Seasonal Cooking

Summer cooking takes advantage of the wide array of garden fruits and veggies. Fruit pies have become my favorite in the past few years.....mainly because of the ease of making a consistent pie crust.

Seems that every cookbook has its own version of a pie crust. Browsing the recent Cook's Illustrated, I find they've come up with another version of the quintessential pie crust.

There is little difference between Cook's Illustrated recipe and Jacques Pepin's pie crust which he's been making for 50 years. Both use all butter, ice water and flour. Some cookbooks suggest a combination of butter and lard/shortening. Shortening is hydrogenated soy or cottonseed oil with all the good parts destroyed in the process. Alton Brown of FoodTV uses 3 parts butter to 1 part lard in his crusts. The one I use calls for salt and sugar added to the flour before addition of the fats. All the recipes I've seen, except Pepin's, suggest resting the pie dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Pepin states that if the processing is kept to a minimum, the dough should be ready to roll immediately. I use his method. Experiment and find the right combination for you.

Oven @400°. For a two-part pie dough place ½ cup of water in a measuring cup and add 3 or 4 ice cubes. Take 2 cups of flour (scoop and scrape) and place in a processor. Add a pinch of salt and sugar. Pulse to mix. Cut 12 ounces of unsalted butter into ¼" slices and then quarter these pieces. Add to processor and pulse 4 times for about 1 second (count 1001). Measure 1/3 cup of iced water and splash about half into the processor. Process for about 5 seconds. Flour should just about come together. Splash about 1 to 1½ tablespoons more. Process until dough comes together into a ball. Stop at this point. When the dough is pinched and it holds its shape, remove from processor and place on a floured surface.

Divide the dough into two parts. Roll one part into a 12" circle to fit your pie plate. Place into the pie plate and cut a piece of parchment paper big enough to place on top of the dough. Add a bunch of beans for weights and place in a 400° oven for 12 minutes. Remove from oven, remove parchment and weight, wash with a mixture of 1 egg beaten and 1 teaspoon of water. This will waterproof the shell from the liquid of the filling. Bake an additional 7 minutes. I use this process for all baked and unbaked pies. It makes the crust crisper for the baked pies.

Two fillings I recently used from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible are for a peach pie and one for a blueberry pie. Both fruits are ripe for using in pies in my locale now. Her pie crusts are different from those above,so try it if you like them.

For the peach pie, use 2 3/4 pounds of peaches (about 8 medium - I use 9 or 10), peeled, pitted and sliced thinly. Macerate the peaches in a 3 quart non-reactive mixing bowl - stainless or glass - by adding 1 tablespoon lemon juice (juice of ½ lemon), ½ cup + 1 tablespoon sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix gently and let stand for a minimum of 30 minutes up to 1 hour. Transfer peaches to a colander over a small saucepan to collect the almost 1 cup of juice.

Reduce the liquid to 1/3 cup until syrupy and lightly caramelized. Transfer peaches back into the mixing bowl used for macerating them and add 4 teaspoons cornstarch and ½ teaspoon almond extract. Mix until all traces of cornstarch are dissolved. Pour syrup over peaches, tossing gently. Transfer mixture to pie shell.

Roll out pie dough to fit on top or alternatively, cut into strips ½" wide for a lattice top. Top pie with your choice topping, place in 425° oven for 45 to 50 minutes. After 30 minutes, if using a lattice top, cover the edges with foil to prevent overbrowning.

Let pie cool on rack at least 3 hours before cutting.