Add the water slowly, incorporating after each addition until the dough just begins to come together. Form into a ball, cut in half and form into two flat disks. Wrap in plastic and refridgerate for at least an hour. (The second disk can be frozen if not needed - if you aren't making two, halve the filling ingredients.)

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.

Roll the pastry into an 11-inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Transfer to the sheet pan.

For the filling, slice the nectarines into a bowl with the blueberries. Toss them with 2 tablespoons of flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar, the lemon zest and juice. Place the mixed fruit on the dough circle, leaving a 1 1/2 border.

Combine the 1/2 cup flour, the 1/2 cup cup sugar, and the salt in a bowl. Freeze the butter for 15 minutes, then grate into the dry ingredients. Mix until the mixture is crumbly. Rub it with your fingers until it starts to hold together. Sprinkle evenly over the fruit. Gently fold the border of the pastry over the fruit, pleating it to make an edge.

Bake each crostata for 20 to 25 minutes, until the crust is golden and the fruit is tender. Let it cool for at least five minutes, serve warm or at room temperature.

Elizabeth's June Pie - Gianuia Pie

Sorry I'm so late on this post. I birthed a child so shut up.

My June pie was AWESOME!! It is called Gianduia Pie and it comes from a book I got from the library called Icebox Pies, by Lauren Chattman.



In the words of the author, "This pie tastes like Baci, the yummy Italian version of a chocolate kiss." I would agree, although at the event I took this to, no one had ever heard of Baci or Gianduia, but they had all heard of Nutella, so no problems there! Besides, it tastes amazing, meaning there is really no need for explanation anyway. Plus, it's easy as, well...pie. (Come on, we all know you've been waiting for someone to make that joke for 6 months of pie posts.)

No pictures of my pie, I hate to report, but you can preview it by checking out the cover on the book above. It's the featured pie!

I took this to a baby shower and everyone loved it. I ended up having heart palpatations as I was trying to leave (pregnancy-related junk I have to deal with each time I have a baby), and so my friends had to help me back inside so I could lie down. No one thought to rescue the pie. (How dare they?) and so the leftovers died in the car. Jeff didn't get to taste it, so I still want to make it for him. Nummers.

This pie is easy but still has a little drama to it, which is a great combination. Enjoy!


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Gianduia Pie (Makes one 9-inch pie; 6-8 servings)

3/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted and skinned
1 1/2 cups heavy cream, chilled
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
One 13-ounce jar Nutella
1 prepared chocolate cookie and nut crust

1. Place the skinned hazelnuts in the workbowl of a food processor and chop them very fine.
2. Combine the cream and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and use an electric mixer to whip the cream until stiff peaks form.
3. Place the Nutella in a medium-size mixing bowl and stir in one quarter of the whipped cream. Gently fold the lightened Nutella mixture back into the remaining whipped cream. Fold in the chopped hazelnuts.
Scrape the filling into the prepared pie shell and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Cover the pie with plastic wrap and refrigerate it until the filling is completely set, at least 6 hours and up to 1 day.

(My changes: I could only find chopped hazelnuts at the store so I didn't skin them. The pie still tasted great. I also covered the top with whipped cream and sprinkled hazelnuts over that.)



Chocolate Cookie and Nut Crust

22 Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers (about 1 cup crumbs)
1/2 cup skinned hazelnuts
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place cookies and nuts in the workbowl of a food processor and process them until they are finely ground. Combine the crumb-and-nut mixture, butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla in a medium-size mixing bowl and stir until the crumb-and-nut mixture is moistened.
3. Press the mixture evenly across the bottom of a 9-inch pie plate and all the way up the sides of the pan, packing it tightly with your fingertips so it is even and compacted.
4. Bake the crust until it is crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. Let it cool completely before filling it. (The crust may be wrapped in plastic wrap and frozen for up to 1 month.)

Ann's June Pie - Rhubarb Custard

I had been quite keen to make a rhubarb pie during the year - after all, it is the pie plant. Being from Arizona, I have no idea of when things are in season, except for citrus - it's one of the 5 C's! Someone clued me in that early summer is rhubarb season and said that she'd seen some at the local farmers' market, so I headed down the next Saturday on the lookout. I was so disappointed to come home empty-handed! (Well, not quite - I was talked into three pounds of organic ground beef for $10.) This was actually the same weekend I made the watermelon pies, and had planned to just make an extra pie for kicks for the sake of getting a rhubarb pie this season. It seemed so Midwestern, and I just had to have one. So I mentioned this to Miss Hass's fiance, Ike, who lives on a lovely, picturesque farm just outside of town. I took pictures with my cell phone of a recent trip out to the farm, but I can't get them out of my phone and onto a computer screen. Suffice it to say that there were rolling hills, a white clap-board house, and tractors. You know, south-central Indiana at its finest. Anyway, back on topic. So I told Ike that I'd wanted to make a rhubarb pie and he said that his neighbor currently had a ton and he could get me some. We discussed how silly it is that so many people don't like rhubarb (what is there not to like?!). This reminded me that my dad's favorite pie is strawberry-rhubarb, so I considered making one in his honor. However, I found a recipe that I couldn't pass up...guess where????

According to the freaking awesome Pie book, Sumner, WA is considered the rhubarb pie capital of the country by more than one source. So Ken Haedrich called up the mayor and asked for the best recipe, and this is the one she supplied. It's from the St. Andrew's Church cookbook, which I think is great because it's a passed down recipe. That's what pie is all about!

It looks like Christmas pie!

This pie was so easy to make. I had a dough already made in the freezer (although it looked kind of greyish when I pulled it out, but it baked up fine), and then I mixed the rhubarb with sugar, eggs, milk, and nutmeg, which gave it deeper flavor than I expected from a summer pie, but was mellow and soothing to the plucky rhubarb. As multiple friends noted, it seemed like a breakfast pie, which I suspect came from the nutmeg. Mr. Haedrich also pointed out in this notes that this isn't a thick custard pie, but rather a light custard that sinks beneath the fruit (is rhubarb a fruit, though? I don't know). Some of my tasters weren't crazy about this pie, but they just don't understand the pleasures of rhubarb with it's sour, vinegary flavor offset with sugar. It's heavenly to me!

La Dolcezza modeled the pie for me because I looked wretched that day...something about rain and exercise. I also made a travesty of serving it - somehow all the pieces fell apart, but they tasted so good!


Sumner, Washington, Rhubarb Custard Pie
from Pie: 300 Tried-And-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie by Ken Haedrich

1 single pie crust, rolled out and fitted into pie plate, chilled for 15 minutes before filling

Filling:

3 cups diced fresh rhubarb stalks
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Big pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon cold butter, cut into small pieces

Combine the rhubarb, sugar, flour, salt, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Toss well, then set aside for several minutes to juice. Whisk the eggs and milk together in a small bowl. Add to the fruit, stirring well to combine. Scrape the filling into the chilled pie shell, smoothing the top of the fruit with a spoon. Dot the filling with the butter.

Place the pie on the center oven rack and bake until the top is crusted over and the filling is set, 50 to 55 minutes, rotating the pie 180 degrees halfway through the baking, so that the part that faced the back of the oven now faces forward.

Transfer the pie to a wire rack and let cool. Serve barely warm, at room temperature, or chilled, with a dollop of whipped cream.