Tamale Pie

I do not know why, but making the savory pies does not get me as thrilled as the dessert pies do. I still feel creative, but it is different.

This is different from most of the Tamale Pie recipes I have seen in that it has a top and bottom crust, most just have the top crust.

This turned out very nice. The crust was solid enough to hold up to being served in whole pieces and tender enough to compete with some of the best cornbread I have had. The top crust blended with a layer of cheddar cheese that made it quite remarkable. The filling was spicy and very flavorful. The only downside to this dish was that it made an entire 9x13 pan with Sweet Wife and I being the only ones home to enjoy it most of it ended up in the trash.

I went out to Camp Yamhill this weekend for the retreat that we have with our youth group each year. It is a really great weekend with some terrific kids. The Spirit of God permeated the weekend. I was moved as were so many of the teens and participating adults.

One of the reasons I enjoy Camp Yamhill so much is the couple that has taken over the cooking and such there, Alex and Pam. No more packaged foods. The food there used to be OK, but now it is very good. I have struck up a friendship with them and enjoy visiting with them whenever I go out there. Alex is a funny guy, I always enjoy his humor and Pam is a chef willing to teach and answer all my goofy questions. It was sad this weekend because Pam was sick and I only saw her briefly the first morning for breakfast. I pray she gets well fast.

If I had not run out of time to bake on Friday before I left I had planned to bring her an example of my baking adventure in an Apple Galette. She told me that one of the "final exams" in culinary school was to bake a galette and I wanted to get her opinion of mine, well maybe next time.

Apple Pie II

Well, I got some new stuff from Pampered Chef (R) and have been enjoying the garlic peeler, fun little gadget it is a silicone tube and you put your garlic clove in there and rub it between your hands and it peels it for you so you can chop it up. Also got some little prep bowls that I have not used much, becuase they are kind of small and I forget have them and just use monkey dishes.

One of the tools I got was a pastry cutter wheel. It has three blades, one that cuts straight like a pizza cutter, only smaller, one that is flat for crimping dough and one that cuts a wavy line. I used the wavy one to cut the dough to make a lattice on this pie.

I finally got around to making the second recipe for apple pie in the book. The filling is cooked before it goes in the pie and Irma said that it is a bit softer filling than Apple Pie I and not as sweet, but with more apple flavor. I did taste the filling before it went in the pie and thought it was very good.

The lattice was fun to make. I always wondered how people got those great lattice patterens with thin pieces of dough, because my dough would always get all messed up with the filling while I was weaving it. In the book I found out. You make it off the pie on a cookie sheet and refrigerate it until it is stiff and place it on the top of the pie in one piece...pretty clever. I do not know if you can tell I used my new cookie cutter to put a couple of little apple shapes on the top of the crust...Ellen noticed when I gave her the pie *smile*.

Rolling the dough went very well with my new pin, I just love it! Also it was good to make the pie for someone else. This is the pie I made to trade for the raspberry jam for the Linzertorte. I went out to Battle Ground to take the pie to Ellen and got to visit with her and Roberta and Jennifer and Elisa. It was a lot of fun and if they enjoy the pie half as much as I enjoyed their company I would be quite pleased. I asked them to make a comment on this blog entry as to how they liked the pie...or not.

There was a little more darkening on the crust than I like to see, but I was writing the previous post on quiche while it was baking and lost track of time, oops.

By the way, Roberta, if you read this thanks so much for the big bag of frozen blueberries. I was planning to make a pie with them, but my wife took them and said they are for her lunches to make up for all the pies I make she does not get to eat. On that same note my sweet daughter, Rachel asks me the same thing every time I bake, "Do we get to eat this one?" Poor thing, I asked her to pick a pie and it will be just for her. She choose the peach, so this summer when peaches are ripe I will bake one just for her!

Quiche Lorraine...does it count if I fail?

My pal Mike has chickens and they laid more eggs than he could use so he gave me a couple of dozen. I thought what a great time to make a quiche. So I set out to make one for him.

As you can see by the pictures I failed in my attempt to make Quiche Loraine. I am so glad I put that pan under the tart pan, what a mess that would have been.

The problem was that I rolled the crust too thin and it shrunk down on one side of the tart and developed a hole during baking. It has an egg yoke glaze baked on the crust to help to seal it, but it was not enough.

The color and flavor were very good and the wife 'o my life very much enjoyed the crust and the filling on the small one, although it had shrunken sides too.

I am going to go ahead and scratch it off the list as done even though it failed. I will attempt it again, only next time I will have to use store-bought eggs.

I got a french-style rolling pin and I am loving it! It is so much nicer to use than the one my mother used. I thought it would take a little getting used to, but it was better right out of the gate. I also got four small removable-bottom tarts and used one in the quiche disaster. They will take a little practice. Irma says to double over the edges of tart crusts that are 3 1/2 to 4 1/2-inch pans, but not if they are very small pans with sloped sides. Well my new pans are 3 1/2-inch, but they have sloped sides...I am going to double the sides next time, we will see how that works out.

Well, I have Apple Pie II in the oven right now. I am baking it for Ellen, a friend at church. I put out the word that I needed 12 ounces of home-made raspberry jam to make the Linzertorte because I did not want to use store-bought jam to fill a tort I have worked so hard on. Ellen gave me a whole quart of jam made by her mother, who she says makes the best jam, from home-grown raspberries. I just hope the rest of the Linzertorte can live up to that!

My Book Is Here!

The book I am baking these pies from, The Joy of Cooking; All About Pies and Tarts, is a library book and I figured I could just keep renewing it all year, but the library will not let you renew if it has a hold on it. I decided I would just buy the book on line.

I found the Joy of Cooking "All About" series in several places on the web and the prices vary on different editions such as All About Cookies or Chicken or Whatever, they were all in the range of $3 to $8...except All About Pies and Tarts. The new copies were $85 and up to $115. Wow, that is a bit much. The used copies were not much better at $45, 50 or 65.

Perseverance pays off. I have continued to look on line and finally found a copy for under $20 including shipping. It said it had "minimal underlining" and was in "good" shape. Well, I thought it would be OK no matter how much writing was in it or whatever.

It arrived the other day and it is in better shape than the one I got from the library!

No writing or underlining to be found. Funny thing is it came from a used book store in Bothel, Washington through http://www.thriftbooks.com/ and the stamp on the book says it was "withdrawn" from the Omaha, Nebraska Public Library. That is a well traveled book.

By the way, I have purchased several books from thriftbooks.com and I have always been pleased with the service and the goods.

Key Lime Pie

My son, David asked me to make the Key Lime Pie for him because he relly likes the key lime flavored yogurt...well, it works for me!

This was different in that I have never made a citrus pie, but I was game. I had to buy a citrus juicer and I wish I had bought a squeezer in stead, maybe I will get one before I make the Lemon Meringue Pie.

Those little, tiny key limes do not have much to them, I had to zest a dozen of them to get the 3 or 4 teaspoons of zest I needed and I had to juice 16 to get the half cup of juice. I did learn my lesson making the French Yeast Galette and used my zesting tool and not the grater to avoid the bitter flesh of the peel.

I had the choice of making it with a meringue topping or whipped cream, I opted for the meringue. The meringue Irma had for me to use has a corn starch paste in it which is suppose to keep the meringue stable for several days...we will never know since Susan took the left-over pie to work and they leave nothing to destablize, ha ha.

The wife 'o my life, Susan said she was surprized that it was not green in color. I had not even thought of that because I saw the picture in Irma's book and it was yellow with just a hint of green, which is just what my pie looked like.

My pie did not look exactly like the book. I tried to "anchor" the meringue to the crust as instructed, but it seperated a little and the pie did weep a bit, the next morning it had maybe a half teaspoon of liquid in the bottom of the plate. They can not all come out perfect, now can they!

One strange thing I noticed was that Irma called for a 15oz can of sweetened condensed milk and both brands at the store come in 14oz cans...weird.

His peace,

Lewis

French Yeast Galette

Well it has been a while, but I finally got back in the kitchen!

My 10th grade daughter, Rachel had us scheduled at her school for student-led conferences, which never go well for us. I do not know if it goes well for others, but Rachel's always seems a little rushed and a little scattered. I did secretly enjoy it though. The reason I bring that up is that her "advisor" at school is a French gal so I decided to make the French Yeast Galette since Irma says that throughout France different regions have varied versions of the galette, but they all have some version it would be interesting to present it to a French native and get her input on how I did. I have asked her to comment on this blog...I hope she will, good or bad I would like to know what she thinks of my galette.

The galette was fun to make in that it was real different from a pie. It was described as a cross between cake and bread. Unlike the apple galette it has no fruit, or any filling at all. It did call for lemon zest. I made two of the galettes and on the first one I used my grater to get the zest from the lemon and I think I dug in a little too deep and got some of the bitter flesh of the peel in the mix. The second one I used my "zester" tool, which takes more time, but renders a better not bitter result.

After mixing the yeast and sugar and the rest you are suppose to cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough stand in a warm place for 3 hours. I always wonder how they made these recipes years ago when there was no plastic wrap...hmm.

To bake the two galettes I had to put them together and then refrigerate them for 10 minutes and then bake for 10 minutes. Which turned out pretty good because I could put one together and refrigerate it while I put the next one together and bake the first one while the second one chills. This worked out OK until I took the first one out of the oven. I was instructed to pat the very sticky dough out to an 11-inch circle under plastic wrap and then to turn up the edges about three-quarters of an inch to form a rim all around. I did not take that very seriously and made a haphazard rim around. Well, the first one I baked on my 15" round baking stone and it grew out over the edge and the second one I made on my 12" stone and the dough was so sticky and delicate that there was no way to transfer it to a larger stone, so I made a very definite rim on the second one. It turned out beautiful, I wish I would have done them both that way. The first one tasted grand, but it was not as pretty.

We ate the first one, the ugly one and gave the second to her advisor, Mrs. Lawrence.

His peace,

Lewis