Rustic Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

After unsuccessfully searching for fresh rhubarb at both Trader Joe's and the Union Square green market last week, I thought I had missed my window of opportunity. Luckily, the subletter-du-mois told me she had spotted some at the Key Foods. A quick trip after work and I had the makings of this season's most sought-after dessert.

Ingredients
8 oz. rhubarb, diced
1 lb. fresh strawberries, sliced
1/4 cup corn starch
1 cup sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
Pie crust recipe, doubled. Do not halve into top and bottom crusts.

How to
Wash and cut the rhubarb into 1/2" cubes. Make sure to remove any green leaves; use only the reddish stalk of the rhubarb.

Rhubarb stalks

Sliced rhubarb

1/2" rhubarb cubes

Wash and thinly slice the strawberries.

Fresh strawberries

Single strawberry. It was really photogenic.

Sliced strawberries

In a large bowl, mix together the rhubarb, strawberries, corn starch, sugar and vanilla. Stir gently until everything is evenly coated.

Strawberry-rhubarb mixture

Roll out the dough into as close of a circle as you can (I'm still working on my rolling techniques). Transfer the dough to a large cookie sheet, then add the fruit mixture in the center of the dough. Make sure to place the dough on the cookie sheet BEFORE you add the fruit!

Cookie sheet with dough and mixture

Fold the dough over and onto the center of the fruit, making sure to leave a hole right in the center. Work clockwise and wet the edges of each fold to help the dough stick together. Sprinkle with a healthy amount of sugar and refrigerate or freeze for about 30 minutes.

Folded edges over mixture

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until edges are golden brown.

Rustic strawberry rhubarb pie

Rustic strawberry rhubarb pie

Single slice

This recipe was adapted from Martha Stewart's Mini Rhubarb and Raspberry Galletes recipe, found in this book.

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.

Pie Blogger for a Day, Phat Man Running

What do baking pie and short-distance running have in common?

Well, nothing.

Nothing, that is, until two friends who write completely dissimilar blogs decide to combine individual interests into one action-packed day that results in two fantastic articles posted on each others' respective website.

It's a crossover-post, like that episode when Steve Urkel helps Stephanie learn to love her new glasses. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.

Read Sean's take on the day's pie baking below; my post on running appears on his blog HERE


From The Desktop of PhatManRunning
Inviting a pie blogger into your home always sounds like a great idea. There are expectations of course, and they aren't unreasonable. The first expectation of course is that you'll be eating pie. Not stopped at the very closest bar to the train station drinking beer (though admittedly, that was at least partially my fault). The other, perhaps more important assumption that I made, is that when I asked, should we make a blueberry pie and she said yes, that she would follow with at least mostly the right directions, but I digress.

Let us start from where all great stories do (and most completely shit stories start as well); the beginning.

When I starting blogging (Phat Man Running) it was in large part inspired by Mary's similar adventures in blogging in this very spot. I was a few weeks into beginning a new running regimen and I thought blogging might be a fun way to keep myself going. I hadn't expected the results to be a sweaty photo of me being the first images to now come up when I Google stalk myself, but this is what happened. Mary and I have been remotely comparing notes on blogging, constantly checking our website traffic, and commenting on how "big" we seem to both be in Russian. While our blogs seem diametrically opposed, it also seemed like we would have to do a blog cross-over sooner or later. So, we set the plan that Mary would come to Always Sunny Philadelphia (Killadelphia as it's been called lately) bake some pie and run a little bit.

The date was set, and on a brave Sunday morning in February she took the bus down. Again, to be fair, the bar was my idea. Also, skipping the whole running/pieing/blogging thing and just going on a bar crawl that would involve eating pie (and possibly running from cops) may have been my proposal. But rather than doing less, we chose to do more. Rather than make a pie, we chose to make a pie meal.  Mini quiche appetizers, Shepard's pie, and blueberry pie (someone once told me antioxidants were good for running, I don't remember why, but this is the kind of healthy advice you are used to if you've read my blog before, I'm assuming I don't need to hyperlink to it again.)

After a short trip to Trader Joe's, we returned to my home to make the pie crusts. While Mary clearly had a better idea of how to make the pie crust than I did, she didn't speak up. Rather, she chose to just passive aggressivly tweet at me--made worse because she didn't tag me in the tweet, nor use the official Pie Running Cross Over Post hash tag, #PRCOP. 

I keep telling myself, "it's ok, different people make pie crusts in different ways." Yet I somehow don't believe me...
— Mary Spadoni (@Pies_Etc) February 19, 2012

I believe you Mary, it's okay.

The pie crusts were put in the fridge before we got all did up and ready to run, which you'll have read about on Phat Man Running. Needless to say, she didn't find the fun.

Just completed the 1st leg of the Couch to 5k training session. Being a pie blogger tastes so much better
— Mary Spadoni (@Pies_Etc) February 19, 2012

When we got home, we started boiling some big peeled russet potatoes. Afterwards, we created the filling of the pie which started with four chopped carrots and a large onions sauteed in olive oil with salt and pepper. Once they were softened, a pound of lean beef was added and browned.

After draining the excess fat, we added a tablespoon of butter, quarter cup of tomato sauce, a glass red wine, and two tablespoons of flour before letting it cook down. Once it cooked down, a cup of chicken stock and half a can of corn was added, then cooked down again, finishing the filling.

The filling was added to a pie crust, mashed potatoes with butter and buttermilk was piped onto the top of the pie, coated with a beaten egg and sprinkled with parmesan before it was placed in the over at 375 for 20 minutes.

Nutrition Facts Shepard's Pie
4 Servings
Amount Per Serving
Calories		842.3
Total Fat		48.4 g
	Saturated Fat	25.0 g
	Polyunsaturated Fat	2.4 g
	Monounsaturated Fat	16.9 g
Cholesterol		151.5 mg
Sodium		1,145.8 mg
Potassium		1,274.7 mg
Total Carbohydrate		68.4 g
	Dietary Fiber	6.5 g
	Sugars	2.4 g
Protein		28.9 g

I expect this is the first time--and likely the last time--nutritional information is ever discussed on Pies Etc. It's not what the blog is about, and I wouldn't expect it to be. But my blog is, at least superficially, about fitness, I've lost nearly 25 pounds since starting it four months ago, so I'm not without any authority on the topic. And its from that position I can report, this wasn't a healthy pie. It's wasn't HORRIBLE and you really could have gotten six or eight serving out of this if you had to. But, I'm also going be gracious by saying we only ate a quarter each.

The good things about the pie though, is that there was plenty of protein (but really I'm just stretching at straws to say that.) What I don't have to stretch to say, is that it was a delicious pie, that it was easy to make, and will be scrumptious come St. Patrick's day, just a few days a way (you will be able to tell this when a grass hopper pie appears on the blog shortly I'm guessing.)

This is already a really log blog post isn't it?

Well we also made some puff pastry mini quiches for apps and runny blueberry pi--though I guess it was thematic-- which most pie bloggers would call a failure, but Mary's ability to forgive anything that comes in a round shape and a buttery crust seemed to save it from the bin. We scooped it in to bowls and licked them clean.

How did my experience as a pie blogger for a day go? Well, having Mary come and visit is always a pleasure. Cooking with her? Not so much. But I will say, while finishing a 5 miler race, or even a 5k twitter road race with a record time might give a sense of accomplishment, it's nothing compared to coming home to fridge packed with leftover Shepard's and blueberry pie just waiting to be eaten.

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

Romantical V-Day Pie Pops

This recipe will be useful to you if:

A.) You want to show your sweetie how much you love him/her this Valentine's Day by showering him/her with sweet, bite-sized treats that are cute, heart-shaped, and every other cloying adjective that can be used to describe the Feb. 14th holiday.

B.) You're (still) single (again) and need an unhealthy dessert to accompany the bucket of Chinese food you'll be consuming while wearing black and watching Fatal Attraction at such a high volume that it drowns out the sound of your roommate making heart-shaped french toast for her "romantic blinner date."

C.) You appreciate the food-on-a-stick genre. Examples include shish-kabobs, lollipops, popsicles, and anything found at the Wisconsin State Fair.


Ingredients 
3-4 oz. fruit spread/jam/jelly/preserves. I used Hero Strawberry Preserves because frankly, it's the best out there
Unbaked pie crust (Here's my recipe!)
Flour to use in dough-rolling process
Wooden sticks/skewers to use as popsicle sticks, these will get baked in the oven with the pies
Cookie cutter - heart-shaped if you're in a relationship, pentagram shaped if you're not and all sorts of bitter
    **I discovered too late that I did not own any cookie cutters, so I cut a heart out of a thick piece of posterboard and used it as a stencil.
1 egg, for egg white wash

Glaze
4 oz. white chocolate chips
2 tbs. milk
1/3 cup confectioner's sugar

How to
Roll out your dough to about 1/8" in thickness. I suggest spreading more flour than usual on the rolling surface, this will help to lift the cut dough without it breaking. Using the cookie cutter (or stencil) cut out an equal number of shapes.

Strawberry preserves, rolling pin and flour, pie crust with heart stencil

Place half the hearts on an ungreased cookie sheet. Press the wooden skewer into the bottom of each heart. Add a dollop of the fruit spread in the center (but only a small dollop! A little goes a long way), then top off with the second half of the hearts. It helps to run a little water around the edges of each bottom piece before sealing with the top half, as you want to make sure to firmly press the two edges together. Use an extra skewer to press a decorative edge around the heart.

The Four Stages of Pie Popdom

I found it best to work assembly-line style, performing one step to all the slices before moving on to the next step. Once you're close to finishing the last of the pops, preheat the oven to 375 degrees (there's no need to preheat the oven at the beginning of the process, I found the first few pops to be a bit time-consuming as I was still figuring out my system and finding my groove.)

A Pie Pops tryptic

Brush a coat of egg white wash over the top of each pop and bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

While the pops are cooling, make the glaze - whisk together the chocolate, milk and sugar until creamy. Drizzle over the pops in a fun, decorative fashion.

If you're feeling creative, you can add a bow, glitter, paint or sparkles to the sticks. The amount of flair you add to the pops is in direct corelation with the amount of love you have for the recipaint of the pie pops. My pie pops did not have any such embellishments.

Pie Pops!

I got my inspiration for this post from three different sources - the William-Sonoma catalogue, my roommate who flipped through said Willam-Sonoma catalogue, and this site, which apparently came up with the idea for heart-shaped pie pops before anyone else.

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!