Pie Run 2012 - Shepard's Pie

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of heading to Philadelphia to collaborate on a blog post with my friend Sean from Phat Man Running. We wrote wrote of our individual experiences on each others' sites (I talked of and showed photos from the 20 minute run we went on, he discussed the caloric breakdown of the pies we made), but I realized that I still had a phone full of pictures just begging to be uploaded. And, since no self-respecting pie blogger would ever let well-lit pictures go unposted, here's the first of the two pies we made. (Note: some of the measurements are a bit general, we didn't have access to many measuring cups so we eyeballed a lot of the cooking process)

(Note #2: I was really excited about having someone else do the cooking because that meant I could take a lot of action shots. Please excuse the slightly excessive amount of photos.)

(Note #3: When we were at the Trader Joe's buying groceries, we almost bought pre-made apple pie and called it a day. But we didn't. That's how much we honored the sanctity of our PieRun Mission.)

Pie Crust
Since Sean was running the kitchen for this portion of the day, we used his pie crust recipe - flour, salt, and butter (instead of shortening) - and made enough for two 9" crusts.

 

Ingredients
Butter for sauteing 
2 cups chopped onions
2 cups chopped carrots
8oz. can of corn
1 lb. ground beef
1 cup vegetable stock
A few splashes of red wine
Mashed potatoes as topping
     5-6 large potatoes, peeled and chopped
     1/2 stick butter
     1/2 cup buttermilk
     Salt/pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese as topping
9" pie crust

How to
Melt butter in large skillet. Add onions and carrots, saute until soft.

Add ground beef, cook until brown.

Stir in the stock and wine.


















Add the corn.

It will be soupy; cover and simmer for about 20 minutes.

While the meat is simmering, roll out half of the pie crust and place in the bottom of your pie plate. Excess crust may be consumed.

When the mixture has reduced to your liking, remove from heat and pour into the pie plate.

Spread the mashed potatoes over the meat mixture.

From a homemade piping bag, add decorative potatoes in the shape of a labyrinth. If you so choose.

Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese

Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes, or until potatoes have browned.

Then thrown yourself a very classy dinner party.

Delicioso.

Presidential Pie

This Monday is President's Day. I know this because that's what the mattress commercials tell me, and nothing makes me think, "yeah, I guess I DO need a mattress at 40% off!" like a holiday to celebrate our nation's leaders.

And because it is the American thing to do, I've made a pie in honor of this sacred day.

I know what you're thinking: oh, she's going to make a blueberry pie and dot it with red berries and whipped cream because it'll be all red, white and blue. Or: oh, she's going to make a cherry pie because George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and could not tell a lie.

Amateurs. I would never be so obvious! (and those are really good ideas for the 4th of July pie. please remind me of that sometime around June 30th.)

A history lesson, if you will:

Zachary Taylor, America's 12th president, was a man's man. Known as Old Rough n' Ready (an early precursor to his later nickname, New Pop n' Fresh), Taylor served in the military during a bunch of those wars you learned about in grade school that used dates like 1812 and vaguely racist Indian names. He was also from Louisville, KY, a town where you can drink copious amounts of bourbon and then sober up the next morning with a plate of Bourbon Ball French Toast. During his presidency, for which he was the second-to-last person to successfully run under the Whig party, Taylor hung new curtains and organized the Department of the Interior, told the inhabitants of that area they were calling California to apply for statehood, and established a policy that forbade both the US and Great Britain to control any canals being built in Nicaragua. Known as the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, it is thought to be Taylor's most lasting foreign policy move. Sadly, Teddy Roosevelt superseded that policy 51 years later in a fit of manifest destiny with the equally well-known Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.

Zachary Taylor, though a true stalwart in the oval office, had an unfortunately weak digestive system. After the Washington Monument groundbreaking ceremony on July 4, 1850, he sought refuge from the swampy DC summer heat by consuming cold milk and cherries - too many, that is. He quickly came down with a horrid stomach ache, which turned into cholera and ultimately, death. He had been in office only 16 months. [Disclaimer: I hastily threw this summary together after quickly reading the Zachary Taylor wikipedia page.]

All this is to say - here's my great recipe for Cherry Pie!

Ingredients
Crust - I doubled my usual recipe and added sugar to compensate for the tartness of the cherries
2 cups flour
2/3 cups Crisco shortening
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
Iced water for mixing

Filling
2 pounds pitted cherries - I used Dole frozen cherries because it's February and I live in New York
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon, allspice (combine to taste)
1 tbsp butter
1/3 cup slivered almonds
1 egg for egg wash

Bowl of frozen cherries

Cinnamon/Allspice/Salt, Cornstarch, Sugar, Vanilla

Slivered Almonds

How to
Prepare the dough as normal; cut in half and form into two balls, wrap and refrigerate each ball for at least 30 minutes.

If using frozen cherries, defrost them in a large bowl. If using fresh, rinse and dry the cherries.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Add the sugar, cornstarch, salt, cinnamon, allspice and vanilla to the cherries, mixing thoroughly until all the cherries are evenly coated. It won't look too pretty.

Roll out one of the balls of dough and neatly place in the bottom of your pie tin. Pour the cherries into the tin, sprinkle with the almond slivers, dot with butter, and brush the exposed edges with egg wash.

If you're pressed for time, you can add the top crust as you normally would, covering the pie and sealing the edges. I chose to attempt a lattice crust, or that woven-crust-look that all the pretty pies get to wear.

Here's how that happens: Roll the second ball of dough as normal. With a pastry cutter, cut an equal amount of strips, each about 3/4" wide.

Ok so my strips aren't equal in width. It was my first attempt at this. Don't judge.

Lay half the strips vertically on top of the pie. Peel back every other strip, (the "even numbered strips") lay the first horizontal strip, then replace the vertical strips. Repeat this process, switching between the even and odd strips until you've laid all the horizontal strips.

Step 3.1 of Lattice Pie Crust

Seal together the edges of both crusts by rolling them underneath the outer edge. Brush the top crust with the egg wash.

Unbaked cherry pie

Bake for about 30-45 minutes, or until crust is golden brown. Be careful though - the juices from the cherries WILL run over the edges of the crust. Thanks to the suggestion of my roommate (who frankly is getting quite tired of my cooking experiments exploding all over our NOT self-cleaning oven...sorry, Amanda), I covered a cookie sheet with tin foil and put the pie on top of that for baking; this way all the juices ran onto the foil and made for a pretty easy cleanup. 

Cherry Pie

Also -  I'd like to take this most presidential of holidays to shamelessly plug a great project. If you or anyone you know is part of a theater company and still figuring out the remainder of your 2012 season, or if you're a teacher and looking for a fun way to teach your class about this election year check out 44 Plays for 44 Presidents - it's an exciting mash-up of short theatrical pieces performed all over the country that culminates in one giant ball of theater fun on Election Night. Do it for your children. Do it for your country. Do it for Zachary Taylor.

Presidential Cherry Pie

For this recipe I sought the advice of the Queen of Baking, Martha Stewart. Thanks M!

She's my cherry pie/Cool drink of water, such a sweet surprise

One more picture? Oh, ok.

Tastes so good, make a grown man cry/Sweet cherry pie

Pie Crust - Up Close and Personal

This was originally going to be a very simple post - describe the steps to making a basic pie crust and accompany those directions with photographs. This is a blog about pie, I reasoned. I should tell people how to make a pie crust!

Then I realized that 11,100,000 results come up in 0.24 seconds when you Google the phrase "pie crust recipe," and that describing the few steps to making a pie crust wasn't just the most obvious topic in the history of pie blogs, it was also the most boring idea I'd ever had.

So I decided to do things a little differently.

I had been itching to try out a new iPhone camera lens that this guy had gotten me for Christmas - a macro lens that magnetically attaches to the outside of your cell phone's camera - and rationalized that this was the perfect opportunity to blend my pie crust post and my new (nerdy) gadget. I mean, who hasn't stopped cold in the middle of making a pie to wonder "gee, if only I knew exactly what this flour looked like close up!" Well, I sure have.

I'll call it "pietography."

How to Make a Pie Crust - In Six Simple Steps but Many Accompanying Pictures

Ingredients 
1 cup flour
1/3 cup Crisco shortening
Dash salt
A glass of ice water

How to
1.) Pour the flour into a large bowl

1 cup of flour in a large mixing bowl

Flour, leveled with a knife

Flour on a knife

2.) Add a dash of salt

Grains of salt

Yes, I poured salt all over my kitchen table to get this shot

The (topless) salt shaker

So. many. grains. of. salt. And this is just a dash!

3.) Cut the shortening into smaller slabs, add into bowl

1/3 cup Crisco on a cutting board

Crisco on the edge of a knife

Flour/salt/Crisco in large mixing bowl

4.) Mix the flour/shortening/salt

A pastry cutter makes this step a lot easier

5.) Slowly add some ice water and begin to kneed the dough

A glass of ice water

Ice Cube - the frozen water, not the rapper

6.) Form the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

Ball of kneaded dough

Dough isn't very photogenic up close. Sorry, dough.

Dough on the edge of the pastry cutter

The "normal" photos were all taken with my iPhone, sans special lens. The close-ups were all taken with the Photojojo Macro lens for iPhone. Let's hear it for iPhoneography!

Astoria Test Kitchen: Pie Crust

It's happened to us all: you're standing in the grocery, pouring over your list of ingredients that are about to become a pie and getting really excited about the deliciousness that is about to happen. You are cool, confident, and certain about every culinary choice you're making, sure your future pie will be spoken of for years to come. But then, as you're checking your list one last time, you have a sudden, nagging fear: I'm about to buy a pre-made crust. Will anyone notice? WILL ANYONE CARE???

This worry has plagued me one too many times, and yesterday I decided to end to my troubles by taking a very scientific approach to the Pie Crust Debacle - when directly compared to one another, which of the three types of pie crust (scratch, box, frozen/refrigerated) is the best?

The makings of three different pie crusts

The Method
1.) Prepare the three crusts at the same time under the same conditions (room temperature, humidity level, etc.) according to their individual directions (i.e, follow the rules on the back of the box)
2.) Fill each of the pies with the exact same filling
  2a.) Use the exact same pie plate for all three pies
3.) Bake all at once, at the same temperature, on the same oven rack level
4.) Taste and rate each pie across five criteria: Taste, Texture, Color, Prep Time, & Price

The Crusts
A.) Scratch (Homemade)
     For this recipe I called upon a friend who, for many years now, has been assigned the task of making all the pies for his family's Thanksgiving. Since I know his family to be ones with very critical taste buds, I decided that this was reason enough to use his Great Gramma Chrissy's Pie Crust Recipe (that, and any recipe named after someone's great gramma is good enough for me). I also wanted to use a recipe that was as personal and varied as any special pie crust recipe, because that is the very nature of a scratch pie crust - whether it's passed down from older generations or it's one that is made up on the spot, no two homemade anythings are the same.
    For this particular experiment, this is the recipe we followed:
1 cup flour
1/3 cup Crisco shortening
Dash salt
- Combine ingredients, add very cold water and stir the mixture until it is of a tacky, play-dough consistency. Refrigerate for at least one hour.

Mixing the scratch crust

B.) Crust from a Box
     The middle ground of pie crusts is one that comes in a box - all the dry ingredients are already mixed together, you just have to add ice water (3 or 4 tablespoons, according to the box's directions) until you achieve your desired consistency. For this experiment, I used Jiffy Pie Crust Mix, which has been a baking-section staple in American grocery stores since the 1940's.

C.) Pre-made, Frozen/Refrigerated Crust
     At the other end of the pie crust spectrum lies the entirely pre-made crust. Sometimes it's frozen, sometimes it's refrigerated, but it's goal is for you to simply unwrap, add the filling, and bake. For this experiment, I used Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Crust (you'll see in the picture above that I show the frozen Pillsbury crust - I started with that one, but it completely fell apart when I tried to take it out of it's original pie tin and transfer to another pie plate. I had to run out and get the refrigerated crust, not the frozen one. Whoops!)

The Filling
It was my goal to keep constant as many factors as possible, using the different crusts as the only variable (this is where I pay homage to my middle school science teacher who taught us the importance of constants and variables and such during those never-ending science fairs. Thank you, Ms. Kreiling...oh, and I'm sorry for super-gluing your chalk to the chalkboard ledge. It was all Terri's idea.) Therefore, I made one giant batch of apple filling to evenly distribute amongst all three pies - chopped Granny Smith apples, dashes of flour, cinnamon and nutmeg to season. I didn't add too much spice (actually, I could have added much more) since I wanted to ensure that nothing would mar the ability to taste the crusts - this was an exercise in pie crusts, not making a fantastic apple pie.

Apple filling

The Process
I first made the scratch crust, following the directions I outlined above, and put the dough in the refrigerator. Next I prepared the apples, and the Jiffy crust after that. Nothing on the Jiffy box instructed me to refrigerate that crust, so it remained in the bowl while I dealt with the aforementioned Pillsbury crust issue (running out to buy a new crust only took about 15 minutes, one of the perks of living in New York is finding a full grocery store every seven blocks). Once I had the right refrigerated pie crust, I was ready to make the pies. I used identical 5-inch ceramic pie plates (purchased at my most favorite of all kitchen stores, Fishs Eddy), opting for smaller pies so that I wouldn't end up with an obscene amount of food (three small pies was already two too many for my two-person apartment).

Jiffy crust

A - Scratch  B - Jiffy  C - Pillsbury

The Judging Rubric
I employed three fellow pie lovers to act as my fellow judges (it's amazing how agreeable people are when I ask them to help me eat pie. But ask them to help me put together the Ikea furniture...). We couldn't do a blind taste test like I had originally wanted (my friends arrived during the beginning of the baking process to "advise" and "comment"), but we nonetheless ate and graded a slice of each pie on a 5-point scale (1 = low, 5 = high) across three criteria - Taste (too overpowering? nonexistent?) Texture (too doughy? not flaky enough?) Color (golden brown, please). We also rated Prep Time and noted the monetary cost of each crust, but did not factor the last two into the final score.

The finished pies!

The Results (average scores)
A.) Scratch Crust
    Taste - 3.9
    Texture - 4.5
    Color - 4.5
    Prep Time - 2.3
    Cost - $2 (1 stick of Crisco is about $1, the rest of the ingredients you probably have in your cabinet already, but they'll cost you another $1 or so)
    TOTAL - 4.3

B.) Jiffy (box) Crust
    Taste - 1.5
    Texture - 1.3
    Color - 1.5
    Prep Time - 3
    Cost - $2/box
        **It should be noted that one box barely made enough for a 5-inch top and bottom crust; any regular sized pie would require two boxes
    TOTAL - 1.4

C.) Pillbsury (refrigerated) Crust
     Taste - 3.8
     Texture - 3.8
     Color - 3.8
     Prep Time - 5
     Cost - $4.50
     TOTAL - 3.8

Scoring sheets

Analysis
Jiffy boxed crust was the clear loser. It was unanimously decided that it was doughy in taste and had a texture closer to French bread than pie crust. It was lighter in color than the other two pies and looked almost like an over-processed bakery pie rather than a homemade creation. It was completely wrong for a lighter, sweeter apple pie, but might be alright for a pot pie or breakfast pie (it had such a strong Bisquick taste that I was reminded of the pancakes of my youth). It also wasn't a time-saver when compared to the scratch crust, since it does require some preparation on the cook's part (mixing, rolling, etc.) The only redeeming quality was the the apples on the inside remained perfect wedges and looked like a beautifully stuffed pie. Regardless, I had never used a Jiffy crust before and I'm not likely to use one again.

Apple pie with Jiffy crust

The pie made with the Pillsbury crust came in as a close second. It was thicker than the other two crusts due to the lack of rolling, and had a very flaky consistency and very buttery taste, almost more like a layered biscuit (not surprising, it is Pillsbury brand after all); one of the judges suggested this would make a great baklava. Personally, this was the crust I most preferred and would have declared the winner, but my preferences were outnumbered by the other three judges who felt the crust's taste overpowered that of the apples. While this was the easiest crust to prepare by far, it was also the most expensive at more than double the cost of the other two crusts. However, no one was turned off by this crust as they were the previous Jiffy crust.

Apple pie with Pillsbury crust

The winner of Astoria Test Kitchen: Pie Crust was Great Gramma Chrissy's Homemade Pie Crust. Personally, I found this crust to be a little too light and subtle for my taste, but after expressing this to my fellow judges I quickly learned that I was in the minority. It didn't have an overwhelming buttery or doughy taste - in fact it barely had a taste at all, allowing us to fully taste the fruit filling.  It looked like the perfect pie on the outside - golden brown and not sunken in like the Pillsbury crust. The apples on the inside though were the mushiest of all, the filling looked more like apple sauce than the wedges of the Jiffy crust, but no one seemed to mind the unsightly insides.

Apple pie with Scratch crust

Did we put the pies on Olympic pedestals? Yes. Yes we did.

Bottom line: if you already have a favorite scratch pie crust recipe, then no pre-made crust, no matter how good, cheap, or convenient can replace that. However, if you're in a pinch then there is no shame, culinary or otherwise, in grabbing a frozen or refrigerated pre-made pie crust - your guests might, but if they do they won't be disappointed.


I had a lot of help with this project! Many thanks to Andrew, Caskey and Amanda!