Pie of the Week - There's an Ap for That

Inspired by Mom's Apple Pie in Sebastopol, we decided to buy a few pounds of 'cots at the farmer's market to make a pie. Dear old Betty Crocker (as opposed to Betty Carr, a.k.a. Mom)...she told us that we would need five cups of apricot halves for a 9-inch pie. But we didn't have quite that many, so we downsized the recipe and put it in a smaller, 8-inch pan.



Like many of the recipes we've explored through this blog, this one was an experiment. The first surprise was that the apricots, although mostly very firm and a bit on the dry side, released a bunch of juice once mixed with sugar and flour. Although we cleaved to Betty's advice about the amount of sugar in the filling (almost three quarters of a cup!), we found that the filling is still a little on the tart side. We added some dehydrated ginger chips, crushed up - about 2 teaspoons - to the filling, but found that the flavor was not strong enough.


Because it was shaping up to be a gorgeous hot summer Sacramento day, we wanted to make pie very early. The great thing about apricots is that you don't have to peel them - that would have really slowed us down. Prep time was relatively quick. It was just a matter of getting the dough together (reducing Betty Crocker's recipe for a standard double-crust 9-incher, using 1.5 c of flour and 0.5 c of shortening) and rummaging around for that 8-inch pan, somewhere in the black heart of a mighty disheveled kitchen cabinet...must speak to POPS about his curation of the collection.


The wisdom on Mom's Apple Pie website holds that you should not be alarmed or dismayed on discovering that your pie "runs over" while baking or is a little gooshy inside. These things, Mom says, are normal. Good to know, because this one, while pretty much a textbook pie on the outside, DID run over (sorry about the burning smell, honey!), and was pretty juicy in the middle. We liked that the fruit cooked down to a soft, almost jamlike texture, but we weren't expecting there to be juice. So this would not have garnered a ribbon at the county fair - it turned the bottom crust all mushy. Next time, we must use more starch to absorb the moisture a little more effectively - two generous tablespoons of flour called out in the recipe was not enough. We were very pleased with the bright orange color of the fruit, very summery and enticing. The flavor was almost like peach, which made Sac Pie yearn for full-on peach season, but a little brighter and zippier. Would fresh grated ginger be a good enhancement the next time we bake this?


Even with all that in mind, apricot pie is not something to be scared of. One wonders why we don't see it more commonly here in Sacramento bakeries. Indeed, one wonders why we don't see bakeries more commonly here in Sacramento...We have received encouragement ourselves to be the next big bakery thing in this town, and the former Phillips building is still available, so....




As a candidate for breakfast, we can recommend the Betty Crocker apricot pie, modified as above, for your summer menu. We don't know if it's nutritious or not - surely there are some good antioxidants or carotenes in apricots, right? But then there's vitamins for that. Soon it will be too hot to bake, and the apricots will be all gone, so try this, improve it, and enjoy it! And let us know how it goes!

Pie of the Week - Quiche and Tell

There are few dishes that we can think of that can be served up as breakfast, or lunch, or dinner. Depending on the filling, a burrito may fit the bill. Of course, the revered Freeport Bakery Knish is a winner. Spanakopita could also work (have we mentioned Petra yet, at 16th and L? Wait 'til you see their monster spanakopita). In each case, it's got a combination of savory ingredients and interesting spices with something soothing and plain, like potatoes, pastry, or eggs. The dishes that are successful meal tri-fectas also feel substantial - enough to last you awhile - but not gratiutously rich.

And where are you going to get a dynamite all-day burrito in this town? It's not as easy as it should be. Especially if you don't eat meat. This is a source of frequent lament at Sac Pie.

Now where were we?

Oh, yes - it's time to make a quiche. Or more accurately, a vegetable-egg pie. It won't be six inches tall, as we see it in some bakery and specialty grocery cases. But then, it won't cost $20, either. It will be fitting for Sunday breakfast/brunch with fresh fruit, or an elegant brown-bag workday lunch, or a light evening meal with a fresh tomato or beet salad. Great for springtime. It has some good protein in it, and green vegetables to make you big and strong. If spinach isn't your vegetable of choice, try some finely chopped steamed broccoli instead. If you make a whole wheat crust, then you can feel especially virtuous when you eat it. It's pretty easy to toss together, with ingredients you probably have in your refrigerator or freezer right now. You will find, after a few times making it, that you don't even need a recipe. It can be a unique work of art every time you make it. Let's cook!

Ingredients:

Basic pie dough for one 9-inch crust

Four eggs (room temperature)

[Optional: water or milk]

1 c (dry) chopped frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed

[Optional: 1 potato, peeled and thinly sliced]

1-2 T finely chopped scallion

1 to 1.5 c grated cheese, such as Gruyere, Iberico, Swiss, Havarti, or a combination

Seasonings to taste: ground pepper, dried tarragon, chervil, thyme, chives

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the pie dough in a 9-inch pie pan or quiche dish, pressing dough into the corners and allowing it to drape over the edge.

[Optional: Line the bottom of the pastry with the thinly sliced potatoes.] Sprinkle the onions evenly across the bottom surface.

Separate three of the four eggs. Beat the one whole egg with the three separated yolks until well mixed. You may decide to add a tablespoon of water or milk to this mixture. Mix in the chopped spinach with the eggs until evenly combined. Add all but a handful of the grated cheese, Add to the mixture whatever herbs and spices you wish. Then whip the remaining egg whites (in a clean bowl) until stiff peaks form.

Using a spatula, slowly and gently fold the egg whites into the egg-spinach mixture. This is what will give your quiche an oven bounce that won't completely deflate after it cools. Use even, circular motions and continue until the whites are evenly mixed in with the egg-spinach combination. Don't overdo it or the mixture will probably deflate.

Pour the filling into the pastry-lined dish. Trim the edge of the pastry and bake. About halfway through the bake time (i.e., when the middle is starting to be less jiggly), you may garnish the top with the remaining cheese and perhaps a few thin slices of tomato or red bell pepper. Bake until the center of the quiche is firm and the top golden, about 40 to 45 minutes.

Cool 20 minutes before slicing and, no matter what time of day it is, you will have pie-that's-a-meal, fresh and ready.

Testing 1-2-3-Whole Wheat Pie Crust

If you are a purist about pie - seasonal fruit, organic ingredients, all natural - then it makes sense that you would eschew white flour in favor of a more healthful option for your pie crust....If it makes the pie better, that is.

Whole wheat pie crust: just the words seem to connote hardpan, hockey pucks, hippies, humorlessness, heaviness, and humdrum. On the flip side, though, there are the health benefits and perhaps the fun of experimentation with a new approach to pastry.

The challenge is to find a recipe that not only does what pie dough should - rolls, stretches, flakes, browns, and tastes good - but provides those attributes without requiring some other ingredients that subtract from the good reasons to use whole wheat flour. Whole wheat crusts that we've tried in the past were made with cooking oil instead of shortening, and they were, to be blunt, miserable to work with, unbeautiful to look at, and unpalatable to eat. Let's see if this one is an improvement.

In this inaugural attempt, we had to start somewhere...and Sac Pie can almost hear you moaning about this already...so we picked a recipe that included some familiars - butter as well as shortening, white flour as well as whole wheat. We know, we know. We hope you whole wheat zealots will not be too disappointed. We need a jumping-off point for continued experiments, and we figure we can gradually reduce butter and white flour and stop before we reach that "humdrum" end point. We are going to follow the recipe to the letter and see what happens. This trial is also a first for us using butter in pie dough ANNNNNDDD using our Cuisinart to make the dough.

This recipe comes from WikiHow. We chose it because it could be done in relatively few steps and without ingredients that we wouldn't otherwise use in a pie pastry.

For this recipe, we decided to make a pie with the remaining frozen peaches from last summer (which were luscious, were they not?). So that, if the crust was a bust, we would at least have that lovely fruit to spoon up.

As with most pie dough, the key thing again is that your liquid is ice-cold. If you do use a food processor to blend the fat into the flour, open it up and lift the bottom ingredients upward with a spatula or spoon, to make sure nothing is getting trapped in a clump on the bottom.

All right, here is the recipe, from WikiHow for pie dough with whole wheat flour:

Ingredients:

2 c all-purpose white flour

1/2 c whole wheat flour

1/2 c butter

1/2 c shortening

ice cold water (several tablespoons)

1 tsp(ish) salt

1 T(ish) sugar

Instructions:

Add the dry ingredients to the bowl of a food processor and pulse, roughly 5 times at 1 to 2 seconds each pulse.

Cut the butter into small chunks.

Add the chunks of butter to the bowl and pulse again, roughly 5 times at 1 to 2 seconds each time. With a spoon or spatula, lift the mixture from bottom to top all the way around the bowl.

Add the shortening, in small chunks to the bowl and pulse again. Lift again. At this point the mixture should look slightly crumbly.

Add the water in 1-2 T increments, followed by a pulse of the processor (and a lift). Repeat until the dough begins to clump and pull away from the sides of the bowl.

When you reach this point, feel the dough by squeezing it lightly. It should be moist, pliable, and slightly sticky. Remove it from the food processor and into another bowl, and shape into a ball.

The dough should be worked with rather quickly to keep the butter from melting. You may elect to cover it with a damp towel if the day is warm and dry.

You can see that the dough forms a ball quite easily, is moist and not crumbly, and that the butter and shortening are well distributed.

Follow this recipe and you will end up with almost enough dough for two pies. In addition to the pie shown above, we made a small 7-incher with the extra dough (also with double crust). You will find that the dough is very easy to roll out - possibly a little more elastic than our usual recipe. As with our usual recipe, it is, however, still slow to brown. We left this baby in the oven for nearly an hour (fearful of overcooking), the last 20 minutes on the top rack.

We encountered almost immediate shrinkage of the pastry as it began to warm up. You can see a little warping of the edge in the picture below. Interestingly, this did not happen to the small 7-inch pie made with the same pastry. Hmmm. Was it the result of two different pie pan materials? Was it anything to do with the differences in the two fillings? Sac Pie is mystified. We only know that it's not the dough itself that causes shrinking.

It doesn't look like it's going to taste bad, does it?

Well, it was perfectly fine. We wanted it to be a little more flaky on top, so there is room for improvement. We could not discern the benefits of the butter in either taste, appearance, or texture of the crust. We detected a slightly dry feel to the crust, but this might have been the result of the pie's bake-a-thon in the oven rather than the ingredients. With all of those things in mind, we still enjoyed snarfing up this pie and the first one gives us confidence to try again: less butter, maybe a small increment of whole wheat flour to replace the white flour.

Don't be intimidated by the novelty of this recipe. It behaves well, tastes good, and is pleasing to the eye. It makes a fine package for your frozen peaches, and is a homey, comforting product.

Pie of the Week - Lemon Tart

It's time.

I have been putting this off all winter. I look at those Meyer lemons bobbing on the tree out back and think, "I gotta do something with those." I've made lemonade, limoncello, and lemon-juice ice cubes. And there are still so many lemons out there. Look at them all! Next I must consider preserved lemons.

After I get finished with lemon tart, that is. Tart is just another word for pie with no lid.

My web research on lemon tart led me through the looking-glass and into a vast lemon tart alternate universe. I never knew that this was a tart people became passionate about. And, as with everything else one searches for on the web, there are gazillions of recipes - and all of them called THE BEST LEMON TART RECIPE -EVER!!!! Sac Pie could make an entire career out of comparing all the lemon tart recipes side by side in an enormous early spring bake-off - amount of butter/eggs, ease of preparation, presentation, taste, yadda yadda - but Sac Pie already has a full-time job, such as it is, and other leisure pursuits besides eating. Please don't act all surprised about that.

So far, I'm able to make three decisions: I will use the backyard lemons, and look for the recipe that maximizes lemons (counting the juice and the zest this took four); I will use the standard pie crust for the tart shell (just to see what happens); and I will not strive for a low-fat, cooking-light recipe but start out with the full schmear - eggs, butter, sugar. Based on the outcome, I will modify the recipe if needed, because I will still have a thousand lemons.

So all I need is a recipe for the tart filling. This is not going to be lemon meringue pie, no no no. Sac Pie does not do lemon meringue. This filling is going to be something between a lemon curd and lemon sauce - soft but firm, viscous and low-rise, not stiff and airy like lemon pudding. It seems wise to pre-bake the shell because 1) the filling is delicate and, loaded with sugar, prone to scorching, and 2) the liquidy filling will be less likely to make the bottom of the shell turn mushy if it's baked first.

Here we go.

I followed this recipe, which I found at David Lebovitz's site, www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2009/05/tart_au_citron_french_lemon_tart.html.

This one looked the simplest and the least sugary and finicky to me. Because I'd never made a lemon tart before, I figured I ought to start with the simple approach and build some confidence before going for something more elaborate. And if David Lebovitz can make a delicious tart with egg yolks that have been in suspended animation in his freezer for a few months, odds are good that a novice's will come out okay. Right?

If you are using a standard 9.5-inch tart pan, I would advise doubling the recipe below, otherwise you end up with barely enough filling to make the dessert not just low-rise but, er, thin. To the point of stingy. Not especially enticing.

Are you ready?

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (125 ml) freshly-squeezed lemon juice 


grated zest of one lemon, preferably unsprayed


1/2 cup (100 g) sugar 


6 tablespoons (85 g) butter, salted or unsalted, cut into bits


2 large eggs


2 large egg yolks

One 9-inch (23 cm) tart shell.

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C.)

NOTE: If you pop the tart shell into the oven at 350 degrees F to bake until golden, you can have the custard filling ready to go into it at the exact time that it is finished baking - about 20 minutes.

1. In a medium-sized non-reactive saucepan, heat the lemon juice, zest, sugar, and butter. Have a mesh strainer nearby.

2. In a small bowl, beat together the eggs and the yolks.

3. When the butter is melted, whisk some of the warm lemon mixture into the eggs, stirring constantly, to warm them. Scrape the warmed eggs back into the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and almost begins to bubble around the edges.


4. Pour the lemon curd though a strainer directly into the pre-baked tart shell, scraping with a rubber spatula to press it through.


5. Smooth the top of the tart and pop it in the oven for five minutes, just to set the curd.

6. Remove from the oven and let cool before slicing and serving.

That was easy! A dusting of confectioner's sugar and a few twists of fresh lemon on top, a sprig of mint, perhaps, and you are off to the races with this simple, elegant confection. Or skip the decorating and just slice into it. Your pastry shell should be firm enough to hold up the dense, silky curd. The filling made with this recipe was balanced between sweet and tart; if you like it more tart, you can reduce the sugar. In the picture directly below, you can see the little flecks of lemon zest in the curd and get a sense of the smooth consistency of its surface.

This was one of Sac Pie's homelier-looking works, mainly because it was an experiment that we were prepared to throw out if it didn't work. But it works just fine. We will double the filling and dress it up when we make it for Susan's ranch picnic this weekend.

If you have some lemons to use up, this is an easy and delicious way to enjoy their freshness. Let me know how you do with your version of this tart.

Pie of the Week - Cranberry Pie Deux

Winter's almost over and I still have two bags of cranberries in the freezer. I know, I said I would attempt cranberry pie again after that shaky and barely palatable first attempt. Lessons learned, as they say in corporate life. I'll do it better this time!

If you were not tuned in during the post-Thanksgiving cranberry pie experiment, let me just give you the bottom line again:

Cranberries are SOUR. Their sourness will dominate any other flavor note in the filling unless you curb it with even more sugar than you think. If you don't get the sugar right, no one will taste the citrus, apple, pear, or cinnamon, or clove, or whatever other delightful accessory flavors you were so excited about. And your guests will not be able to force a full serving of this pie down, because their faces will be turning inside out with pucker. Sac Pie has already run this experiment so you don't have to. Trust me!

Cranberries impart terrific health benefits to us along with that puckerful punch that makes your jaws lock up. Loaded with vitamin C and antioxidants, very hardy and relatively non-perishable, they can make a great addition to your dessert repertoire if you handle them right. They need to be cooked and sweetened in order to be palatable. Just writing this is making my eyes water...

Sac Pie began with friend Kim's cranberry relish recipe again, and this time was in possession of several estate-grown oranges with which to add flavorful sophistication to the pie filling.

The cranberries, frozen, as I said, were thawed and then rinsed gently. I hewed closely to the original recipe, namely combining

1 c. orange juice

1 c (organic cane juice) sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1.5 tsp clove

1 T minced fresh ginger plus a strip of dried sliced ginger (removed after cooking)

1/2 c golden raisins

in a saucepan on the stove. I boiled the juice until the sugar was dissolved. Then I added the cranberries and other ingredients and cooked it just until everything was combined. I cooled the mixture for about 2 hours.

The spicing and additional fruit is completely up to you. All will be well if you just remember that the critical thing is the sweetener (we can run the experiment next season with brown rice syrup or honey). In this incarnation, in addition to the cranberries, I used 1 chopped apple and about a T of orange zest in the filling (after it had cooled).

After adding the sugar-spice combination to the cranberries and mixing, I sprinkled in a scant teaspoon of tapioca for a thickener.

Voila! A carnival in a pie shell. Maybe for Mardi Gras or Valentine's Day next year?

A few pats of butter, a full pie lid, and into the oven at 400 degrees for 50 minutes.

This time, the pie filling was much more temperate and sparkly in flavor, rather than aggressively tart and borderline obnoxious. I liked having the apple chunks and the raisins for textural variety. The seasoning really does remind me of the mince pie combination. I completely forgot my note-to-self from last fall about adding a little booze. I think that amaretto or kirsch would be an interesting note. But even foregoing that, I think the combination really comes together as a result of the sugar to buffer the acidity of the cranberries.

Don't forget to try the recipe above as a cranberry relish, which is its origin, after all. And thank you again, Kim, for getting me started on this. I can cater you a slice, if you like!

Pie of the Week - Vegetable Pot Pie

It's WINTER. It's RAINING. It's time for Pie That's A Meal.

Vegetable Pot Pie may be a cure, or at least a palliative, for the Sacramento Winter Blahs.

Unfortunately, I have not yet found a local sit-down eatery that serves vegetarian pot pies. You can buy individual-sized ones at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op (www.sacfoodscoop.com) to bring home and heat up in your own oven, if that's convenient for you. But it's not difficult to prepare your own with what you already have in the house.

Winter vegetables like potatoes, butternut squash, turnips, and carrots are abundant here in the Sacramento Valley in the winter farmer's market stands. They are also extremely durable, which means you can take your time figuring out how and when you're going to eat them. The only down side of root vegetables and squashes is that they are bland as baby food when prepared by themselves. This is one reason a lot of people claim to detest them. Our Pie of the Week aims for an alchemical combination of these nutritious and plentiful staples in a hearty, double-crust savory pie. In addition to staving off the Blahs, it may also make converts of the non-root-vegetable-eating members of your household. Paired with a fresh green salad, this makes a satisfying dinner or brunch item. A side of cranberry sauce might make you come out of your funk and feel festive.

If you search the web for vegetable pot pie recipes, as I have, you will find a bazillion of them. Some include beans, or cheese, or noodles, or spinach, or tofu. You can customize the filling in a number of distinct but satisfying ways. Whatever your choices, 6 cups of filling is a good target amount. The common denominator of these recipes is that you pre-cook small pieces of whatever vegetables you plan to put in the pie, coat the vegetables with a little flour, and then add broth and a milk to create the sauce - or gravy- that is one of the most joyous sensations about eating a pot pie. We're doing this one vegan, but you could substitute real milk and butter where I've used soy milk and Earth Balance.

Note: there will be quite a lot of peeling and chopping - maybe 30 minutes' worth. But it is RAINING, and you are not going outdoors anyway.

You could certainly opt for a less-crusty version of this by spooning the prepared vegetable filling into individual pots (or one big pie dish) and doing only a top crust. But to me that sounds like it might result in messy cleanup work (both the pots and the bottom of the oven). SacPie rocks the double crust. We need those calories for hibernation, and we never, ever want to clean the oven.

This recipe is a riff on the Food Network recipe from Aida Mollenkamp (http://www.foodnetwork.com/). I had some butternut squash, already steamed, in the fridge. I had turnips, a leek, some Yukon Gold potatoes, celery, carrots, garlic, and a big bunch of Italian parsely. I had broth from cooking beet greens and some dried porcini mushrooms to infuse the broth. I did not include fennel or peas or chives, but only because I didn't have them in the house when it was time to make pie.

Ingredients:

1 T unsalted butter or Earth Balance

2 small heads of fennel (or 2 sticks of celery), finely chopped (about 3 c.) - OPTIONAL

1/2 medium yellow onion (or one leek), finely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and finely chopped (about 2/3 c.)
12 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced (about 5 c.)
1 small Russet potato peeled and diced small (about 2 1/2 c.)
1 small turnip peeled and diced small

1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. vegetable broth (warmed)
1 c. milk (or plain soy milk)
1 c. frozen baby green peas - OPTIONAL
1/4 c. thinly sliced fresh chives (or whatever your herb choices are)
1/4 c. parsley
1 T white vinegar
1 large egg yolk, beaten with 2 tsp of water - OPTIONAL
1 double-crust pie dough

OTHER OPTIONAL HERBS: sage, thyme, bay leaf, chipotle powder, rosemary

Directions:

Heat the oven to 400 degrees and arrange a rack in the middle.

Melt the butter/EB over medium heat in a 3- to 4- quart pan. When it foams, add the fennel, onion, carrots, (garlic, leek, celery, turnip) and cook until just soft and onions are translucent. Add mushrooms and potato (also bay leaf and/or rosemary sprig, if using. These should be removed when the filling is finished cooking). Season well with salt and pepper, stirring to coat. Remember that root vegetables tend to use more salt. Cook, stirring rarely, until mushrooms have let off water and are shrunken, about 6 min.

Sprinkle flour over the vegetables, stir to coat, and cook until the raw flavor is gone, about 1-2 min. Add broth and milk gradually, stirring constantly until the mixture is smooth. Bring to simmer over medium heat, cooking until slightly thickened, about 5 min. Remove from heat. Add peas (or canned beans or edamame), herbs, and vinegar, stirring to coat. Taste to correct seasoning.

Pour the filling into a 9-in pie crust. Place the top crust over filling and seal. Brush dough with egg wash (optional) and cut slits in the top crust. Bake until crust is golden brown and mixture is bubbling, about 25-30 min. Let stand at least 5 min before serving. I know it will be hard to wait that long, but restrain yourself.

I baked this pie for about 40 minutes in order to get a browner crust. One of the things I've learned about the palm oil shortening crust recipe is that it is slow to brown, but difficult to overcook.

The pie filling cooks to a compact, moist endpoint. Individual chunks of potato, squash, turnip, and carrot are still identifiable but blend creamily with the gravy. The taste was as close as I've come yet to the filling in Freeport Bakery's knishes (http://www.freeportbakery.com/), which are elegant and delicious (and the subject of a future blog). One generous slice of this pie and a side of steamed broccoli was a substantial, comforting dinner. I nearly forgot that it was raining.

Let me know how the Winter Blahs, and the winning of the hearts, minds, and palates of your vegetable objectors is going after you make this.

Pie of the Week - Apple

I have never met anyone who expressed a dislike of apple pie. Maybe because it feels subversively un-American to voice such nonsense. But I think, on the contrary, that almost everyone who has eaten a good apple pie finds something in it to love.

Apples, of course, were one of the least perishable and abundant fruits available to the white settlers of the United States. Today, 60% of all apples raised commercially in the U.S. come from Washington state. And the U.S. is the second largest producer of apples worldwide, after China.

As to the pie, I consider apple pie a playground for experimentation because of the varied but gentle flavoring of the fruit. Endless possibilities can be explored - a different mix of apples, addition of dried fruit or chopped nuts, a crumble topping instead of crust, pouring heavy cream through the slits in the crust after the pie comes out of the oven. In southern Ohio, homemade apple pie was offered to me warmed with a small slice of melted cheddar on top. That variation becomes an apple-cheese gallette when you bake the cheese on top in a tart pan, without an upper crust.

And when, in my 30s, I discovered that I could warm up a slice of apple pie in the toaster oven, pour some milk over it, and make it my breakfast on a hostile winter morning - well! It changed my life. Not only because I felt like I was getting away with something naughty, but because knowing that there was apple pie out in the kitchen was singularly motivating when it came to getting me out of a warm bed and waking to the cold world. Apple pie is wintertime pie for me.

So, I've made the point that apple pie can be different every time you make it. Take some time to explore variations on the theme so you can decide whether you have a favorite.

I am a big fan of the old reliable, Betty-Crocker variety template - a double-crust pie with nothing but sliced apples, cinnamon, sugar, and a little bit of flour in the filling. This is the pie of childhood and it never disappoints, even if the crust is ugly (as it turned out today).

There are many new apple hybrids out there in the stores and farmer's markets, which I am certain have their merits - HoneyCrisp, Fuji, Braeburn, Gala, and on and on. Many of these are grown just outside the Sacramento Valley in the Apple Hill area. I have not tried a pie with any of these. My preference is for a slightly tart apple that has little juice, so I look for MacIntosh as a first choice. When I can't find those, I go for Granny Smiths. Granny Smiths don't cook down much. I love their firmness and the snap of their tartness. The Macs are good not only for pie, but for applesauce too. But they are a little juicier, and tend to reduce as they bake, yielding a creamier consistency. Macs have the slight disadvantage of being less abundant in Northern California markets in the winter months. This is an apple that hails from Ontario, Canada and was in my lunch box pretty regularly when I was a kid. The Macs today tend to have an overly tough skin, but a crisp white interior and great appley-ness.

I have never pretended to be an expert baker, and you don't need to be in order to make a terrific, flavorful apple pie. The main points are 1) make sure the apple slices, or chunks, are of a uniform size for even cooking, 2) press down on the mound of apples slightly to compact and settle them into a symmetrical domed shape, and 3) add a little starch of some sort to the filling in order to prevent the dreaded wet pie syndrome. This could be a tablespoon of flour, or a little less of cornstarch, or tapioca, mixed in well with the sugar and cinnamon. Bake it until the crust is golden and you see bubbles of fruity steam coming out the vents.

You can make an apple pie in the hour after dinner and have a warm slice of it before bed. Or, better yet, just skip making dinner and go directly to pie.

Pie of the Week - Cranberry Pie

This week - a pie and a bonus condiment!

Cranberries are in season and I was inspired by our Thanksgiving hostess, Kim, and her cranberry relish recipe to try to make a pie with it. After my first taste of her relish, I was reminded of a good mincemeat filling, but this was ever so slightly more tart and bright, both in flavor and color.

I've cooked cranberries perhaps twice in my entire life, both so long ago I barely remember how they turned out. It was an orange-noted conserve of some sort, which no one else would eat.

After the Quince Near-Debacle, I was feeling a little more cautious about this pie. Would the cranberries cook inside the pie crust and hold together when the pie was sliced? Or should I hedge my bets and follow Kim's recipe strictly, cooking the entire filling first? Would that liquid component all end up at the bottom of the pie in a gooshy mess? Would it be too sweet or too tart?

Would it be, you know, good?

The recipe for the filling (thank you, Kim!) was

2 packages of fresh cranberries

1 cup of orange juice

1 cup of sugar

to taste: raisins, chopped dried apricots, and other fruit (grated apple?) to taste (I used about a cup total of raisin and apricot)

to taste: cinnamon, grated or chopped fresh ginger (or powdered), clove

Kim's instruction for the relish calls for boiling the juice and sugar on the stove, and then adding the fruit and spices. This mixture would be cooked until the cranberries popped. Using the ingredients listed above, it's the best cranberry relish I've ever had.

For the pie filling, I opted for the following modifications:

1c. combined orange and cherry juice

1/2 c. sugar

1 tsp. each cinnamon, clove

I cooked the juice and sugar, adding about a tablespoon of chopped fresh ginger. I strained the ginger out and then poured the liquid over the cranberries, raisins, and apricots. I added a tablespoon of flour to the fruit mixture and stirred it in with about 1/2 tsp. of ground ginger.

I loaded all that into two 8" pie shells, topped it with a few pats of butter and a full top crust, and baked it for about 50 minutes. I used a hotter than normal temperature of 425 degrees, to make sure those cranberries really cooked. I watched, I brooded. It smelled nice.

This pie turned out better than I had reason to expect, based on my pie-on-the-fly mods to a recipe I'd never made. No, there was no pool of wet goo at the bottom. Yes, the cranberries cooked thoroughly and sufficiently to hold together upon slicing. As you can see, the pie has a bright crazy pink color - like strawberry-rhubarb pie - and distinct pieces of fruit with their own flavors and textures intact. It evokes a holiday mood and immediately induces good cheer, even before you bite into it.

I would do it all over again; however, next time, it needs the full cup of sugar. Yes, really. As constructed this week, it was pleasantly tart but almost at the edge of pleasantness for sensitive palates. A bit of ice cream would temper that very well if you need a foil for those cranberries. The spicing was a little too conservative in this pie - the ginger, cinnamon, and clove could be increased to 1.5 to 2 tsp. each. Fresh cranberries seem to easily overpower spice, so I don't think subtlety is what you're after. One modification that I will introduce next time is to add a splash of rum to the boiled liquids.

I can't think of too many fruit pie fillings that double as a chilled holiday condiment. I am thrilled that this recipe works for both. Do you have any other recipes like this to share? Sac Pie would love to hear from you!

PIE OF THE WEEK - Quest for Quince!

My friend Marina challenged me to make a pie of fresh quince and ground pasilla peppers. She thought the combination of flavors would be exotic, and quinces are in season right now, so she encouraged me to bust out of the comfort zone and experiment with new ingredients.

DEFINITELY OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE. Although I've eaten quince paste (membrillo) in the Spanish style before, I had never knowingly eaten a quince that I had cooked myself. I wasn't even sure exactly how to cook them.

But rather than let all that deter me, or be dragged down by the experience of people who knew better, I bought five quinces (a quint of them), some pasilla powder, and then tried to figure out how to make a pie.

First, you peel. The peel is edible but tougher than an apple's, so I decided to leave it out. Then, you core. This part was difficult. It was much like cutting through a winter squash. The cores were surrounded by some hard, woody material that I resorted to digging out with a knife. And finally, you chop. I made chunks about 1/2" by 1/2".

At this point, I thought to myself, "Self, are you sure this fruit is ripe?" The self was really not sure. But there was all that raw material, cut up and oxidizing. So what could I do? I made pie. I added sugar, a pinch of salt, at teaspoon of cinnamon, and about 1 to 2 teaspoons of pasilla to the fruit. Honestly, I had no idea how this would turn out. The smoky-woody quality of the pasilla combined with the sharpness and familiar tang of the cinnamon to make something different from the sum of their parts. I thought that even if the fully baked result was not completely palatable it would at least be interesting.

The fruit and spice went into a double crust pie in a PYREX pie pan, like Mom used to have. I baked that thing for over 50 minutes, to make sure the fruit was adequately cooked. The result smelled pleasingly of apple pie. That was not what I was expecting.

The fruit ended up not cooking down very much, and although soft and moist, it seemed there was not enough moisture in the fruit to make it smooth and a little juicy. The quince pieces looked like chunks of sweet potato, and lended about the same mouth feel as cooked sweet potato. I thought that quinces turned red as they cooked, so I expected the filling to be a nice rhubarb color when it finished baking. Instead, the chunks of fruit were a dusky orange-brown, again, like sweet potato. And the flavor of pasilla was not evident at all in the final product.

The crust was dynamite, though.

If I look at what could have gone better, I come back to the following potential issues:

• underripe quinces (maybe get them at the farmer's market next time)
• too much cinnamon and/or not enough pasilla
• may need more sugar than the 1/3 cup I added to the filling
• may need to add liquid to the fruit mixture to get it to cook better; this could be something like cherry or apple juice (or apple sauce?
  

If you have any other suggestions, let me know. The quest for quince and pasilla pie is not at an end. I think it's a flavor sensation worth pursuing. The first one was not a winner, but I am not discouraged, and have all season to suss it out. I will follow up with my next trial. Fortunately for Sac Pie, someone is always willing to consume the rejects from these experiments.

Next Pie of the Week: Cranberry

Pie of the Week: Making the World Safe for Mincemeat!

This pie is wonderful because it can be slightly different every time I make it. It started out in the 1980's with a recipe I made up on the fly -with shredded apples, pears, and oranges, dark raisins, and a mixture of clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice (which is also very good).

But this Pie of the Week is a little different. I wanted to try a new kind of mincemeat filling that comes condensed into a 2-by-2.5-inch brick. I found this in the holiday cooking section of the grocery store. I thought it would be equivalent to the Crosse & Blackwell product in the big glass jar. Here at Sac Pie we are always experimenting and striving for maximum pie happiness.

Package instructions call for reconstituting the sticky brick of mince filling with hot water, and that doing so would create enough filling for an 8-inch pie. When it was all re-hydrated, though, it was not enough for a respectable 8-inch pie. The liquid was also a little too thin. So I peeled and chopped 2 MacIntosh apples and mixed them in with the store-bought filling.

The result was a spicy, chunky filling, pleasantly moist but not runny or gooey. A little bit sweet and agreeably tart.

A lot of people I tell about this pie will wrinkle their noses when they hear or read "mincemeat." As if I were pushing Grandma's fruitcake or bread pudding. But if you like those Thanksgiving spices and apples, raisins, and citrus, mincemeat pie is delicious and feels rich and decadent without being at all heavy. And please note, packaged "mincemeat" filling sold in the U.S. does not contain any animal products.

Try it! You might be surprised how much you like it.