It’s asparagus season, it’s baseball season, it’s school music program season, it’s kitten season.

All of these pale, though, compared to the One Season to Rule Them All.

Pie season.

Fruit pies are the pinnacle of the home baker’s art — sweet and tart, ensconced in a flaky crust. I’d go so far as to say they’ve always been an indicator of a farm cook’s prowess.

When I was just a wee browncoat I read the entire series of “Little House” books. Tacked onto the end of the boxed set is a slim volume called The First Four Years. The First Four Years covers the time just after Laura and Almonzo were married, and they set out to build their own household. It’s an unusual volume in the series in that it doesn’t bear the editorial stamp of Laura’s daughter, Rose, who edited and polished up the rest of the series to give it a smooth narrative and familiar themes.

The First Four Years is rougher and darker than the rest of the series as a result. Almonzo develops what sounds like a viral joint condition similar to rheumatoid arthritis which makes it difficult for him to work with his hands, weather disasters constantly eradicate their crops and efforts to get ahead, and Mr. and Mrs. Boast come off as pathetically creepy when they make Laura a modest proposal to adopt her new baby, their reasoning being that the Boasts themselves cannot have any but Laura and Almonzo could always have more.

we’re getting to the point

There were happy and amusing spots in the narrative, though. One which stood out to me as a child was near the beginning of the book, when Laura and Almonzo moved into the house he’d built for them. She marveled at the kitchen’s modern conveniences, like the pull-out bins for flour and other dry staples. I flashed back in recognition to my house’s kitchen, which had been remodeled when I was six or so. Before then, however, the cupboards had a couple of those same bins along the bottom, which, for the uninitiated among you, open in somewhat similar fashion to an expanding file folder.

laura’s rhubarb pie

The other humorous moment I remember from the book was the first time Laura made a pie in her new home. Almonzo brought home the threshing crew for lunch, and Laura had been wracked with nerves, sixteen years old, hoping everything she’d cooked would turn out satisfactory.

The crew was impressed by the food, relieving Laura. She put the rhubarb pie out. One man took a bite, paused, and reached for the sugar bowl. Lifting the top crust and generously spooning sugar on the rhubarb filling, he joked that the best kind of pie was one where you could control how much sugar was in it. Yeah, she’d forgotten to add the sugar.

with rhubarb pie, try not to forget the sugar

There’s a reason rhubarb is known as pie plant. Familiar to people in the past, rhubarb was rarely used in cooking before sugar became commonly available, because it’s so incredibly astringent. I kind of proved this in my savory rhubarb experiment, in which I found out it was very difficult to make rhubarb tasty without sugar.

The beauty of fruit pie is that balance between sweet and tart. Try not to freak at the 1-⅓ cups of sugar in this rhubarb pie recipe. The rhubarb needs it, and you’ll still have that distinctive rhubarb tang.

Rhubarb’s the first pie fruit of the season. Try to get a pie made with it before the rhubarb’s gone. You won’t be sorry.

rhubarb pie

I haven’t done a pie crust tutorial yet, and for that I apologize. If making your own crust, please, please just use the recipe on the Crisco can. Note that the shortening was reformulated several years ago to make it virtually trans-fat free (the label says 0 grams). You’ll be disappointed with butter. Use shortening, use ice cold water, add just enough water til the dough comes together cohesively, and don’t play with the dough too much, and you’ll have a flaky crust. Trust me.

oven: 450°F (then 350°F)
prep: 15 minutes (assuming pie crust is already made)
total time: 1 hour 15 minutes

pastry for a 9-inch double crust pie
4 cups chopped rhubarb
1-⅓ cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon butter

Preheat oven to 450°F. Roll out bottom crust and place in 9-inch pie plate. Trim edge of pastry.

In a medium bowl, combine sugar and flour. Sprinkle ½ cup of the sugar-flour mixture on the bottom pastry crust in the pie plate.

Dump the chopped rhubarb on top of it.

Sprinkle the remaining sugar-flour mixture evenly on top of the rhubarb.

Cut the butter into 6-10 smaller bits and dot the rhubarb with them.

Roll out top crust and cover the pie. Trim, seal edges, and crimp. With a sharp knife, make a few slashes in the top crust to allow steam to escape.

Place pie in 450°F oven on bottom rack. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350°F and bake another 45 minutes, or until top crust is very slightly golden and fruit is bubbling.

Remove pie from oven and let cool on a rack for an hour or more. If you cut into a warm pie, it goes all over the place! If you can resist long enough to let it cool completely, you won’t have watery juices pouring out from the slice you just cut.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: rhubarb

Blueberry pie ranks right up there. Number two after sour cherry pie, for sure. I’d always had blueberry pie that was baked, but the blueberries this year are so fabulous — large, and the perfect sweet-tart combination — that I wanted to do one that was more strawberry pie-style.

In other words, blueberries mixed with a thickening agent and set inside a prebaked shell of some sort. So the flavor of the fresh berries would burst through.

KAF came through! That’s the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book. Remember that, because I’m not going to repeat it.

The original recipe in KAF called for 1 cup of sugar. Based on scientific evidence — Mom had just made a fresh blueberry pie using another recipe calling for 3/4 cup sugar and turns out is was JUST. TOO. SWEET. — I cut it to 1/4 cup. I don’t know why you’d want more, unless you’re some kind of stereotypical sugar-loving animal whose name escapes me at the moment. Plus if you use the walnut-oat crust, you’re getting some more sugar there.

why is there no picture of the entire pie?

Because I was madly baking it, and cookies, and zucchini bread, before going to Gun Lake. And I didn’t get a picture of it before we half-demolished it. It was chilly, and dark, and rainy. Poor light for food porn anyway.

These were truly the best I could do. They do not do the pie justice.

How about some lakeside fun distraction before the recipe

G & B hurtling towards icy lake water. Have fun, guys.

Yeah, that looks fun. And warm, judging by that windbreaker. And not at all so windy there are whitecaps on the lake. Newp.

When the windsock is horizontal, that’s a clue.

It was sunny like this for the five minutes each day between when the sun lowered between the cloud cover and the trees in the west. Yay.

But we got to play games! Like this one, Last Days of Pompeii, and Ticket to Ride: Europe, and Ghost Party. I liked TtR:E more than I thought, particularly because I kicked ass and totally won our second game. J thought Pompeii was “mean” just because you throw people into a volcano. Hmph. (Side note: Becky is coming back to town very very soon, bearing games like Citadels, Diamant, and Power Grid, none of which I’ve played and all of which I’m drooling to play. So. Excited.)

Oh, yeah. You came for pie.

fresh blueberry pie

This recipe is adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, aka My Favorite Baking Cookbook Ever. Reprinted with permission.

prep: 20 minutes
to table: 90 minutes
servings: 8

1 prebaked pastry shell or walnut-oat crust
4 cups (1-1/4 pounds) fresh blueberries
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup (1 ounce) cornstarch
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon cold water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine 2 cups of the blueberries with the sugar in a large saucepan. Mix the cornstarch with the lemon juice and water, stirring till smooth, and add to the blueberries.

Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently, until thickened. The liquid will quickly turn hot pink, and then deepen as the blueberries release their juices. This cornstarch mixture thickens really quickly and well. Remove from heat, and add the remaining uncooked berries, stirring to combine. Stir in the vanilla.

Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Spoon the blueberry filling into the baked pie shell. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Variation: You can make this with frozen blueberries instead.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blueberries

Now there’s a mouthful. Know why? Because it’s so versatile. It works for the gluten-free folks. It works for the pie folks. It works for the tart folks. It works for the don’t-make-me-get-out-the-rolling-pin folks.

Even better, this walnut-oat pie crust recipe is just a prelude to the fresh blueberry pie I made it with, coming up soon. Thought I’d get you going with this amazing crust first, because it will work with more than just blueberry pies. It’ll work with cheesecake, other pies, all sorts of tarts.

And it’s press-in-the-pan easy.

the mad day of baking for gun lake

Last week, as usual, I totally miscalculated time to food ratios. I was leaving on Thursday to visit J and B at the lake and for some reason I dicked around doing comp stuff all of Tuesday, totally forgetting this meant I’d overcompensate on Wednesday in a mad rush.

Wednesday I wound up making a double batch of no longer gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, a variation I use when doubling that replaces some of the oat flour with white whole wheat. Makes for a more traditionally taller cookie.

Then, or rather simultaneously — I wound up washing a lot of dishes that day — I tried out KAF’s zucchini bread. KAF, I love your cookbook, but one of your recipe developers has a serious nutmeg fetish. Many of the recipes have about twice the nutmeg I’d normally add to things, taste-wise, and I like nutmeg. On the bright side, my victims friends thought it was just the right amount.

The zucchini bread came out fine, cooled fine, cut a few slices to photograph, perfect texture. Until it sat a few hours, and became an uber-moist blob. Ick. All I can think is perhaps I should have chopped the zucchini up more finely after grating it, or let it sit and drain a bit before adding to the batter. Maybe my zucchinis are just really watery. It improved upon toasting, at least, and K liked it a lot that way. :p

Also simultaneously, I was madly putting together this crust and the blueberry pie, which I’ll go into in more detail in the next post. I know. Such a tease.

a more awesome crust you will not find

No siree. Not if you like oats and walnuts. And if you don’t like those, you don’t like food, and you aren’t reading this anyway.

It’s a crunchy crust, of decent thickness, about 1/4 inch. Crunchy kind of like those crunchy granola bars, but not to quite that tooth-breaking extent. The crunchiness crumbles right away in your mouth, and the butter and brown sugar enhance the warm toasty flavor of the baked oats and walnuts. This walnut-oat crust is the perfect foil for lightly sweetened fresh fruit pies. I’d like to try it with the currant pie. I bet cream pies like that would work great with the contrast of smoothness and crunch.

Look no further. This is the perfect press-in-pan crust.

gluten-free walnut-oat pie or tart crust

italic:
This recipe is adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, aka My Favorite Baking Cookbook Ever. Reprinted with permission.

prep: 20 minutes
total time: 35 minutes
servings: 8
special equiment: food processor, 9- or 10-inch pie plate
oven: 350 degrees

1-1/3 cups old-fashioned or quick-cooking rolled oats (not instant)
1 cup walnuts
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Spread the oats in a round cake pan. Spread the walnuts in another round cake pan. Bake the walnuts until they smell toasty and are beginning to brown, about 8 minutes. Bake the oats until they begin to brown, 15 to 18 minutes. Watch both the oats and the walnuts carefully; they go from brown to burned quite quickly.

After removing the walnuts from the oven, let them cool for a few minutes. Then, while the oats are still toasting, coarsely chop them. There’s no need for fineness as they’re going into the food processor.

When the oats are done, remove them from the oven. Transfer both the toasted oats and chopped toasted walnuts to a food processor. Add the sugar and salt and drizzle in the melted butter.

Process until the oats and walnuts are finely ground and the mixture is cohesive. Happily for us, this stage will be obvious — all the ingredients will be moist and stick together.

Remove the mixture from the food processor and press into the bottom and up the sides of a 9- or 10-inch pie plate (not deep dish) that’s at least 1-1/4 inches deep, or a similar tart pan.

Bake at 350 degrees until it’s just barely beginning to brown, 14 minutes. Remove from the over and set it on a rack to cool. Use with your favorite prebaked-crust pie or tart recipes.

Variation: Use pecans instead of walnuts.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2009. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: oats, walnuts

Oh man. You have to try this. Currant chiffon pie. If you don’t have currants, sub another juice like lemon, orange, or grape or raspberry or…anything. Just make this pie, once in your life. It’s creamy, fluffy, melty, and tart, the perfect foil for a flaky pastry crust or graham cracker crust.

Seriously. Dude. Eat this pie and die happy.

This pie will drive you to eat when you’re not hungry. One slice is good, two better, three divine. Consume only in public or with other safeguards nearby.

reverse engineering a mid-twentieth century recipe

Grandma (Dad’s mom) used to make this currant pie, in a convenience-food version using lemon Jell-O and Dream Whip. I wanted to recreate it using less-processed foods, and it was a bit of a challenge at first.

First, we always called it currant cream pie.

Reseaching cream pies on the internet taught me three things:

1. Always turn on SafeSearch when googling phrases like “cream pie.” I cannot emphasize this enough.

2. It wasn’t a cream pie. It was a chiffon pie.

3. No currant juice-specific pie recipes exist anywhere on the intertubes. They all used whole berries. Which didn’t make sense to me, as currants have nasty raspberry-like seeds. And you know what I think of those.

I turned to a cookbook I always seem to forget about: the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook. It’s not trendy, vegetarian, whole grain, or frou frou, so it languishes on the shelf. What it does have, however, is basic recipes for everything, in spades. And it had a few chiffon pie recipes. The ones closest to my needs were a lemon chiffon pie and an orange chiffon pie.

Currants are not as tart as lemons, nor as sweet as orange juice, so I had to play with the sugar amounts a bit. The recipes also differed in that one called for 4 eggs, one for 3. So I did a trial run, with 4 eggs and a cup of sugar. It filled a 10-inch pie plate to the brim, but was a bit sweet and a bit eggy.

So I tried again, with the result here, using 3 eggs and 3/4 cup sugar. Dad and I agreed you could cut another 1/8 to 1/4 cup of sugar for more tartness.

on the bright side, you’ll master beating egg whites and whipping cream

Chiffon pies rely on gelatin for stability…

…beaten egg whites for their airiness…

…and most add some whipped cream for, well, creaminess.

In this recipe you’ll do all those, plus fold in the egg whites and whipped cream. The links to tips for these techniques are in the recipe as well.

currant chiffon pie

Linda thinks this is still a little eggy. I think that’s due to the egg yolks in the gelatin mixture. I’ll try that without the yolks sometime, but I really like it like this too so I’m in no hurry.

prep: consider this a 3-part recipe
to table: 2-1/2 hours
servings: 8

All the ingredients:

3 egg yolks
1 cup currant juice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
red food coloring
3 egg whites
1/8 to 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream, NOT ultra-pasteurized if possible
1 baked pastry shell or no-bake graham cracker crust shell, 9 or 10 inch

1. Make the currant-gelatin mixture

Whisk together the egg yolks, currant juice, and lemon juice in a small bowl. Mix the gelatin, salt, and sugar in a small saucepan. Stir currant mixture into the gelatin mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and begins to boil. It’s ready when the color changes from dark pink to pepto pink, and the liquid begins to “swell up” in the pan. You’ll know it when you see it.

Transfer the currant-gelatin mixture to a bowl and add 1 drop of red food coloring, if desired. Chill currant-gelatin mixture in refrigerator, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes — until it’s the consistency of corn syrup, or unbeaten egg whites.

2. Beat the egg whites

Use a stand mixer. It’s just easier. Pour 3 room-temperature egg whites into the bowl, and beat on high speed using the whisk attachment until soft peaks form. While running the mixer on high speed, slowly pour in 1/8 to 1/4 cup sugar, and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

Fold the egg whites into the currant-gelatin mixture. This means don’t stir. Just use a big spatula and encourage the whites and the currant mixture to meld together. Imagine you’re a chaperone at a junior high school dance, with girls lining one wall and boys the other, and it’s your job to gently get them to meet.

3. Make the whipped cream

If you have two mixer bowls, consider yourself lucky. If you don’t, wash out and dry your bowl and whisk attachment, and put them into the freezer for 5 minutes. You want everything to be icy cold when whipping cream. Remove the bowl and whisk from the freezer and connect them to the mixer again.

I only mention to avoid ultra pasteurized cream because it’s not as perfect for whipping, but it will work just fine. Add the 1/2 cup of cream to the bowl, and beat at high speed until soft peaks form. Notice the picture; I went too far to stiff peaks and the whipped cream wouldn’t incorporate smoothly into the pie mixture.

Fold your soft peak-stage whipped cream into the pie mixture until it’s all happy and one color.

Spoon currant pie mixture into the pie shell, and chill until set, about 45 minutes.

Variations: Try this with any juice: lemon, orange, grape, raspberry, you name it. Adjust sugar according to the sweetness of the juice. Currant juice is about midway between lemon and orange. Add some grated lemon zest to the currant-gelatin mixture.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: eggs, red currants