Okay, now that we got that out of the way, despite the photo, I'm going to try to avoid any of the obvious pie jokes. (Okay, we all know, that pie is sitting in my lap. Sometimes a girl has to snap a photo while driving to the party. What's a girl to do?? Risk the pun.) At the end of the day, this was just a lovely and simple blueberry pie. Sometimes you send your girlfriend out to get bourbon and a baguette and she comes home with rye and a GIANT box of blueberries instead. So, you have mint juleps, contemplate the unexpected fruit, and determine, "Hey, I could make a heck of a pie." After a lovely light breakfast side of blueberries and fresh mint (more to come on that later), I crammed another 3 cups of berries into said pie.
There's not so much to say about this here pie. As I've said a million times in the past I swear by The Joy of Cooking and its pie crust. It's easy. It's tasty. It's flaky. It's just a no-brainer. (Okay, I was almost lured by a cornmeal crust and a sweet corn ice-cream recipe, but as this pie was for someone's BBQ, I thought I'd go with old faithful. I hope to bring you the results of those other recipes later this summer.) What this pie also proves (aside from the superiority of The Joy of Cooking) is that just because you're running out of ingredients does not mean that you can't pull off the pie. There was a serious level of scrimping here: running out of sugar, no lemon, running out of non-sketchy Crisco. Fiddlesticks. No worries. Cinnamon in place of lemon (lovely). Using a disposable pie pan so you can leave it, you only need a single pie crust recipe to pull off a bottom crust and a lattice. Go Pie!
What do you need?
Lovely Crust:
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2T water (and maybe 2T more)
- 1T butter
- 1/3 cup Crisco
So, hypothetically you sift the salt and flour together. I skipped it this time. The wold did not end. In another bowl, mix the Crisco and butter together. Mix half of of the Crisco mixture (stop judging the Crisco. Loretta Lynn hawked it. It can't be that bad.) into the flour mixture. (I swear by the use of a pastry blender. I'm not sure if it's the pastry blender or the magic of my late grandmother from whom said pastry blender came). Mix in the second half. It will start to look cornmeal-y or coarse. Add the 2T of water, lifting with a fork. In the end, just use your hands to make it into a ball. If you need to add a couple more tablespoons of water, have at it. For rolling out pie crust, I swear by putting it between 2 pieces of waxed paper. Just peel from each side before you try to transfer. As you can see, my pies are never works of art. I lack precision and grace. Nonetheless, they're tasty.
The blueberries (also from The Joy of Cooking, just reduced a bit because of the small pan):
- 3 cups fresh berries (4 if you're using a full-size 9inch pan)
- 2/3 to 1 cup or more sugar (I used a little under 2/3 and it needed no more!)
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2T lemon juice or 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (I enjoyed the cinnamon and had no lemon)
Okay, so you're supposed to combine ingredients 2-4 before you mix them in with the berries. Sometimes a girl doesn't actually read the directions and forgets to do so and just mixes them in one by one. No one died and the pie was delicious. Let the berries sit for 15 minutes and juice up (I gave them 10).
Bake at 450 for 10 minutes and then at 350 for another 35-40 minutes. (I ended up turning it back up to 450 for the last 5 or 10 minutes to get my brown on.)
In short, tasty and delicious and thanks to Keri and Jeff Kersten for sending the pie back home with us. I shall now go wake Liz up and we shall head to the kitchen and enjoy leftovers.
Go Pie! And God Bless Loretta and her Crisco.
No comments:
Post a Comment