New Direction

Well, I failed the original mission of this blog which was to record the baking experience of creating all the pies in Irma Rombauer's Joy of Cooking; All About Pies and Tarts cookbook. I have ignored my blog for a long time.

I have decided that I will renew my blog and the goal will be simply to record my adventures in cooking for my family and friends and, of course, I will continue baking and will share that also.

I still have a goal to finish Irma's book and I will! It may take a while, but I will finish it!

L'Chaim

After the Linzertorte “bust” I decided to back to some basic Americana pie. What could be more American than peanut butter (yeah, yeah, I know you were going to say apple pie, but this is my blog) and chocolate?

Irma says in the book that this is a simple pie and sounds like kid stuff, but has a complexity and subtle flavor that will surprise.

We were invited over for dinner to the home of some of my favorite people ever. I first met Edwin and Patty when they were young and fresh married leaving for deep dark Africa as missionaries. In fact I met them at their going away potluck celebration as a guest of my best friend in the whole world Kevin. I remember a little envy at the things they were going to experience and accomplish. Between then and now the sun has risen and set quite a few times. Their twin daughters, Jessica and Bethany are both in their first year of high-school and the youngest; Tabitha is, well, I do not know how old she is…probably 6 or 8. Anyway we were invited to have supper with them and Patty tells me they are planning curry chicken. I tell her that curry wrecks havoc on my wife’s digestive system, so we had Mexican instead. Thanks, Patty.

I thought my daughter, Rachel would come with us and she was dragging her feet, not wanting to go and my son, Dave pops up with, “Hey, I want to go.” Then Rachel decides it might not be so terrible with Dave there. As it turned out we all have a really fun time and even Rachel, although she would not admit it, was glad she decided to go along.

I decided to bake and bring the Peanut Butter Pie. It has a crumb crust which can be made with graham crackers, but I thought it would be better made with chocolate wafer cookies. The filling itself is almost like a mousse, very light and the subtle flavor of peanut butter and cream cheese with the chocolate crust was very good by itself, but there was more. The pie is topped with a thin hard chocolate glaze and I made whipped cream for a garnish. There were nine of us and a pie that goes into eight servings so Patty and I cut it into ten slices. As it turned out we could have cut it into twelve servings because it was so rich.

Dinner was very good.

The company was great.

The game was goofy (fun).

And I think the pie turned out to be pretty good, too!

Thanks to our American-African friends for having us over.

Linzertorte

Funny how things go sometimes. My oldest daughter, Keri and my two sweet grandchildren, Erik who is two and Eliana who is eight months old, just left Sunday after staying for two weeks. They did not seem to demand much of my time, but I got pretty much nothing done while they were here.

I finally got around to making the Linzertorte for the family in our congregation that is, well, very European. I thought they would enjoy it more than my family due to the crust which is made from nuts and The Wife ‘O My Life does not like nuts in baked goods…not even brownies. When I gave it to them it was the oldest boy’s birthday, but he said he does not enjoy nuts that much either so it was “ok.” The king of the castle said he really liked it. The queen said it was pretty, but lacked the depth and complexity of flavor that she is used to in a Linzertorte. So all in all I feel it was not a great effort, but I ticked one more pie/tart off the list.

Chess Pie

I set out to make two pies. I was going to make the Chess Pie and the Lemon Chess Pie.
The Lemon Chess Pie for the Wife O' My Life and the Chess Pie for the gal who has a desk right next to Wife at work. It seems that one day I called for Sues and she, Antoinette, answered the phone and I was perturbed with her because she was not Sues. I do not remember the exchange at all, but if she says I was rude I want to beg forgiveness and what better way than to bake her a pie. Chess Pie has nuts in it and Lemon Chess does not. The Wife O' My Life does not like nuts in pie, or most anything else. So the Chess Pie was for Antoinette. I prepared everything for the pie and prepped all I could to make a smooth time baking, I love to have everything laid out and ready just like a TV cooking show. It called for an unusual method for making the filling. I had to combine the eggs, sugars and some evaporated milk in a heat-proof bowl and simmer an inch of water in a skillet and place the bowl in the water until the filling was shiny and warm to the touch. I was a little distracted by the strangeness of the recipe and forgot the six tablespoons of butter I cut into small pieces that were to be scattered on top as the mixture heated. I did not realize my mistake until I was done putting the meringue on the pie. I went to get a drink from the refrigerator and oops there was the saucer with little uniform cubes of butter.
I did not toss the pie, I eat my mistakes. I started over and made the Chess Pie the way it should be and did not make the Lemon Chess Pie. Oh, well. Another day I will make it.
We ate the pie that I screwed up and I thought it was quite good despite the omission of the butter in the filling. My family also enjoyed it. The meringue was very stable and delicious even after two days in the refrigerator.
I did not get pictures of either pie.
Antoinette said that the pie was very good, but very rich and she was eating only small pieces at a time.

Rhubarb brings me back home...

We got some rhubarb from the market table at church and I was going to make a pie. No strawberries, though. Just rhubarb. The Wife O' My Life has a pal at work who is the pharmacy manager and she has to put up with a lot of grief from people who want more than their insurance will allow and some times she comes to Wife almost in tears. So, she asked me to bake her pie to cheer her up. One of the coolest parts of the whole story is that she told Wife that rhubarb was her favorite pie!

I did not get to taste the pie, again, but it bubbled up and I did get to taste the filling and it was tart and delicious. Irma said that the best rhubarb for pies is the early spring rhubarb that is as big around as your finger. Says it is sweeter and more flavorful. This rhubarb was about an inch or slightly more across the widest part so it was not early by any means, but I hope she enjoyed the pie. I did use the greater amout of sugar suggested and I added the optional grated zest of one orange.

I tasted some of the raw rhubarb and it made me remember when I was a kid going with Mom, my brother, Dan and my sister, Cookie and finding wild rhubarb or at least feral rhubarb. She made a really tasty cake with it. It is the simplest recipe. You make a yellow or white cake mix according to the directions and put half the batter in a 9x13 and top it with two cups sliced rhubarb then the rest of the batter, bake a little longer than the box says and it is delicious.

The Bake Sale Trio

The preschool that is in our church building had an Easter egg hunt and a bake sale. The hunt was just for fun and a few of our teens and even fewer of our adults filled plastic eggs with toys and candy. I do not know how many eggs were there, but it was a LOT! We came in Saturday about noon and hid them for the hunt which started at one o’clock. For the little ones it is more scattering than hiding, but they have a good time and so did we.

In connection with the hunt they wanted to have a bake sale to help toward the purchase of a copier. I contacted the gal in charge and asked how I could help. She said she wanted to have small $1 packages for people to purchase and a few larger items for a few dollars more. I told her I could bake two or three pies for her and she appreciated that and could I put a price on them. Gee, how do you put a price on a pie? I had no idea how to price them. Oh, well. Worry about that later like Scarlet O’Hara.

I took The Book with me and went to the grocery store. They have not had peaches since I started this adventure up until this week and they came out great in the Fruit Crostata so I thought I would make peach. I selected my fruit with great care. I am sure the produce guy thinks I am very picky, the Wife ‘O My Life would say anal-retentive, but I think that goes too far. After I had taken all of five minutes to pick the six best peaches in the lot I remembered that I had told my sweet little girl, Rachel that when I make the Peach Pie it would be for her and it did not seem right to make her buy it from the bake sale. I put the peaches back and picked out three perfect pears for the Pear Streusel Tart. I choose lemons for the Ohio Lemon Pie and then decided to make one of the Canned Fruit Pies. I got pears for that pie.

I had never made or even heard of Ohio Lemon Pie. You take three lemons and zest them and then with the while part of the peel still on you slice them “paper thin” and mix them with their zest, two cups of sugar and a bit of salt. As they soak, or as Irma puts it they macerate everything becomes soft and very sticky. I was instructed to macerate them for a minimum of two hours and up to twenty-four. The longer you macerate them the better. I went for fourteen hours and took it to the sale still warm. I do not know what it tasted like as it was sold in the bake sale. The lemon pie and the tart were purchased by the same gal and I know people who know her so perhaps I can get a message to her through them and she would comment on here as to how she liked or did not like the baked goods. The Wife ‘O My Life told me if I wrapped the tart in colored plastic wrap and gathered it up top and put a ribbon on it I could sell it for fifteen or twenty dollars. I did not have colored plastic wrap or ribbon…they went for ten dollars each.

Fruit Crostata

The Fruit Crostata was a pat-in-the-pan shortbread crust, so it was a little different than any other. It looks a bit like a Galette, but does not taste like it. I made it for Scott and Susan’s regular every-other-Thursday get together. Last time I baked for them was the pumpkin pie with brandy sauce. This was better, they both tried it and both said they liked it. Sues and I liked it too. It was trickier to put together than the Galette in that the dough had to be rolled out between two pieces of parchment paper because it was very sticky. I made a nice fat border this time, learned my lesson making the Galette. I used fresh peaches and the frozen blueberries we were given.

As an interesting side note the Wife O’ My Life is journaling all her food intake now and so I try to provide her with calorie counts on what I cook and bake. All About Pies and Tarts does not list that sort of information so I have to calculate each ingredient and do math to figure it out. A lot of the time I am able to find a recipe on the internet that has about the same composition and use the information provided. I did a search for Fruit Crostata and was surprised to find a web site called Trusan Cuisines that had a sample menu on their web site with different menu items and photos of the dishes. The surprise came in the photo they had for their Fresh Fruit Crostata. The photo is a little hazy as if it were a phone pic or it was scanned and as I looked at it I realized why it seemed so familiar. It was the picture from All About Pies and Tarts. I called Sues over and we compared different parts of the pictures and it is, right down to the wrinkles on the berries, the same photo. I wonder if they can get in trouble for that. If you want to see it you can look here: http://www.trusancuisines.com/menu_tuscan.htm