The Pie Dough Compendium

Getting pie crust just right is not as easy as... well pie. I've ended up a few that were too dense, a few that were too crumbly (not flaky), and a few that were wonderful. The key is keep everything as cold as possible-- chill the fat, the utensils, the liquid, even the flour.

If you can, use a food processor to work the cold fat into the flour-- it only takes about 10 pulses and it's perfect. If you don't have a food processor, try this technique from Cook's Illustrated: freeze the stick of butter, then use a box grater to grate it over the flour, then just mix it quickly with a fork. Much easier than cutting it in.

Basic Pie Crust (enough for a double-crust pie)
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp table salt
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
11 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
7 Tbsp vegetable shortening , chilled
4 - 5 Tbsp ice water

Mix the dry ingredients in the food processor. Scatter the butter pieces over the flour mixture. Pulse the processor about 5 times. Add the chilled shortening and pulse about 5 more times. The mixture should resemble course cornmeal with bits of butter that are no larger than small peas. Turn the mixture into a medium bowl.

Sprinkle 4 Tbsp of ice water over the mixture. With a rubber spatula fold and press the dough until it sticks together, adding up to 1 Tbsp more ice water, if necessary.

Shape the dough into two balls with your hands, flatten into disks, dust lightly with flour, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour. Resting and chilling in the fridge is important. Don't skip it.


Foolproof Dough for a single-crust pie
This recipe is from Cook's Illustrated. Vodka is essential to the texture of the crust and imparts no flavor—do not substitute. This dough will be moister and more supple than most standard pie doughs. I think it will stand up to more handling and to pressing into those cute little mason jars in the previous post.

1-1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1Tbsp sugar
6 Tbsp cold, unsalted butter cut into 1/4 inch slices
1/4 cup chilled solid vegetable shortening, cut into 2 pieces
2 Tbsp. vodka, cold
2 Tbsp. ice water

Process 3/4 cups flour, salt, and sugar together in a food processor for 2 pulses until combined. Add butter and shortening and process about 10 seconds. Dough will resemble cottage cheese curds with some very small pieces of butter remaining.

Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Add remaining 1/2 cup flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl and mass of dough has been broken up, 4 to 6 quick pulses. Empty mixture into medium bowl.

Sprinkle vodka and water over mixture. With rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together. Flatten dough into 4-inch disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days.

Pie in a Jar-O

Matt, full of awesome ideas as usual, found an awesome recipe for pie. But not just any pie... Single-serving pies baked into their very own squat little mason jar! What could be better?


Here is the inspiration.


We modified the recipe a bit based upon some tips for pie-crust making from other recipe books (specifically, How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman). Unfortunately, we still ended up with chewy, tough crust, but I'll get to that later.


PART I: THE INGREDIENTS
Short, squat 1/2 pint mason jars

Pie crust:
1 1/4 cups flour
4 tbsp butter, 4 tbsp shortening
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
ice water


Filling:
2 cups canned cherries or diced apples
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp flour
Other spices - For the cherry pies, we used lemon zest, for the apple pie, we used cinnamon.
1 tbsp butter (divided between the pies)


Note: As I write this I realize I never added this last ingredient - the butter. I wonder how much of a difference it made? The filling was still very tasty without the extra fat.


Crumble topping:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
2 tbsp oats
1/4 tbsp cinnamon
3 tbsp cold butter






The first part was easy - Just mix the dry ingredients, cut up the butter into bits, and slowly cut the butter in. According to the recipe, the goal is to have lots of little tiny bits of butter coated with flour. 

The hard part was the next step - slowly folding in cold ice water until the mixture becomes solid enough to stick together. The recipe calls for only about 3 tbsp to 1/4 cup water. I think we used at least 1/2 a cup before it appeared to get to an appropriate texture, and at that point it was quite doughy. This was probably our first mistake when it came to the crust.

The second mistake was working the dough too much with our hands as we coated the inside of the mason jars. The dough became somewhat oily, which I think you are supposed to avoid when trying to make good dough. 

PART III: THE FILLING

We didn't have enough cherry filling to make all four pies, so we improvised with an apple pie. We happened to have a golden delicious apple handy, so that got cut up and placed in the last jar with more flour/sugar, etc. This step is pretty much the easiest part of the whole process. Mix the ingredients and place in the jars. We decided to add lemon zest to the cherry filling, just to give it a little bite.

Matt made the crumble topping, which also looked fairly easy, although I didn't have much to do with this step because I was busy with the filling.

Part IV: BAKE IT


Bake the filled jars for 50 minutes. Yes, you can bake mason jars. No, they won't explode.

The result.


The apple pie ended up being much tastier than the cherry pie, although both were excellent. The dough was too chewy and not flaky at all. Matt didn't like the crumble topping with the cherry pie, but I thought it was great. To each his own.


Pros: Despite the crust, the outcome was adorable and delicious. Once we get the recipe down, I think they will make great gifts! Also not too expensive and fairly easy to make.


Cons: The crust. How can we fix this? Any suggestions? Less water? Roll the dough out before putting it in the jars? More butter?


-rachel

Ps. Here's how we rewarded ourselves for all our hard work:

And, eventually...

Welcome new contributors!

I've decided to open the site up to select friends/family members who would like to share their culinary exploits.

Feel free to post your own recipes, recent successes/failures in cooking. Yes, Aunt Jan, its ok to post about that awesome quesadilla (taco? enchilada? can remember) you made for yourself the other night. Not every recipe needs to be a production. You don't even need to post pictures! Its ok, I promise. :)

-rachel

Slanted Door DIY Meal

Slanted Door restaurant in SF (Ferry Bldg) is a bit pricey. Luckily, they have a counter just behind the real restaurant called "Out The Door" that offers simpler, to-go versions of their entrees. I've never actually eaten there, although last time I was in the Ferry Building during lunch hour, there was a huge line of folks waiting to pick up their vienamese/asian-fusion fare. Must be good!

In any case, Tuesday nights Matt always comes down to San Mateo for dinner and a show (usually the Biggest Loser - Gotta love eating while you watch other people try to lose weight!). This week, Matt had the great idea to buy some take out from Out the Door.  Apparently, they sell versions of fancy Slanted Door dishes, broken down into their components, and sold as recipe "kits" for cooking at home. Neat!

Here's a link if you want to take a look for yourself. 

 As you can see, Matt purchased the Bok Choy, "Shaking" Beef, and Broken Rice. He also purchased a little mystery dessert from Miette, a great little bakery also in the Ferry Building. 

Here's what the kits have inside: 

"Shaking" Beef - Beef, fresh onions, watercress, garlic, assorted spices and oils. 

Bok Choy - Big 'ol tub of bok choy and shitakes, oil, rice wine, "sauce" and garlic. 

Broken Rice. Its like regular rice, but... broken. 

Matt and I split the dishes - I took the rice and bok choy while he worked on the Shaking Beef. 

The beef dish came with a dipping sauce made of a salt and spice mixture which you mix with fresh lime juice. Bet you were wondering what we did with that lime!

Here's the finished product:

MMmmm steamy rice....

Shaking Beef

Bok Choy. Can you believe that whole bucket of veggies cooked down to just this small bowl? By the way, I totally forgive Matt for choosing a dish with mushrooms in it. They were easy to pick out. :)

Ready for the Pros/Cons??

Pros:

• Taste. Good lord was that a tasty meal. Beef was perfectly cooked (thanks to Matt) and the sauces complimented the meat/veggies perfectly. It all tasted even more fabulous over the broken rice. 
• It all looked very fresh and pretty. The produce was top notch and the easily perishable items were vacuum wrapped to maintain freshness. 
• The recipe was laminated so even complete klutzes like me couldn't ruin the page with an accidental spill. 
• Time. Whole thing took 20 minutes to make. The great thing about these kits is that you don't need to spend time making a huge list of items to purchase at the store. There is also ZERO prep time.
• No wasted material (except the rice). We ate everything. Plus, I didn't have to buy a whole bottle of rice wine so I could use just 2 tbsp. 

Cons - 

• Pricey... the Shaking beef alone was $20! The beef was Filet Mignon, but still, if you're going to cook it yourself it shouldn't cost as much as it does at the restaurant. Matt made a joke that they must call it "Shaking" beef because thats what you do when you get the bill. 
• They don't tell you what is in the"sauce" so you won't be able to make it at home without their kit. One point Slanted Door. 
• No labels on the items - I hope you're a good guesser! "Lets see... this cup of liquid is more brown colored than that cup of liquid... hmmm... I guess this one must be the 'sauce.'"
• Dipping sauce was super salty and unnecessary. I mean, it was filet! You could cook it without seasoning and it would still taste good. 
• One rice package made enough rice for at least 6 people! We ended up throwing away a lot of cooked rice. I guess next time we'll cook only 1/4 the package. 
• They don't warn you how quickly the garlic cooks... It was in the pan for probably 5 seconds before it started turning black. If I had known to throw the bok choy in right away, I probably could have avoided the powerful smell of burning garlic in my kitchen. 

Would I cook this again? Yes, but I'd probably choose some of the cheaper items on the menu; otherwise, I might as well go out to eat. Still, it has a lot going for it. It certainly has the effect of making you feel like a gourmet chef without all that annoying training.

Ok, thats all for this post! Time to go eat my Annie's Mac and Cheese.

ps. If you were wondering about dessert...

Lemon Meringue Torte. nom nom nom drool...

French Vegetable Stew (AKA Toot-a-lot Soup AKA Tutelage Soup)

Matt and I were looking for something fairly tasty, but easy, for a sunday night dinner. Matt always knows where to look for recipes. This time we chose a recipe from notakeout.com, a website with a somewhat different approach to cooking. The basic idea is that they give you a recipe for an entire meal, but the whole thing is written in a timeline format so that you can easily juggle several dishes at once without having to worry about what should be cooked and when. Its an interesting idea in theory, and *almost* works in practice.

In any case, we chose the "French Vegetable Stew."

 The recipe looked easy enough, not a lot of ingredients and not a lot of preparation involved.  We did make a few changes to the recipe - A little concerned that the broth might be bland, we chose to replace half the water with 4 cups chicken broth. We also couldn't find regular thyme at the store, so had to use lemon thyme instead.

Here are some fun pictures of the process:

Matt chopping the yukon gold potato. He was also nice enough to take on the job of onion-chopper; I don't tolerate the fumes well.

Potatoes, leeks, onions, and turnips in the pot. 

The secret ingredient (psst... its chicken broth!)

This is the pot prior to STAGE I of cooking, which is boiling the majority of the vegetables for 15 minutes, i.e. until they are pretty much all the same color and taste. After that, you reduce the temp to a slow boil and add the cabbage. After another 15 minutes you add white beans, parsley, and garlic.

The end result (Sorry, no picture; we were too hungry!) was not very exciting, but had a lot of potential. We ended up adding a bunch more salt and pepper than the recipe called for. Also, the cabbage wedges totally fell apart and just ended up mixing in with the rest of the vegetables.

Pros:
Once you get the timing down, it is very easy to make.
Ingredients cost less than $20 total!! Super cheap.
Quite healthy, assuming you don't drown it in salt and slather butter all over the baguette, which we definitely did.
Hearty, fills the tummy.

Cons:
Bland, bland, bland... needs something. What?
Cabbage wedges fall apart and don't look pretty like the picture
Easy to overcook
Minimal protein

Some ideas for how to improve this recipe:
-Add carrots
-Replace the almost tasteless turnips with sweet potatoes (Although there may be a timing issue here. I can imagine if we put the sweet potatoes in too soon, they'd disintegrate. I'm guessing 10 minutes before its done cooking?)
-Add pre-cooked chicken

Any other suggestions?

Would I make this soup again? Yes, but I'd experiment with different vegetables and seasoning. This soup needs a kick!

ps. Check out my use of the semicolon in this post! I'm so proud of myself!

Trying to cram as many puns into one blog as possible

Ok not really....More like Matt gave me an idea for a blog and I'm running with it!

Not exactly sure how this one is going to play out, but here's the basic idea: I like cooking. I would like to cook better and I like trying new things. Why not have a place to chronicle my successes and failures in cooking?

Yeah, so thats pretty much it so far. I'll let you know when things get fleshed out a little more.

-rachel