I have broken the natto barrier and it didn't even take seven times! Yesterday (my sixth time) I willingly ate it as a snack and I'm eating it for breakfast again this morning! I have joined GW in the shameful ranks of American natto eaters, misunderstood and scorned for eating something that smells like ass and is covered in slime.I had a very busy day off yesterday. I keep hearing hype about the Uptown's pizza (they just added it to their menu) and I hadn't been there in years so I decided to go. Have you been to the Uptown lately? It completely rules. The Stagecoach (and leave it to my favorite yelper to have written the only review) and the Uptown are what the Cornerstone wishes it could be but never can. Everyone is sooo friendly and cheerful at the Uptown that you immediately feel like a regular. The pizza was good, maybe the cheesiest and gooiest I've ever had. Not thin crust but not Roma's style bready, either. In between. I'm glad I went back, but I don't know that I'd get the pizza again. I'd rather get the breakfast. I'll have to try their club sandwich to pit it against the best one ever from the Stagecoach. They also have tons of specials every day, yesterday they included fresh fish and chips and a turkey and gravy open-faced sandwich that looked great.
I also went crazy and baked two pies! Because of a hilarious mix-up I ended up with twice as much pie crust as I needed so in addition to the apple raisin five spice pie (bottom picture), I had the brainstorm to make some kind of savory lamb curry pie. Smiller and I went to Taylors and they ground us some lamb to order. I chopped up onions and sauteed them, and then added the ground lamb (at this point I drained out as much of the fat as I could and we both did shots of it) and a bunch of the Japanese curry that I brought back. Then at the last second I threw in a peeled, chopped up potato, a sliced carrot, and some peas and put it into the pie crust (I am omitting the description of the giant temper tantrum I have every single time I make pie crust-it's quite sad) and somehow maneuvered a crust on top. I cooked it on 375 until it looked done (about 40 minutes). The potato and carrot cook inside. It was delicious if I do say so myself! That's right, yesterday I ate pizza AND pie.
I have pie crust questions if anyone would like to step up to the plate to help me.
Becks-
ReplyDeleteI can't do much in this world, but I can make a pie crust.
For a long long time I used a fork or pastry cutter thingy, and mixed it together by hand. Now I use my kitchen aid. Rolling it out, I just make sure to use enough flour to work it into a nice "skin" feeling sheet. Is that gross? To compare pie crust to flesh?
When I come up this weekend, maybe we can try to make one? A peep merinque pie?
Ella
my pie crust obsession has to do with the flakiness, though, so i barely barely mix it (you've seen this in downieville) and when i go to roll it it completely falls apart into crumbs and looks like a hideous skin graft on the pie (it bakes up rustic looking). do you just roll it onto the counter? how do you get it off? that's where i have the breakdown every time. but my crust is flaky and light. i need to find a balance between those factors. what recipe do you use?
ReplyDeletea peep pie would be hilarious. we should do it! what many people don't know about pie is that it only takes a few minutes to make one once you know how.
look, we both compared the pie crust to flesh!
ReplyDeleteOk, so it's flakiness that you are obsessed with. I'll dig around and bring all the different pie crust receipes that I use. I use different ones for different pies. some are flaky, some are durable and some are sweet.
ReplyDeleteI think this is going to involve us baking about 5 pies. Each with a different crust!
Beckler, I think it's your receipe, not you.
Ella
I'll be peacefully doing that puzzle in the next room - ignoring all garment rending & tears.
ReplyDelete-miller
are you balling your pie-crust mix in cling wrap and letting it rest in the fridge for 20-30 minutes? It good to just barely mix it together to achieve flakiness, but it needs the cool resting period for the ingredients to react to each other and bond together.
ReplyDeletemaybe not a ball. more like a disc.
ReplyDeletethe second pie crust sat in the fridge for an hour and it turned out even more disastrous than the first. i almost stabbed my helper in frustration (sorry dude). my real question is, are you rolling it out onto a counter? onto some special pie crust surface thing? onto the ceiling in a zero gravity room? how do you get the crust into the pie pan?
ReplyDeletehmm...well I'm a food jerk with too many kitchen gadgets, so I roll it out on a ridiculously floured wooden pizza peel and slide it into the pan. I was determined to get more than one use out the peel than sliding pizzas in and out of the oven, so that's what I do all my baking crap on.
ReplyDeleteI use a floured cloth. I really flour that sucker, as well as the rolling pin. I liberally sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour too if it's acting sticky. When it is rolled out, I lift the edge of the cloth and roll the dough up on the rolling pin. Then I unroll it on the pie plate. Hot Sacramento summer weather is the true test of a inverterate pie baker. If you can make a decent crust in August, you are doing your family proud. I'm all with Skipper about the chilling. I chill the bowl for the mixer, the dough hook, the butter, the finished dough, everything but if it's winter time, I don't need to get that carried away. It is good to rest the dough. With me that just naturally happens, as I'm not ready to roll it out when I make the dough. I gotta make the pie filling first! Beckler, it's not you, its that receipe!!!!
ReplyDeleteElla
If it's flakiness you want I've got one word for you. LARD. I would replace the "fat" in your recipe with half butter, half lard. Yummm!
ReplyDeleteWhere is that receipe from anyhow? Hell? Drop it! Two wrongs don't make a right beckler!
ReplyDeleteTry a different one!
Ella
I definitely do want to try a pie with lard.
ReplyDeleteA cloth sounds like a good idea, and I already need to buy a pizza peel (where did you get yours, skipper?). Ella, why must you slander the Joy of Cooking in this way? the rombauer beckers are spinning in their graves.
I have an ancient culinary institue cooking encyclopedia on my desk right now (you can see i am hard at work) and the recipe is pretty much the exact same. two cups flour, 2/3 cup butter, lard, crisco whatever, little salt, 4-6 tblspns ice water. joy says 4 pretty strictly. it's stern that way.
ReplyDeleteI sure you're recipe's pretty much the same as mine. I found mine from a German cookbook that measures in weight, which makes sense since there isn't too much fudging room when baking, and it's also a lot more consistent.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I worked the conversion out to be:
3 oz butter
1 oz lard
6 oz flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 c ice water
It's pretty much enough for one covered pie or two tarts. I adjust the lard:butter ratio for smoothness v. flakiness.
Why would you use anything but lard in your pie crust?
ReplyDeleteI have a giant can of it just sitting in my fridge for all sorts of delicious baking.
And, just to blow your mind, I don't roll my pie crust at all. I put the dough in the middle of the pan and just start pushing it down until all the pan is covered.
jana.
ps. Let's have a pie baking eating not contest cos we're all winners when there's pie party sometime but not this weekend cos I'm heading cross country and won't be here. (I will however be in Montreal by weeks end and can't WAIT to get me some poutine.).
Smiller let me taste some of the lamb-curry-pie......
ReplyDeleteIt was BOMB!
------------Whaus
woodhouse-back to work!
ReplyDeleteyou are kind, but i just ate my leftover lamb pie and i found the crust to be flaky yet...tough (gasp). too thick and the pie was lacking in salt. sigh. and all the spice seems to have faded overnight.
pie baking contest! this endorsement is not an offer to host,however. whoever hosts will be required to set up a tantrum room for me.
ha ha! look how much i will comment to avoid writing my midtown monthly article. liv if you are reading this that is a joke.
ReplyDeleteI highly endorse the use of lard. Screw you, President Wilson.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and with all these comparisons of pie crusts to human flesh, somebody should make a barbecue meat pie shaped like a human head. Add two little boubles of lard for the eyes, bake; viola! Face pie.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteor how about a rabbit pie, in other words...a hare pie!!! ha ha ha isn't funny how i can make these hilarious jokes yet simultaneously crank out another professional, polished midtown monthly article
ReplyDeletep.s.-help me, ghostwriters? anyone?
No way, I thought it was better today!
ReplyDelete-miller
Just make up a fake restaurant to review and then give it a shitty review and complain about how it was so difficult to find, that you can't remember how you got there.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you should try using suet?
ReplyDeleteAlso, recipes on this site never let me down...
Scroll down to "Combination Butter and Shortening Crust"
Make sure the water you use is ice cold.
When I saw your pics, at first I thought you had made bastilla...mmmm...
I'm with Jana. I've never had a rolling pin and the one time I tried rolling the dough out, I had such a fit, I threw everything in the garbage and started crying. Now, I just chill the dough and push it into the pan. Maybe that's a cop out, but that route has never failed me.
ReplyDeleteYou should interview the new pie lady in town (I can't remember her name - she's on 12th in Alkali Flats, right?).
so you're saying that it's totally NORMAL to have a crying fit when you're making pie? glad to hear it.
ReplyDeletehow do you make the top crust with this method?
maybe i'll write up the pie lady next month, but i'm sure every other media outlet in town will be all over her. look, i just called myself a media outlet!
my sister would freeze her sticks of butter and then grate them with a cheese grater so that mixing together the flour and the butter wasn't very hard but the butter didn't melt. from what i understand, having the butter cold causes the flakiness cuz then when it melts in the oven it sort of bubbles up and the flour separates into layers. i used to make a good pie crust but that was so long ago that i'm too scared to try again.
ReplyDeleteYou can use my place for a contest. The kitchen is only used when Amy needs to bake pies at 3am that she eats by sun-up.
ReplyDeleteOne of my sisters enters the State Fair in cakes and she always gets Blue Ribbons. I wonder if I could get her to judge? She got another sister to enter, who's also getting Blue Ribbons, only in the cookie section which is supposed to be the easy one.
The cake sister hasn't worked out her crusts yet to move up pie division. I haven't noticed anything wrong with her crusts but she's not satisfied.
I'm always impressed when a cook adjusts recipes for weather and humidity. May all ya'll know how to do that, but it boggles my mind.
Should I buy a Crosley just to modify it? I think I should.
my answer to you on this Dave is a solid YES! especially if it's one the ol' man currently has his eye on. plus, your desire to modify it probably means he wont want to buy it off you when you leave on your next trip. it would be a win, win all around.
ReplyDeletebuy! buy! buy!
modify! modify! modify!
I thought the one the Old Man was eye-balling was another cheap one. It's a nice color blue, but that's way too much for me. Worth it, I guess, since it is a 1950s race car with known history. But it's more than $800.
ReplyDeleteFor the top crust, I flatten small pieces of the crust and place them on top so that they form a pretty solid covering. It looks very rustic. Rustic meaning kind of homely. But, I'm not entering any contests and the end product always comes out tasting great.
ReplyDeleteAnd rolling out pie crust is second only to trying to roll out pizza dough among the kitchen adventures that made me lose my cool.
dave,
ReplyDeletepay no attention to dani.
buy! buy! buy!
I finally sampled my own apple pie (hot!) last night and I have decided that my crust is perfect the way it is. The end.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't you have to be double jointed to sample your own pie?
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of a joke that Tess told me. What's better on pie than on pussy? Crust!
beckler said...
ReplyDelete"I finally sampled my own apple pie (hot!) last night"
-------------
This brings to mind that image of Ron Jeremy trying to blow his own horn...
Pres,
SASSF
The pie crust problem can be completely solved by rolling it between two sheets of waxed paper. I think I got that tip from Joy of Cooking, but whatever, it completely solves the sticking problem, and also the problem where you add too much flour to make it stop sticking so then it's not flaky enough. Waxed paper. That is the key. I have never had one fall apart since I started doing that, and I bake lots of pies.
ReplyDeletethanks for the suggestion, that sounds like it will work. i'll try it soon.
ReplyDeleteI only wish that the Stagecoach location on Florin Road, as mentioned in Shawn L.'s Yelp, was open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Florin store closes at 3:00 PM. The Elk Grove location is open for dinner.
ReplyDelete