mercedes pie (peaches’n'southern comfort)

oh lord won't you buy me a summer peach pie

today should be about waffles perhaps, but I bought peaches at the farmers’ market. I see peaches- I think pie. So visions of pie not waffles bloomed from the two quart containers of soft green cardboard piled with white and yellow peaches.

as the good professor Brillat-Savarin’s noted on truffles, so said America’s homemaker Ida Bailey Allen:

There are pies and pies.

this pie was of the “old-fashioned kind” invoked in one of those “pies,” the latter, I think. Not dainty; no meringue or fuss. Typically, I approach pie with a well-researched, agonized plan but this was extemporaneous.  Whimsy pie…that must be lifted with two hands and intention.

crust is coming easier after the rhubarb pie triumph using the Baking Illustrated pastry recipe (the methodical chef-writers of “Cook’s Illustrated” reprise the book’s recipe in the magazine’s fall issue, October 2010). Using half butter and half shortening for fat delivers flavor and flake. Using half icy water half alcohol for liquid limits moisture absorption that develops tough gluten yet allows steam to form layers of flakiness. Our cabinet held half a bottle of Southern Comfort to accompany these peaches.

start a pot of water to boil for peeling the peaches then assemble the crust. Cut a cold stick of butter into pieces and scoop out ½ cup of veggie shortening. I store shortening in the freezer since its sole use is pastry. In your biggest bowl, sift a cup of all-purpose flour over the fat and rub well together. If the kitchen is warm, stash it in the fridge for a few minutes to keep your dough cold.  Sift an additional cup of flour along with a pinch of salt into the bowl and rub in until just combined. Stir in a ¼ cup each of icy water and Southern Comfort until it all just comes together. Form the dough into two circles, wrap in waxed paper, and refrigerate for at least an hour.

drop the peaches into boiling water, cover, return to a boil then turn off the heat and let stand for 3 minutes or so.  Remove with a slotted spoon or tongs to a colander; the peachy-water makes excellent brew water for ice tea, so don’t toss it! When the peaches have cooled enough to handle, slide off their skins. A gentle drag downward of each skin should do it; some may want a paring knife, though no need for peeling zealotry.  Halve the peaches, removing the pit, and slice.

in a big bowl, combine the peach slices with a few handfuls of turbinado sugar, teeny pinch of salt, and dusting of flour.  The flour, what I had on hand, can cook up gluey so use a light hand. Auntie Ida would add quick cooking tapioca to thicken up the filling, and cornstarch also works. Maybe I should add that I have small hands—the peaches did not want much sugar. Try adding the minced needles of a sprig of rosemary.

preheat your oven to 450°.

clean off a generous work surface, and roll out your pie dough. The kitchen witches all say the trick to fine crust is deft handling of the dough, so work quickly and add just enough flour to keep it from sticking to the counter or rolling pin. Turn and flip the circle between passes of the pin, working from its center toward the rim. Roll to a thin (1/4 inch) round large enough to drape into your pan up its sides with overhang. I used a cast iron skillet.

pie in flight

carefully lay one round into the bottom of the pan and gently press it into place. Dump the filling in. To cover, roll the second round of dough onto the pin then unroll over the pie. A pie with fillings as juicy as peaches need ventilation—hence the traditional lattice top I am too lazy to make—so cut slits in the top or use a cookie cutter to make art in your top crust. Like this dove. Working around the rim, roll the top and bottom edges together between your fingers to seal. Leave it free form or crimp with a fork or ruffle using your thumb & forefinger as a mold, pressing into it to form a sort of “U.” Paint the top with a bit of cream. For those without brushes, fingertips work fine.

bake for quarter of an hour, until the crust begins to brown, then lower the heat to 350° and bake about 25 minutes or until the crust is crispy golden and filling bubbling, oozing up through your art.

let stand for an hour or so. Serve generous slices to beloved guests with vanilla ice cream (or ginger, raspberry, butter pecan…), whipped cream perhaps gussied up with a bit of sea salt or booze.

rhubarb pie

the ultimate slice of early summer

i love wicked vegetables: potatoes and eggplants from the nightshade family, mysterious mushrooms, and rhubarb, flashing crimson warnings on its stalks, its broad leaves toxic.  It is the collective wisdom of generations of cooks that lets me Betty Crocker it up with poisonous plants.  Not that rhubarb is as risky as, say, blowfish.  Just don’t eat the leaves.  And who wants leaves in their pie anyway?

rhubarb also goes by “pie plant,” its number one use.  The red, celery-textured stalks of this vegetable are so associated with sweets in the U.S. that by court decree rhubarb is a “fruit.”  In making pie, the rhubarb is hardly the scary part.  It is making piecrust that should put the fear of God in you.  Or maybe that’s just me and my history of crusts that scorch, liquefy or otherwise manage to send billows of smoke out of my oven (or the ovens of others—sorry Morgan!) and right to the smoke alarm.  Lesson #1: always put a cookie sheet under a baking pie.  Even with perfect crafting, they tend to bubble and ooze onto the oven floor.

rhubarb is also a harbinger of sweeter summer fruits, at its peak just as strawberries hit the farm stands.  Perhaps that’s why the two seem to go hand-in-hand, although my mother calls adding strawberries the “suburbanization” of rhubarb pie, blaming America’s over-sweet tooth for an adulteration of rhubarb’s tart flavor.  She’s not really a sweet sort of lady, and I am right there with her.  To generously fill a regular pie pan, you want about 8 cups of fruit total and can allocate the proportion of rhubarb to berries as suits your tastes.  Although I used about two cups of berries in this particular pie, I held back on the heaps of sugar called for in most rhubarb recipes.

rinse off about two pounds of rhubarb stalks and slice them into half inch pieces, about 6 cups.  In a large skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter or vegetable oil.  Over medium heat, cook the rhubarb with ¼ cup of sugar for 8 minutes or until it just begins to get soft.  Dump the lot in a colander, put a plate over the fruit, set the whole thing in a big bowl and stash it in the fridge to cool and drain.  According to the scientific sleuths who wrote Baking Illustrated, pre-cooking the fruit protects the crust from saturation and sogginess.

take a deep breath and put together dough for a double piecrust.  Measure out 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour.  Rub in 11 tablespoons cold butter and ¾ cup vegetable shortening.  If you have a pastry cutter or know how to do that thing with knives cookbooks say is possible then do that.  For the rest of us, gently work the flour and fat between your fingers, rubbing them between your thumb and first two fingers, until you have it all in pea sized bits.  It helps to freeze the shortening by the teaspoon beforehand and to stick the whole bowl in the freezer for 3 minutes about halfway through the rubbing, especially if it is hot out.  Add 2 tablespoons sugar and a bit of salt.  Fold in 6-8 tablespoons ice water, just enough for the dough to come together.  Pat the dough into two flattened disks, wrap in wax paper and refrigerate for at least an hour.

when the crust and rhubarb have thoroughly chilled out, transfer the fruit to a big bowl and heat the oven to 500°.  Whisk together ½ cup sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch and a pinch of salt.  The cornstarch slightly thickens the filling; arrowroot also works well.  Prep two cups of strawberries by rinsing them, slicing them if they are large and hulling them if they have a noticeable core.  This week’s berries were the first of the season, tiny and sweet, happy to be left whole or, at most, sliced in half.  Add the berries to the barb and sprinkle with the sugar/cornstarch/salt.  Carefully stir to combine.

roll out the two crusts.  Line a pie pan with one and gently press into place.  Fill and cover the pie, pinching off the rim to seal.  Cut 8 slits in the top crust, brush with a beaten egg white and sprinkle with sugar.  Lower the oven to 425° and bake on the lowest rack for 25 minutes.  Turn the pie, lower the heat to 375° and bake another half an hour.  Remove to a wire rack and cool at least 3 hours before serving.  In addition to saving delicate mouths from lava-like filling, the cooling time lets the fruit set up for slice ability.

if you come into a bumper crop of rhubarb—or later in the season, peaches!—then make a big ol’ pie in a cast iron skillet.  It does an amazing job browning the crust, and such a generous, homey dessert completes a dinner party with a celebration of summer’s abundance.

lemon sweet rolls

lemon sweet rolls - wish you were here!

in making do on a tighter grocery budget—a sudden piece-meal grocery acquisition process—I have come to a special place of preciousness around butter.  Suddenly, I want it for everything; pound cakes are the only recipes calling to me.  Alas – those neatly quartered sticks can no longer be a perpetual purchase.  These sweet rolls use less butter than biscuits but deliver a soul-soothing buttery bready aroma as they cook and a no less satisfying gooey lusciousness upon consumption.  I am sticky with love.  Plus, they continue this year’s theme of “when life hands you lemons,” oh! the things you can eat!!!

in a big enough bowl, whisk together 2 ½ cups all purpose flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, and a packet of yeast.  In a really big bowl, cream together a generous 2 tablespoons of softened butter with scant ½ cup of sugar.  Beat in 1 egg (preferably at room temperature).  Alternating additions in three parts, stir in the flour along with ¾ cup of buttermilk. Stir until the dough hangs together, adding more buttermilk a bit at a time if necessary.  Knead the dough in the big bowl for 5 minutes or so, or until the dough is silky smooth and elastic.  You may need to add more flour or milk to achieve the right texture, and you’ll learn the right texture as you continue to bake these addictive rolls in their myriad possible incarnations.

butter a clean bowl and let it hold the dough, covered lightly with a damp kitchen towel, to rise for at least 2 hours (until doubled in size).  When your dough is at full height, dump it onto a floured cutting board and pat, stretch and roll it into a rough rectangle about ¼ of an inch thick.  Spread the flattened pre-bread with soften butter, about 3 tablespoons, and sprinkle generously with brown sugar.  More butter and more sugar and nothing else will give you basic caramel rolls—absolutely delicious.  We zested the rind of a (well-washed, organic) lemon across the entire thing.

when you have spread your sweet roll filling, gently roll the rectangle lengthwise (moving from one wide-end to the other) to make a pinwheel log.  Slice off “rolls” from 1 to 1 ½ inches thick.  Set side by side in a buttered (or parchment paper lined and buttered) baking dish that is big enough to accommodate the rolls only barely touching.  Cover and let rise for another hour, or cover tightly with foil and put in the fridge to be ready for baking first thing in the morning.

heat your oven to 400°.  Top each bun with a sliver of butter and sprinkle with brown sugar.  Bake for 20 – 30 minutes, until golden brown.   Be sure your roommates, friends and neighbors are around to share in the yumminess, or you will eat the entire pan yourself.  Unless, of course, it is the sort of night you deserve to eat the whole damn pan yourself.  In which case, I recommend adding mini-chocolate chips, chopped pecans or both to the roll’s inner schmear.  For classic cinnamon rolls to bring along to your next apartment-warming or for Xmas morning, blend 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon and ½ cup of sugar and sprinkle over the butter spread dough, adding ¾ cups currants or raisins, chopped walnuts or pecans as favored by your people.

the dessert that outdid itself: meyer lemon blueberry pastry

over this glorious pastry as it cooled (admittedly near the unpicturesque sinkful of dishes), our friend from India leaned in and cooed, oh, I don’t know what you usually do—but you’ve outdone yourself.

in a sudden fit of late winter, Brooklyn was covered in snow.  it was getting late.  the kitchen fugged with cookery; the laughter of the folks at table in the living room where the Christmas lights are still up at the windows.  the pastry was golden and layered with sunny lemons, smelling of lemons and buttered sugar.

this dessert is the best kind of cooking, ridiculously easy and utterly delectable.   because the Russian bodega on the corner sells frozen puff pastry for a buck o’five thus making the splurge on meyer lemons and grossly out of season blueberries doable.

thaw frozen pastry dough and gently stretch it until it is about a quarter of an inch thin.  I just carefully pull it and stretch it with my fingertips like pizza dough then drape it over a towel covered chair and let it hang out.  Depending on how your pastry comes, you may need to roll it out.  If you make your own, that’s all you my friend and kudos!

melt half a stick of butter over low heat.  When just foaming, turn off the heat and grate in the peel of meyer lemon and about an inch of peeled and minced ginger.  Cut the ends off a fresh, unzested, lemon and slice thinly.

heat your oven to 375°.  On a baking sheet covered with parchment paper, lay out your pastry dough.  Spoon lemon ginger butter over the surface and spread.  Gently fold over each edge of the dough to make a rimmed rectangle of pastry and smooth the seams with your fingertips.  Brush the newly revealed surfaces with butter, and sprinkle the center with brown sugar.  Lay in the slices of lemon, touching but not overlapping.  Drop two handfuls of the best blueberries picked from a pint over the lemons.  Drizzle the whole thing with the remaining butter and finish with a bit more brown sugar.  Bake for 20 minutes to half an hour or until the edges are golden brown and the center cooked through.  Cool enough to eat, slice and serve.

i prepared this before any of the dinner and set it out on our fire escape, putting it in the oven as we sat down to eat, and it was perfectly ready come dessert time.

Ridiculously good chard tart

Thaw a package of puff pastry. More power to you if you make your own. Puff pastry is so labor intensive, however, that even the most ambitious cooks typically buy it, like phyllo dough.

Chop a pile of chard. Oh—that sounds so brute! considering the chard we had in hand this November. After the bunch was rinsed, I held a leaf up like an X-ray, a stained glass, to the window, and with the sunlight shining through, it was a cartooned tree of tall, cumulous shape in sea-vegetable Green with Fuschia branches, pink veins edged in lit white. Layer the leaves on top of each other and roll like a cigar, slice from the end to your fingers to make long shreds. Then slice across these shreds to make bite sized pieces.

Peel and chop two shallots. Toast a handful of pine nuts in a dry skillet. Zest a lemon (again – organic, the peel!). Hold these ingredients in little bowls or dishes until you are ready to incorporate them into the dish.

Heat your oven to 375º. Heat a shallow skillet over medium heat to cook your greens. Melt about a tablespoon of butter and toss in the shallots. Let the shallots cook for a few minutes (3-ish) and then toss the shard over it along with half the lemon zest. Cook the greens down, stirring occasionally. About 10 minutes total. Let sit in the pan with the heat off.

Stir together ½ a cup of Greek yoghurt and ½ a cup of feta cheese along with the remaining lemon zest.

Crush ¾ of the pine nuts in whatever way is easiest in your kitchen. I crush them on a cutting board with a wine bottle, not rolling pin style but screwing and crushing with the round bottom. Stir the crushed pine nuts into the greens along with a handful of currants.

On a cookie sheet, layout a full sheet of puff pastry and turn up the edges all the way around to make a crust. Pinch over about a quarter inch and use your fingertips to squish the folded over edge into the main body of the dough. Spread the feta and yoghurt along the pastry. Spread the chard mixture on top of the creamy layer. Sprinkle with more feta and the whole pine nuts. Bake at 375º for 15-20 minutes or until the puff pastry is golden. Let rest for 10 minutes or so, slice into squares, and serve hot.

summer strudel

this basil – in bloom – and veggies from the farmers’ market wrapped up with cheese in phyllo dough

don’t fear the strudel – it is just like a fancy burrito.

heat your oven to 375º and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper – especially if you want to make the strudel and refrigerate it to cook later – or grease it lightly with butter.

Thaw a package of phyllo dough. You are only going to use three sheets so if you are not interested in trying some other phyllo recipes you can make this filling and use it in tortillas like a quesadilla or as a layered frittata. Anyway, onward-

prep your veggies. Scrub clean, leave the skins on, and slice thin:

1 small summer squash. Slice your squash very fine, so you have thin circles edged in green. If it is short and squat rather than long like zucchini, then cut it in half then slice. The one I took home from the farmers’ market was the size of a tennis ball, gum drop shaped, and green with white speckles.

5 new red potatoes, about the size of ping pong balls. Slice them very fine, so you have thin circles edged in red.

peel and slice:

½ of a sweet yellow onion

melt 4 tablespoons (half stick) or so of butter or olive oil in a hot skillet. Pour off all but a table spoon into a cup to use with the pastry later. In the remainder, fry the onion and potatoes until the onions are translucent and the potatoes just begin to brown – about 10 minutes over a medium high flame. Every few minutes, turn them carefully with a fork; the potatoes this thin are delicate.

in a medium sized bowl, mash together with a fork:

1 cup pre-cooked cannelloni beans, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and

¾ cup fresh soft cheese. Sounds vague, but the label on the tub from the upstate organic, humane dairy says “fresh soft cheese” so I don’t know what else to tell you. Whatever local, happy white soft cheese you can get will be delicious.

pick a handful of fresh basil leaves. I ended up with about a half cup of shredded basil – suit yourself. Pick the leaves, and layer them, staggered side by side to make a wide stack, then roll them up like a cigar. Slice along the circular end to make fine shreds. Stir into the beans and cheese, along with:

¼ cup or more fresh sweet peas.

unroll your phyllo dough on a cutting board, and lift one sheet to your paper-lined baking tray. Brush lightly with butter, layer another sheet, brush with butter, third sheet, butter. Drop several tablespoons of the cheese filling onto the stack of phyllo, making a rectangle of filling with an inch of pastry above and below and two inches to its right. Layer slices of squash over the filling then add a bit more cheese & beans. Layer the potatoes and onions over that and a little more cheese and bean. You’ll have more filling than you need. Fold the two inches of pastry to the right over the filling then fold over the top and bottom pastry margin. Using the parchment paper to help you, fold the strudel over and possible over again to seal. Brush the entire outside with melted butter. Slash diagonal cuts across the top.

store in the refrigerator until ready to use (even over night) or bake immediately for about half an hour or until the outside is golden brown.

You can make this recipe vegan by making sure you use vegan phyllo, subbing olive oil for the butter, omitting the cheese entirely, and mashing the beans more thoroughly. Try adding tofutti sour supreme or tahini to make it creamier. Other veganizing ideas – please leave ‘em in the comments.

eve’s pockets

(because knowledge sustains)

for the pastry

Oh darlings, don’t be daunted by the idea of making pastry. It’s as easy as biscuits! If you haven’t made buttermilk biscuits yet, try it. Serve them with boxed soup. Good for breakfast with honey or maple syrup. But I am digressing into biscuits, and this is pastry pocket dough. The freezer is the tool of miracles for both.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
• 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• about ½ a cup of ice water (let some ice cubes melt into a bit of water as you begin cooking)

Right out of the refrigerator, cut the butter into cubes. Scatter the butter bits on a cookie sheet so they are not touching each other and stash them in the freezer for quarter of an hour.

Sift together the two types of flour with the salt and sugar. Feel free to sift twice. Sifting the dry ingredients adds air’n’fluff to baked treats and is especially important when you are vegan baking (obviously, these butter-filled pastries are far from vegan, but vegan muffin recipes are comin’).

Toss the frozen butter into the flour. Reach in with your hands and rub the bits of butter with the flour between your fingers. It’s sort of a press and slide motion, and I imagine making flat shingles of floured butter that overlap like scales on a fish to form the flakey layers in pastry. Most instructions I’ve read on pastry making say to cut the butter into the flour until it resembles course meal or other grainy sorts of descriptions, but it feels velvetier than that. Error on the side of less handling the first few times you try; over handling makes crusts and biscuits and the like tough.

Freeze the dough again, about another quarter of an hour.

With a wooden spoon, gently stir in enough ice water for the dough to hold together without getting sticky. Scant half a cup, but it will depend on the weather. Humidity and temperature affect the flour’s ability/need to absorb the liquid.

Flour your little paws and kneed the dough. Pat it together into a ball, press down, turn and press and turn and press, working it against the size of the bowl. Kneed long enough for it to come together, about 5 minutes if that. Then rip your dough ball in half, stick on half atop the other and press down. Do this a few times; you can visualize making the elongated layers that flake, flattening them on top of each other. Divide into two thick circles, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for about an hour.

This dough keeps well, and while it makes for “fancy” desserts, it is an awesome vehicle for a gazillion different leftovers. For example: black beans simmered with green pepper and onion with cheddar cheese cubes; white beans, spinach & ricotta; thick stews; thick chili.

for the filling

• one apple – tart for baking, not mealy; try heirloom varieties
  (hint hint: Union Square green market is flush with apples right now)
• ¼ cup dried sour cherries
• 2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts
• ¼ cup of sugar
• fresh ginger
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon corn starch
• cup apple sauce

• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon milk

pre-heat the oven to 400° and grease a baking sheet.

Peel your apple. Slice it in half, in quarters, then, on an angle, slice out the core with the seeds. Peel and mince about an inch of fresh ginger.

In a medium bowl, mix together apples, sour cherries, and walnuts with the ginger, nutmeg, corn starch, and sugar. I’ve been storing my sugar in this empty lemon, ginger, Echinacea juice jar, and evidently, I did not wash it very well because it’s lemon-ginger-Echinacea-y and delicious in this recipe. Stir in the apple sauce.

Roll out each circle of dough on a lightly floured surface. I don’t have a rolling pin; an empty juice bottle suffices. Roll it out thin – about an eighth of an inch. I roll into an elongated rectangle, following the shape of my cutting board. Trim the edges and slice into rectangles, about four for each circle of dough.

Divide the apple mixture among the cut-outs, leaving a 1-inch border. Fold over the pastries – into triangles if you cut your pastry into squares or into rectangles.

In a small bowl mix the beaten egg with a teaspoon of milk. Use a brush (or your finger or a spoon, but a clean kitchen-use only paint brush or pastry brush works best) to brush the egg mixture on the border of the pastry.

Fold each pastry, enclosing the filling, and crimp the edges with a fork. Brush the tops of the pastries with more of the egg wash. Make 2 or 3 small slashes in the top of the pastry to let the steam escape.

Bake for 20 minutes or until puffed and golden. Cool turnovers to warm before serving.