This Year’s Birthday Pie

I think, as of this year, I can safely say I’ve covered the whole universe of apple pie. I’ve done all manner of tarts, tatins, single-crust pies, and traditional double-crust pies, and now I can add fried pies, which was His Lordship’s birthday request this time around.

Because no fried apple pie recipe had every quality I was looking for, I mashed together and made further changes to this recipe for the pastry and Shirley Corriher’s recipe in Cookwise for an apple pie in which the filling, top and bottom crusts are all cooked separately and assembled at the last minute to keep the pastry from going soggy. I mixed the apples (Stayman, Cortland, York and Honeycrisp) for a nice balance of sweetness and tartness, and a blend of firm pieces and almost-melting ones. To further bump up the apple flavor, I used a blend of apple cider and Calvados in the filling.

The resulting pies are really good, blisteringly crisp outside and oozy-apple-y inside, although I’m not going to kid you; they’re a fair amount of work and not remotely speedy to prepare. Still, once a year, you might as well really do it up right, right?

Fried Apple Pies
Makes 7-8 individual pies

For the dough:

2 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon sea salt
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, in ½ inch cubes
3 tablespoons very cold non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening, in lumps the same size as the butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
Ice water

For the filling:

5 medium apples, preferably a mix of pie varieties
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
¼ cup apple cider
2 tablespoons Calvados
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
6 tablespoons light brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in 3 tablespoons apple cider

Oil for frying
Confectioner’s sugar for dusting

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the butter and shortening and work with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Whisk the egg with ¼ cup of the ice water, sprinkle over the dry ingredients, and stir gently until fully incorporated. Add more water as necessary until the dough holds together, kneading a few times in the bowl to be sure. Divide the pastry in half, press into disks, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap or in zip-top bags. Chill at least one hour.

Peel the apples and divide into segments with an apple corer/slicer. Further chop each segment into ½ inch chunks.

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat and sauté the apples 2-3 minutes, stirring gently with a heatproof spatula. Add the ¼ cup cider, Calvados and vanilla and cook 1 minute longer before adding in the sugars, spices and salt. Simmer the apples until starting to become tender but not mushy, 5 or so minutes more. Add the cornstarch mixture and continue simmering until the juices have thickened. Cool the filling completely and refrigerate until ready to assemble the pies.

Roll a disk of the pastry on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of about a quarter inch. Cut six-inch circles from the dough, laying the circles in a single layer onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Refrigerate until firmed up again.

Place two heaping spoonfuls of the apple filling in the center of a pastry circle. Brush the edges with water, fold in half, and pinch to seal closed, pushing out any air as you go along. Place the filled pie back on the parchment-lined sheet and crimp the edges with a fork. Repeat with remaining circles. Chill again, until the pastry is cold and the pies are easily picked up.

Heat 2 inches of oil in a heavy, high-sided pot to 360 F. Fry two to three pies at a time, turning once, until well browned. Drain on a rack set over a baking sheet until cool enough to handle. Dust with confectioner’s sugar before serving.

Notes:

Don’t be tempted to skip the re-chilling steps with the pastry, because the non-hydrogenated shortening really needs to be kept as cold as possible or it will be too floppy to handle easily.

There will be both extra filling and dough scraps. You can re-roll the scraps for more pies, although the second batch will be tougher so I don’t bother. The leftover filling is a nice topping for waffles or pancakes, or can be served as a compote with yogurt.

Read Full Post »

How I Spent the Snowpocalypse

Thanks to the copious and rapid descent of white stuff from the sky, I, along with much of the Mid-Atlantic region, was the beneficiary of an unexpected weekend in the middle of the week. I did mention before that there is an unhappy coincidental tendency for there to be the worst winter in decades shortly after I move somewhere, didn’t I? Yeah, sorry about that, population of the greater East Coast. No promises, but it’s usually a one-shot and the curse lifts the following year.

So anyway, what did I do with my snow days, you ask? Well, like a good little bee, I actually did some work that could be done from home, and which needed doing lest deadlines back up unpleasantly when I got back to the office. I also — I won’t lie — did plenty of slothing around on the couch, with my laptop, a warm blanket, and a huge cup of tea.

Since we have recently killed off the cable TV, thanks to the largely craptacular state of programming nowadays and with the cheering encouragement of a certain family member, I have been catching up on a lot of older material via Netflix, Hulu and DVDs, and getting re-acquainted with some old favorites. High up on that list is a tragic casualty of the writer’s strike and the generally out-of-step-with-mine tastes of the American viewing public, a delightful little confection called Pushing Daisies, which, if you aren’t familiar with it, you must go out and rent right now. It had everything I love: whimsy, intelligence, cute dogs, fantastic art design, random musical numbers, a soupcon of darkness, a whole lot of snark, and, last but decidedly not least, yummy-looking desserts.

The lead character being the owner of a shop irreverently named The Pie Hole, there was a whole lot of pie on the show. When I watched it the first go-around, I was too busy and harried to indulge the pie cravings it always engendered. It’s a different story on re-watching, since my acquisition of the entire series on DVD has coincided with a lot of stuck-indoors time. There was one particular pie that I had most wanted to try re-creating, and it occurred to me as I was lounging around, watching snow fall faster and faster, that I had everything I needed to finally try it, including the time. So I got off the couch and did it, and I had a lot of fun in the process.

The facts were these: a pear pie, with Gruyere cheese baked into the crust. As I love both pears and cheese, this sounded like nothing but win. Fortuitously, I had a bit of Gruyere left from my last visit to my delightfully surly favorite cheese monger, who gives major discounts on a rotating variety of cheeses if you buy more than a pound at a time. I had also recently tried out a recipe from Rick Bayless for freeform tarts, which had just the kind of sturdy dough that would stand up to this kind of wild experimentation. The only compromise I had to make was mixing apples in with the pears, because I didn’t have quite enough to keep it pure.

Are the results refined and elegant? Heck no. Just take a good look:

They are rustic to the extreme, the way they spread and flatten and get speckled with gold from the toasted cheese. Absolutely no beauty contests are going to be won by these tarts. However, and much more importantly, they are both tasty and intriguing, with juicy, lightly spiced fruit surrounded by a crumbly, melting, rich dough that would, with a bit more salt and a much heftier hand with the Gruyere, make a really good cheese straw.

These tarts are basically a re-engineered cheese and fruit course, which makes them ideal for those who only grudgingly accept dessert. There is no sugar in the crust, and very little sweetener in the filling. While the baking tarts filled the house with the scent of fondue, they’re not aggressively cheesy in flavor, especially after they’ve cooled to room temperature, at which point they just hint at cheese.

I think it would be very interesting to play some more with this idea — maybe rosemary and parmesan with just apple or cheddar with cranberries. I might even get really daring with the chemistry and see what goat cheese or brie would do in place of the cream cheese, maybe with sour cherries.

First, though, I intend to test out this idea of individual “cup pies” made in muffin tins, with honey baked into the crust. Yum!

Pear and Apple Tarts with Gruyere Crust
(Extremely loosely adapted from Rustic Cajeta Apple Tarts in Rick Bayless’s Mexico: One Plate at a Time)
Makes 6 tarts

For the pastry:

1 1/3 cups (6 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/2 ounces cream cheese
1 1/2 ounces Gruyere, grated
1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons ice water

For the filling:

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 Honeycrisp or other crisp-tangy apples
3 ripe but still firm Comice or Anjou pears
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Juice of half a lemon

Cut the butter and cream cheese into small cubes and place in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt for the pastry in a food processor and pulse several times to mix. Add the very cold butter, cream cheese and Gruyere and pulse a few more times, until no pieces of butter larger than a pea remain. Sprinkle the vinegar and ice water over the mixture and pulse briefly until the dough just starts to come together in moist-looking large crumbs that hold together when pressed between your fingers. Tilt the dough out onto a large piece of plastic wrap or a quart-sized zip top bag, seal tightly, and refrigerate at least 1 hour.

Peel and core the apples and pears, and slice into sixteen wedges each. Melt the 3 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat and add the apple wedges. Cook, stirring frequently, until all the apples are browning at the edges. Add the pears, maple syrup and cinnamon and continue cooking until the fruit are tender but still holding together. Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Cool the filling to room temperature.

Once the dough has chilled and the filling has cooled, divide the pastry into six equal pieces and squish each section into a ball. On a floured work surface, roll out each ball to a rough circle around the six inches in diameter.

Set the first circle of pastry onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Pile one sixth of the fruit in the center of the circle, leaving behind the juice. Make sure at least an inch of dough is left clear around the fruit. Fold the pastry over the filling, pleating as you go, and leaving some fruit exposed in the middle. Repeat the process for the remaining circles, leaving 2 inches of space between each tart. Put the sheet into the freezer for 15-20 minutes, while the oven is heating.

Heat the oven to 400 F.

Bake the tarts, straight from the freezer, 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. Serve warm or just at room temperature.

Notes:

Although they’ll keep for about a day, I think these are best when recently made. If they’ve been sitting overnight, try reheating them in the oven to crisp the dough back up.

I think the dough is just a tiny bit too rich, so next time, I’ll cut back the butter in the pastry by four tablespoons and up the Gruyere to three ounces, plus extra for sprinkling on top, as they did on the show. This time, I was necessarily limited to the 1 1/2 ounces I had left after we made a frittata for breakfast, and obviously I wasn’t able to pop out and buy more!

Read Full Post »

Easter Pie for Christmas

In keeping with my not-quite-there-yet attitude toward the holidays this year, there is one food that I’ve been craving since my little outburst of decorating two weekends ago. As it happens, it’s a holiday food, yes — but the wrong holiday.

This savory pie filled with spinach, ricotta and parmesan and seasoned with nutmeg is not traditionally a Christmas food. It’s an Easter food, which is why the Italian name for it, Torta Pasqualina, means “Easter Pie”. When I was growing up, we did have it for Easter, but I loved it so much that my mother could be persuaded to make it at other times of the year, and now that I’m a grown-up, I can make it for myself at Christmastime if I want to.

The catch is that it had been so long since I’d watched Mom make it that I pretty much forgot how, and would you believe that scouring through every single Italian cookbook I have, including the supposed bible of Italian cooking, did not turn up a recipe quite like what I was looking for? Oh, there were plenty of pies made with ricotta and greens, but either the dough was wrong (puff pastry? I don’t think so. Sweet pastafrolla? Even worse!) or the filling wasn’t right (prosciutto is definitely out and chard is nice but not what I was looking for here).

In the end, I had to do a lot of remixing, combining of elements, and filling in my own blanks to come up with a recipe closer to what I remembered. It’s not quite 100% there, and I will probably have to consult with Mom to figure out where the ratios were a little off, but it’s really darn close.

If you’ve never had this pie, imagine something a little like Greek spanikopita, except milder and eggier and denser. At least for me, it’s an incredibly comforting flavor, plus it’s green! Green is Christmassy, right? It’s also better cold than fresh out of the oven and will keep for days in the fridge, which makes it an excellent option if you want to make it ahead and devote most of your holiday cooking energy to fussy rolled-out cookies or wassail or what have you.

Torta Pasqualina, or Italian Spinach and Ricotta Pie
Serves 8-10

For pastry:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) salted butter, cut into 32 pieces
4 tablespoons non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon water

For filling:
2 12-ounce bags frozen spinach
1 16-ounce container part-skim ricotta cheese
1 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano
2 teaspoons each salt and freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
4 large eggs, beaten

Place the butter and shortening in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to chill thoroughly.

Place dry ingredients in the food processor bowl and pulse several times to combine. Add the butter and shortening and pulse again until sandy, 12-15 times. Beat the water into the eggs and add to the processor, and process until the dough starts to form a ball around the blade. Divide the dough into two pieces, one comprising two-thirds of the dough. Form each piece into a flat disk, wrap tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 1 hour.

Defrost the spinach in the microwave, then squeeze bone-dry in a colander or a dish towel. Place in a large bowl and stir in the cheeses, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Taste the filling and correct the seasonings as necessary; it should be slightly over-seasoned since it will be eaten cold. Stir in the eggs. Set aside.

Set the rack at the lower-middle position and heat oven to 350F.

Roll the larger piece of dough into a circle large enough to line a 9-inch springform pan. Tuck the pastry into the pan, letting the excess hang over the sides. Spread the filling onto the pastry, leveling and smoothing the top. Roll out the second piece of dough and set over the filling. Trim the excess, tuck the edges under, and crimp. Cut an X in the center and pull back the corners to leave a vent for the filling as it cooks.

Bake the pie for 60-70 minutes, until the pastry is golden-brown and the filling that peeks through the opening in the crust looks dry and set. Cool completely before eating, and refrigerate any leftovers.

Notes:

I used salted butter because I’m hoarding the unsalted for holiday cookie baking, but if you only have unsalted around, add 1 teaspoon salt to the dry ingredients.

Using lower-fat ricotta is not only fine but even preferable here, since the full-fat kind can make this unpleasantly rich in combination with the eggy pastry.

Many versions of this pie crack additional whole eggs into the filling, which bake to a hard-boiled consistency and make for a pretty presentation when the pie is cut open. If you want to try this, use a big soup spoon to create 4-5 evenly-spaced deep indentations in the filling once you’ve spread it inside the pastry, and carefully crack an egg into each well. Cover the pie with the second layer of pastry and proceed as instructed.

Read Full Post »

Pie Squared

When I said earlier that there’s a lot of “it’s that time of year again” in my life during the autumn months, I should have included in the list the annual pie-making ritual that is His Lordship’s birthday.

I usually spend the weeks before his birthday with my ears open for any new options, and this year I happened upon the episode of America’s Test Kitchen on apple desserts. The Skillet Apple Pie not only looked perfect but also provided a ready-made gift idea: a 12-inch oven-safe skillet, which we did not have. (I know! Kitchen equipment I don’t own! Inconceivable!)

The idea here is that the filling is pre-cooked on the stove, then covered with just a top layer of dough and baked for a much shorter-than-usual length of time. The sheer brilliance of this is that it sidesteps the double-hassle of rolling, fitting and crimping, and avoids the largely inevitable risk of a soggy and/or tough bottom crust. You also don’t have to worry about finding an oven temperature that will soften the fruit, set the liquids, bake the dough, and avoid burning or overbaking any of the components. Since the filling is already mostly cooked, you’re free to flash-bake the crust at a temperature so high that the layers of dough “EEK!” away from each other and create beautifully crispy strata.

I did have to make some important changes to the procedures to accommodate the special needs of non-hydrogenated shortening, but even so, this was as effortless as pie could ever possibly be. The outcome was, if I may say so, even better than the birthday pie I deemed perfect a couple of years ago. This one may not be quite as refined as that standard double-crust apple pie, but it has its own kind of beauty, and by every measure it was a smashing success. The apple filling was sweet and juicy, neither gummy with too much thickener nor runny with too little. The pastry was utterly perfect: flaky, tender, shatteringly crisp. His Lordship positively adored it, both the day it was baked and the next morning for breakfast.

I love the ease, speed and deliciousness of this recipe so much that the birthday apple version was followed two weeks later by a pear and cranberry version (see the notes in the recipe below). Pretty much anything that would work as a cobbler or crisp will work here, so I’ve been dreaming up zillions of other filling possibilities ever since. I just found a new source for quinces and may have some left over for pie experimentation even after making jam, and I’m also eager to try cherry and peach when summer comes back around.  Don’t be surprised if pie makes repeat appearances in the next several seasons!

Best-Ever Birthday Apple Pie
(Adapted from America’s Test Kitchen’s Skillet Apple Pie)
Serves 6-8

For crust:
1 cup (5 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons non-hydrogenated shortening
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3–4 tablespoons ice water

For filling:
2 1/2 pounds of various kinds of apples (about 6; see notes)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup apple cider
1/3 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

To bake:
1 egg white, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons granulated sugar

Cut the butter into 1/4 inch pieces and place into a small bowl with the shortening. Cover and refrigerate until the fats are very cold and firm, at least 20 minutes.

Place the flour, sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse several times to combine. Add the cold fat and pulse again 10 times, until the mixture resembles crumbs. Err on the side of leaving visible pea-sized bits of butter.

Dump the flour and butter mixture into a medium bowl. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of ice water over it and fold with a rubber spatula, pressing down gently. If the dough isn’t sticking together, add the extra tablespoon of water and fold again. Transfer the still-crumbly dough onto a large sheet of plastic wrap and press out into a small disk. Wrap tightly and refrigerate at least 1 hour, and preferably overnight.

Fill a large bowl with cold water, and squeeze in some lemon juice. Peel and core the apples, and cut them into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Place the peeled slices in the acidulated water to keep them from browning while you’re working on the rest.

Heat the butter in a 12-inch oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Lift the apples out of the water and toss into the pan. Stir infrequently until they’re starting to caramelize but not cooked all the way through, about 5-7 minutes, then turn off the heat. Whisk together the cider, maple syrup, lemon juice, cornstarch and cinnamon and pour over the apples, stirring gently to coat. Set aside to cool while you’re rolling out the pastry.

Adjust the oven rack to the upper-middle position and preheat to 500F. While the oven is heating, roll out the dough to an 11-inch circle between layers of plastic wrap or parchment paper. Transfer the dough to a large cookie sheet, still encased in the plastic or parchment, and place in the freezer for the last few minutes of the preheating to re-chill the shortening.

When the oven is hot, peel the top layer of plastic or parchment off the pastry, flip the dough gently onto the apple filling in the skillet, and peel off the second layer. Fold under or trim off any edges that are hanging over the sides, brush the top with the egg white, and sprinkle evenly with the sugar. With a sharp knife or pizza cutter, cut the dough into six quadrants (once down the middle, and twice across). Bake until the crust is a deep golden brown, 20-25 minutes.

Let cool 15 minutes before serving warm with vanilla ice cream.

Notes:

ATK said to combine sweet and tart varieties, so I used equal amounts of Macoun, Empire, Jonagold and Cortland. Using apples with different characteristics gives you a more complex apple flavor and ensures that some apples will stay firm while others are almost applesauce-soft and add more body to the filling.

I use an apple corer/divider to segment the apples, which gives me eight wedges that can each be halved to get the perfect thickness.

Non-hydrogenated shortening can be found at health food stores and some bigger supermarkets. If you can’t find it and have to resort to regular shortening, you can skip the freezer step since it’s more forgiving of abuse.

If you don’t have an oven-safe skillet, the filling can be spooned into a shallow casserole or 9×13 Pyrex dish before being covered with the dough.

For the cranberry-pear variation, substitute pears for the apples and add one cup of cranberries plus 1/3 cup of sugar and the maple syrup once the pears have begun to soften up. Cook until the cranberries are just starting to pop, but be sure to turn off the heat while at least a few are still intact. Before you add the cider and thickener (I left out the cinnamon, but it’s your call), taste the filling and add a little bit more sugar if it’s still too tart. Proceed as usual with the recipe.

Read Full Post »

Birthday Apple Pie

His lordship, like many a bearer of the Y-chromosome, is generally uninspired by sweets. He will take them happily enough should they appear before him, but he will rarely lament their absence. Cake in particular is usually his last choice from the dessert menu, which is why we celebrate his birthday every year with pie instead.

Wherein lies the problem, because pie crust is the runner-up for the title of my personal culinary nemesis (the winner, I would think, should be obvious). Pastry, yeast, even candy I can master, but really good, reliable pie crust has, for many years, eluded me. Every decent pie I’ve made has been outnumbered two or threefold by dry, crumbly, tough, or greasy less-than-perfect-successes. While many people have issues with this area of baking, I’m doubly handicapped at the gate since two of the standard go-to ingredients are off-limits. Lard, while OK with his lordship, does not fit in my vegetarian lifestyle, and transfat-laden shortening is not good for either of us. That leaves all-butter crusts, which, while very flavorful, can be horribly temperamental and, no matter how perfectly executed, are never going to achieve the ideal of flaky tenderness of a truly perfect pie.

Until now, the best results I’ve been able to achieve is by using the French technique of fraisage, in which the sandy dough is smeared across a cold work surface with the heel of your hand to build flat, thin sheets of flour-coated butter that will puff in the oven into crisp layers that impart that much-desired flakiness. While it produces lovely results, the process is fiddly, time-consuming and messy, which is why most of the time I’ve drifted into the less cumbersome and more forgiving tart zone. His lordship’s previous birthday ‘pies’ have included tarte tatins, linzertortes, pear frangipane tartes and the like.

This year, though, he specifically requested all-American double-crust apple pie, so there was no getting away from the pastry conundrum. I could have cheated and used store-bought, since there are a few on the market that use neither animal fats nor hydrogenated fat, but a birthday pie really deserves more effort than that. When I saw non-hydrogenated, palm-oil-based shortening in the store, I thought I’d give it a shot, using a recipe from the always-reliable chefs at America’s Test Kitchen, in the encyclopedic New Best Recipe. To my surprise, it worked perfectly. The pastry was far easier to work with than I expected, and baked up as beautifully flaky and light as any I’ve ever had. The filling, a mixture of Fujis, Jonagolds and Honeycrisps from several trips to the farmer’s market, was juicy and complex. His lordship was delighted, and declined ice cream or whipped cream, preferring to enjoy it in its pure, ungarnished form.

The only factors preventing me from dubbing it a complete triumph are that, in my haste, I forgot to add the salt to the flour, and I really ought to have chilled the entire pie well before baking to ensure better definition, since the very high initial baking temperature flattened out my careful crimping almost immediately. Still, it’s the best result ever, and I finally feel as though I’ve achieved the upper hand against that pesky pie dough.

Birthday Apple Pie

2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 oz) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
6-8 tablespoons ice water

8 cups sliced apples of choice (in 1/4-inch slices, from approximately 3 pounds of apples)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon grated lemon or orange zest
3/4 cup (5 1/4 oz) sugar
1 teaspoon apple pie spice
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 large egg white, beaten lightly
1 tablespoon raw sugar

Chill shortening and butter very thoroughly before beginning.

Process the flour and salt in a food processor until combined. Add the shortening and pulse for 10 seconds, then add the butter and pulse again until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Turn out into medium bowl.

Sprinkle 6 tablespoons of ice water over mixture and fold in with a rubber spatula, pressing down until the dough sticks together. Add additional ice water as necessary. Divide into two balls and flatten into disks. Wrap each disk in plastic and refrigerate at least 1 hour before using.

Adjust oven rack to lowest position, place a rimmed baking sheet on rack, and preheat to 500 F.

Roll each disk of dough into a 12-inch circle between two sheets of parchment or plastic wrap. Set one circle into a 9-inch pie plate, pressing gently into the corners and leaving a 1/2-inch overhang. Chill the lined pie plate and the top crust well while preparing the filling.

In a medium bowl, toss the apples with the lemon juice and zest. Mix the sugar, apple pie spice, flour and salt in a medium bowl, then toss in with the apples. Fill the chilled shell with the apple mixture, mounding it in the center. Cover with the top crust, tucking the edge under the bottom crust overhang so that the fold is flush with the pan edge. Crimp the edge to seal, cut four slits in the top, and place in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Brush the top and edge with the egg white and sprinkled with sugar. Place on the baking sheet and lower the temperature to 425 F. Bake until golden, about 25 minutes, then reduce to 375 F. Continue baking until bubbly and deep golden brown, 30-35 minutes more.

Cool the pie on a rack to room temperature, 4 hours or more.

Read Full Post »

Sunday Sweets Blogging: Sour Cherry Crumb Tart

Cranberries, rhubarb, and now sour cherries. Do we sense a theme here? I appear to have a thing for incandescently red, tart fruit, don’t I? I suppose I might as well confess that I love pomegranates and blood oranges, too. I’m sure someone with a psychology background could come up with some sordid reason for my attraction to crimson fruits, but I prefer not to examine the implications too closely and just enjoy the mood-lifting color and the tastebud-stimulating tingle.

Even if you don’t share my potentially problematic compulsion to snatch up anything red and tangy, you really ought to take advantage of the blink-of-an-eye season for sour cherries if you’re lucky enough to live in their growing area. They’re obscenely expensive for the two weeks or so that they appear, and pitting them is a pain in the ass, but their manic color and flavor are so wonderful that it’s well worth the pricetag and the trouble. If you do bite the bullet, the best way to showcase them is in a pie, or, if you’re not feeling up to working with dough, a crisp or cobbler. You want to let the fruit get top billing, with some plain and sweet dough or crumbly mixture to play the supporting role.

I went a little nuts (literally!) with today’s recipe, which combines both an almond-enhanced bottom crust and a crumbly topping, but since they’re a once-a-year treat, I thought they deserved the extra effort. As has become another habit, this recipe is an amalgam of components from several recipes: the basic almond tart dough and the almond crumble from Nick Malgieri’s How to Bake, and the filling from a Gourmet recipe for sour cherry crostata on Epicurious. The end product is humble in appearance but a shooting star in taste and texture, with a tender cookie-like crust and a crumbly and nutty top layer, sandwiching between them a zingy layer of unadorned fruit.

Sour Cherry Crumb Tart
Makes 1 9-inch tart

Almond Tart Dough
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg yolk, at room temperature
1/2 cup finely ground almond meal
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Sour Cherry Filling
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 quart fresh sour cherries, pitted (approx. 4-5 cups)
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cold water
3 tablespoons cornstarch

Almond Crumble Topping
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup slivered almonds
6 tablespoons butter, melted

Equipment: 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom

Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on medium for 5 minutes, or until fluffy and pale in color. Beat in the vanilla and egg yolk and beat for another 2 minutes, then beat in the almond meal. Sift the flour over the the mixture and fold in gently with a spatula, until no traces of flour remain. Place in a gallon-sized zip-top bag or sandwich between two layers of plastic wrap and press out into a disk approx. 1/4 inch thick. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Melt the butter in a large nonstick skillet over moderate heat, then add the cherries and sugar, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Lower the heat and continue to simmer until the cherries are tender but not mushy, about 6 minutes. Mix the water and cornstarch into a paste, pull the pan off the heat, and stir the paste into the filling. Return the pan to the heat and simmer two more minutes, stirring frequently. Pour the filling onto a shallow baking dish and allow to cool to room temperature.

Place the oven rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 350F. While the oven is heating, prepare the topping by mixing the dry ingredients in a medium bowl, then stirring in the butter until thoroughly combined. Let sit for five minutes, then break the mixture into medium-sized crumbs with your fingers.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and press into the tart pan, making sure the bottom and sides are even and patching any cracks or holes through which the filling might ooze. If the dough heats and softens too much from working it, return to the refrigerator for several minutes, then fill with the cherries. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the top.

Set the tart on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake until the dough and topping are golden and the filling is bubbling, 30-40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely on a rack, a full hour if you can wait that long, and at least half an hour if you can’t.

Read Full Post »