Since I have had my favorite pie book The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, by the Elsen sisters, I have been wanting to make one of the cherry pies. I have always loved cherry pies, even the frozen ones that you find in grocery stores! Just put a little ice cream on top, and you have a summer treat, in my opinion. But in my years of cherry pie eating, I had never eaten a "fresh from the oven" cherry pie. I looked at the fresh cherry pies in the pie book this summer and became more determined to make one. One day a friend mentioned that he had seen and eaten fresh sweet cherries at a local market, so I went to Greenlife to get the ingredients I needed for the "Sweet Cherry Streusel Pie".
This filling for this pie included 5 cups of sweet cherries as well as brown sugar, lemon juice, apple, cinnamon and potato starch. This pie had few ingredients and was relatively easy to assemble. But the hard part was pitting 5 cups of cherries! This task took me about an hour, and left my hands and fingers tired and stained with cherry juice! It was after completing this part of the pie preparation that I realized why I had never made or eaten a fresh cherry pie. It is obviously much easier to buy canned, pitted cherries! The pie crust was a butter crust on the bottom and a streusel topping. The streusel topping was an easy mix of sugars, butter and flour, which is refrigerated before putting on top of the filled pie.
I was more excited about taking this pie out of the oven and digging in than most fruit pies that I have made. I was curious about whether the fresh cherries would really make a difference in a cherry pie. First, the pie was beautiful to look at, with the colorful, dark red cherries visible in each slice. And the pie tasted as good as it looked! One aspect I liked about this pie was the texture, specifically the cherry filling. Most cherry pies are thickened with cornstarch, while this one used potato starch instead, which made it less "paste like". The fresh cherries made it the most unique cherry pie that I have ever had. I will say that the pie was very rich, so that a small slice was enough for a dessert. I loved the pie alone, but did try it with whipped cream and ice cream. Honestly, I thought this pie was good any way that it was served.
My husband and I were eating our way through this pie pretty fast, and I broke the news that I planned to freeze part of it to save for later. I had been making so many pies this summer, and thought that this would prevent us from having to do extra exercise to work off all of my pies. However, I changed my mind after eating about two-thirds of this pie. Oh, well - I will freeze part of the next one. For now, I will keep doing the extra walking!!
A discussion of topics that are of great importance in my life, including pie-making, exercise, travel, and gardening. The purpose is to provide information, humor, and insight about these activities.
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Melanzana e Dolce: Eggplant and Dessert
Several months ago, when we were in Italy, I was impressed by the wonderful food. (as is everyone that visits Italy). One incredible fact is that we did not put on the the usual 3-5 pounds that most of us put on after traveling. While it is true that we did a lot of walking, we probably ate enough so the we took in more calories than we burned off. As we thought about this situation, we agreed that the secret may have been the freshness of the ingredients and the manner in which the food was prepared. Fresh vegetables cooked with olive oil and paired with freshly caught seafood is a pretty healthy diet. Many diet experts tell us that the "Mediterranean" diet is beneficial.
One of the foods we enjoyed very much in Italy was melanzana, Italian for eggplant. Whether it was eggplant parmesan, or sauteed eggpllant, we considered this a culinary treat. Fortunately, my husband enjoyed a bumper crop of eggplant in his garden this year. I began to look for various ways to prepare eggplant and found an intriguing recipe called "Ratatouille and Polenta Pie", in local food author Ashley English's book A Year of Pies. This recipe featured eggplant as the main ingredient, but also included garden fresh zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes. These vegetables were chopped, put in a roasting pan and baked for an hour with onions, olive oil, and shallots. (chopped shallots were my addition). The roasted veggies were then placed in a pan over the stove and sauteed with fresh parsley, thyme, oregano, olive oil and red wine. These savory vegetables were placed in a greased deep dish pie plate.
The part of the recipe that makes this a "pie" is the polenta topping. For those who may be unfamiliar, polenta is yellow corn meal, stone ground at either a coarse or medium consistency. I was able to find it at the local grocery Green Life. The corn meal is cooked over the stove with water for about 15 minutes. More thyme and parsley are added to the thickened mixture, along with salt and butter. The polenta is spooned over the vegetable mix and put in the oven to broil for about 8 minutes.
The resulting pie was beautifully browned and had a firm but moist texture. After letting this cool for about 15 minutes, we tasted this fragrant pie, and it was even tastier than I had expected. The roasted vegetable and polenta combination is truly different and delicious. This is an outstanding vegetarian entree, and could easily be the main course without a meat. However, since I also developed a love of prosciutto while I was in Italy, I served a few slices of this with the ratatouille pie.
Since I was on a roll with my cooking that day, I made another pie from English's fun pie book. Feeling in an Italian mood, I decided to try the "Nectarine and Lavender Crostata". Crostata is an Italian pie which has a "fold over" crust, similar looking to a pizza. I used fresh white nectarines (skin stays on), dried lavender flowers, butter, sugar, arrowroot, vanilla, and sea salt. Instead of putting the the rolled out butter crust on a pie plate, it is put onto a baking sheet. The fruit and accompanying ingredients are combined and then spread on the rolled out crust, with a 2 inch diameter of dough which is then folded over the filling. The crostata is baked for 30 minutes. I actually took the crostata to a gathering with friends, so I only grabbed a small piece, but by all reports, this was a light, pastry like pie. A crostata could be filled with other fruits, like berries and pears.
I loved both of these recipes, and plan to keep going through Ashley English's pie book to try other delicacies. The only downside of my Italian inspired cooking day was that I was totally exhausted by the end of the day! A friend and I were recently discussing the days when cook books were filled with recipes of casseroles using canned goods and potato chips! It takes a lot more time and effort to make dinners with fresh ingredients, but these meals not only taste better; they are better for us. And you will sleep very well after a full day of cooking!
One of the foods we enjoyed very much in Italy was melanzana, Italian for eggplant. Whether it was eggplant parmesan, or sauteed eggpllant, we considered this a culinary treat. Fortunately, my husband enjoyed a bumper crop of eggplant in his garden this year. I began to look for various ways to prepare eggplant and found an intriguing recipe called "Ratatouille and Polenta Pie", in local food author Ashley English's book A Year of Pies. This recipe featured eggplant as the main ingredient, but also included garden fresh zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes. These vegetables were chopped, put in a roasting pan and baked for an hour with onions, olive oil, and shallots. (chopped shallots were my addition). The roasted veggies were then placed in a pan over the stove and sauteed with fresh parsley, thyme, oregano, olive oil and red wine. These savory vegetables were placed in a greased deep dish pie plate.
The part of the recipe that makes this a "pie" is the polenta topping. For those who may be unfamiliar, polenta is yellow corn meal, stone ground at either a coarse or medium consistency. I was able to find it at the local grocery Green Life. The corn meal is cooked over the stove with water for about 15 minutes. More thyme and parsley are added to the thickened mixture, along with salt and butter. The polenta is spooned over the vegetable mix and put in the oven to broil for about 8 minutes.
The resulting pie was beautifully browned and had a firm but moist texture. After letting this cool for about 15 minutes, we tasted this fragrant pie, and it was even tastier than I had expected. The roasted vegetable and polenta combination is truly different and delicious. This is an outstanding vegetarian entree, and could easily be the main course without a meat. However, since I also developed a love of prosciutto while I was in Italy, I served a few slices of this with the ratatouille pie.
Since I was on a roll with my cooking that day, I made another pie from English's fun pie book. Feeling in an Italian mood, I decided to try the "Nectarine and Lavender Crostata". Crostata is an Italian pie which has a "fold over" crust, similar looking to a pizza. I used fresh white nectarines (skin stays on), dried lavender flowers, butter, sugar, arrowroot, vanilla, and sea salt. Instead of putting the the rolled out butter crust on a pie plate, it is put onto a baking sheet. The fruit and accompanying ingredients are combined and then spread on the rolled out crust, with a 2 inch diameter of dough which is then folded over the filling. The crostata is baked for 30 minutes. I actually took the crostata to a gathering with friends, so I only grabbed a small piece, but by all reports, this was a light, pastry like pie. A crostata could be filled with other fruits, like berries and pears.
I loved both of these recipes, and plan to keep going through Ashley English's pie book to try other delicacies. The only downside of my Italian inspired cooking day was that I was totally exhausted by the end of the day! A friend and I were recently discussing the days when cook books were filled with recipes of casseroles using canned goods and potato chips! It takes a lot more time and effort to make dinners with fresh ingredients, but these meals not only taste better; they are better for us. And you will sleep very well after a full day of cooking!
Friday, August 5, 2016
And Now For Something Completely Different:Cinnamon Apricot Pie with Vanilla Pouring Cream
I am still going through the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, with my ultimate goal of making every pie in the Elsen sisters' book. What I have found, not surprisingly, is that I have favorites that I want to make over and over again (The Salted Caramel Apple and Bourbon Pear Crumble come to mind). Since I can't spend every waking minute making pies, I have found it more difficult to keep trying new pies. But this week, I did make a new one that I had been wanting to make since last summer: "Cinnamon Apricot Pie with Vanilla Pouring Cream".
This pie fascinated me, because it is uncommon to find fruit pie recipes that use apricots. I love apricot jam, and I had the pleasant taste of that in my mind when I found this recipe. So I began to look for fresh apricots last summer. To my dismay, I could not find them after looking at the produce sections of the major local groceries. I thought that I simply waited too late in the season last year, so decided that I would begin early this summer. I was finally able to get fresh apricots at Green Life Grocery and Earth Fare, and a friend said that she had seen some at a local farmer's market. But apparently, the availability of fresh apricots is limited because, according to my research, the growing season is relatively short. Furthermore, California is the only major producer of apricots in the country, and they are rather hard to export. Luckily,I was able to find two different varieties of this interestingl fruit to use in the pie.
The crust is the usual luscious butter crust. The apricot filling consists of the fresh apricots, lemon juice, granulated and brown sugars, ground cinnamon, potato starch, and Old Fashion bitters. This is the first time that I had used potato starch for a pie, with the usual thickeners being either ground arrowroot or cornstarch. (Potato starch, by the way, can be found at grocery stores that carry organic and natural ingredients). After the fruit pie is cooked and cooling, the cream topping is prepared. The "pouring cream" is made of milk, egg yolks, cornstarch, sugar,and 2 tablespoons of dark rum. It is important to note that the pouring cream should be warm when the pie is ready to be served.
The pie was a great combination of sweetness and tanginess, with the cinnamon being a great companion for the fresh apricots. I will say that the sugars and cinnamon really improve the flavor of the fresh apricots. Apricots alone, without the cooking, sweetener, and spices are not my favorite fruits. (unlike peaches, which are sweet without sugar). The pouring cream sauce was the perfect topping for this pie. It would have been even better had I made it a little thicker, but it was still delicious. This pie is a true treat, and will be one of those "special " pies that I will serve to guests.
pie that I made just for him, I should not eat half of the pie. Thus, unfortunately, I have not been practicing my usual habit of eating a piece of a new pie every morning for breakfast. Oh, well - there will be other pies in my future!
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Portland's Alluring Gardens
And you will understand that rain isn't such a bad thing after all!
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