Never-Fail Pie Crust

So, I'm surprised that I haven't posted this before now. It's really the only pie crust recipe that I have ever made. It just works so wonderfully: It's not fussy, you can use a number of substitutes, and it always turns out nice and flaky. Here's the basic incarnation.

Never-Fail Pie Crust

4 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups shortening
1 large egg
1/2 c cold water
1 tablespoon vinegar

1. In mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt

2. Cut in shortening until crumbs are pea-sized or smaller

3. In smaller bowl, mix egg, water, vinegar until in a single phase

4. Mix wet ingredients into dry until most of the flour is incorporated. Toward the end, you might need to gently knead the dry ingredients into the dough.

5. Separate into 4 balls, then roll on lightly floured surface (I like to use wax paper for ease of transportation to pie pan) and use as any pie crust

Now, for notes.

While this pie crust is supremely unfussy, in a warm kitchen, it's still nice to put it in the fridge for 10 minutes or so if it's a bit sticky. Alternately, you can use a bit more flour (it can stand it, but it's better to just fridge it).

For substitution on fats, you can use all butter, but it's quite sticky. If I did that again, I'd cut by 1/4 cup-ish. I much prefer substituting only half of the shortening for butter if I want a butter-y crust. I also know that my great-grandmother used lard, but the closest I've gotten to that is using the animal fat based shortening (pretty close, but I don't know how close for handling purposes). Honestly, that was the easiest fat to work with that I have ever used in this recipe.

When halving this recipe, still use 1 egg, but reduce the water to 1/8 cup instead of to 1/4 cup.

If I know that all the pie crust is going to dessert pies, I like to double the sugar. I've also accidentally doubled the salt (when doing a half recipe), and that's perfectly fine. It doesn't help anything, but if you do have a brain-fart like I did, it really is fine to go ahead with the half recipe.

For flour, I've not done a lot of substitutions, but I know that if you're using pastry flour, only substitute half! Otherwise it turns out very wet. It's salvageable by throwing in more flour (at that point I used whole wheat flour), but it made a bit of a mess. I haven't tried completely using whole wheat flour, but substituting up to a quarter is excellent.

Sourdough Pita Bread

2-3/4 c (5:6--water:flour) barm
10 oz flour (6 oz in barm)--separated: 1 c, unsifted + 1 c, sifted if working without kitchen scale
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons yeast
2 tablespoons oil

1. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients except for a scant 1/4 cup of the flour. With a wooden spoon or your hand, mix until all the flour is moistened. Knead until it comes together.

2. Dust the counter with a little of the reserved flour and scrape the dough onto it. Knead the dough for 5 minutes, adding as little of the reserved flour as possible. Scrape the dough with bench scraper and gather it together as you knead it. At this point it will be very sticky. If it is too sticky to work with, cover it with the inverted bowl and allow it to rest for 5 to 20 minutes. Then knead the dough for another 5 to 10 minutes until it is soft and smooth and just a little sticky to the touch. Add a little flour or water if necessary.

3. Let the dough rise in bowl, lightly greased with oil. Press the dough down and lightly oil the top of it. Cover the container with a lid or plastic wrap. (At this point, you can refrigerate the dough overnight or up to 3 days.)

4. Preheat the oven to 475°F one hour before baking. Have an oven shelf at the lowest level with a baking stone.

5. Cut the dough into 8 or 12 pieces. Work with one piece at a time, keeping the rest covered with a damp cloth. On a lightly floured counter, with lightly floured hands, shape each piece into a ball and then flatten it into a disk. Cover the dough with oiled plastic and allow it to rest for 20 minutes at room temperature. Roll each disk into a circle a little under 1/4 inch thick. Allow them to rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes before baking.

6. Quickly place 1 piece of dough directly on the stone and bake for 3 minutes. The pita should be completely puffed and just beginning to brown. The dough will not puff well if it is not moist enough. See how the pita puffs, then, if necessary, spray each remaining piece with water before baking.

7. Once the pita has puffed, you can flip it to lightly brown the other side.

8. Proceed with the remaining dough, baking as many at a time as can fit on the stone without touching. After they are baked, transfer the pita breads to a clean towel, to stay soft and warm. You should allow the oven to reheat for 5 minutes between batches, but it isn't completely necessary.

The pitas can be reheated for about 30 seconds in a hot oven before serving, if needed.

Rhubarb Hibiscus Butter

I wanted to do a rhubarb jam or something, and the recipe I found went something like the following:

1/2 lb rhubarb, sliced (~1-1/4 c?)

3/4 c sugar

2 T lemon juice

2-3/4 T dried hibiscus flowers, minced

1. Macerate rhubarb in sugar >6 hr, 'til most of the sugar has dissolved

2. Add lemon juice and hibiscus

3. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly for ~10 min that it takes to thicken

4. Remove from heat, let sit ~5 min, ladle into jars

5. Process 15 minutes in water bath

Yields...Well, I don't know actually. First off, the recipe didn't say, and second off, I ended up stealing some of the rhubarb (+sugar) for a batch of scones. I ended up with exactly one cup, and I stole about 1/3 c macerated rhubarb, so I'd guess 1-1/2 c. otherwise.

The person that posted the recipe said that the result would be jammy, but it's certainly more of a butter. But my! It isn't shy about taste. It's more like POW! RHUBARB! ...and hibiscus. It's quite tart, so if I do something like this again, I'm going to drop the lemon juice entirely I think. I do, however, like it as a butter instead of a jam, so no added pectin.

Lentil Salad

So, last night Chris and I were looking for something to eat with bratwurst and bread, and upon seeing lentils in the back of the pantry cupboard, we decided that we needed to do something with them. Chris proceeded to find the following recipe somewhere, and it was amazingly delicious.

The vinegar helped it stand up to the big taste of the brats, and the onions helped the salad stay complementary ('cause who doesn't like some onions with their brats?). The carrots didn't stand out too much, but they were very pretty and certainly worth adding. Not to mention, I think they were hold more of their own when I eat the leftover salad for lunch today.

Without further ado, here's the recipe.

Lentil Salad

1/2 c. lentils, cooked (and drained if necessary)
1 carrot, minced, sauteed until tender
1/2 medium red onion, minced, sauteed until tender
glug of EVOO
1 T red wine vinegar (or 1/2 T each red wine and white vinegar)

Mix it all together and serve at room temperature.

Orange Marmalade

Oh, oh, oh! I almost forgot. We eventually got some temple oranges instead of the navel oranges (which apparently the one company was out of stock, but never felt the need to tell anybody on our end...but the new company that Chris's mum ordered from--The Orange Shop--is grand). Anyway, we ate the vast majority of the oranges, but the last five I turned into a bit of marm...or, well, orange jelly with orange zest might be more accurate...but anyway, it was with the following recipe:

juice of five orange (1 1/2 c)
minced zest (I minced 3 or 4 of the oranges, but ended up using less--just eyeball it, whatever looks like enough)
1 c sugar
part of a pack of pectin (1/2 - 3/4)

The marm turned out deliciously, if a bit zingy. The set was loose, which I don't mind, and the recipe is a bit iffy, but the result stands for itself. Next time, though, I might try something more like everyone else's marm recipes--that is, cut the juice with water (I could also use more zest in this case, I suppose), and simply cut the fruit up instead of juicing it. Oh, and they suggest using more sugar, which I know would improve the set, but I think the sugar to acid ratio with this recipe is just so grand, it would be hard to justify. Maybe I could up it a titch, but we'll see. That's all the way 'til next December or January anyway.

Homemade noodles

So I've made noodles before, but they never turn out quite right. Dry or chewy or just plain wrong. My mother has  recipe for egg noodles that always turned out well with just ap flour, but I never had it on hand when I was experimenting with homemade pasta. Now that I'm out Boston-way, though, there are more specialty shops and/or specialty items (and, yes, I am enough of an American country girl that semolina counts in this category) that Chris and I decided to try out semolina flour. Here's the recipe we ended up using:

3 medium eggs (4 1/4 oz), beaten
6 ounces semolina flour
2 ounces bread flour (we were out of ap)
1/2 teaspoon salt

We mixed the solids, formed them into a bowl, poured in the eggs and slowly mixed in the flours with a fork until it came mostly together (you won't incorporate all the flour mix). Then we kneaded it until smooth and elastic (adding in the extra flours as necessary so that the dough isn't sticky). Right now it's resting for its half hour. Hopefully this turns out well. *crosses fingers*


So, to get it thin enough when rolling by hand, you have to divide the ball of dough into at least quarters. Our first quarter ball ended up a little thick, but the next two were gorgeous (still on the thicker side of noodles, but perfect for the application we put them to). The last quarter is in the fridge, where it can apparently stay for up to 24 hours--well wrapped, of course.

A good trick is to roll them out on a piece of wax paper, lightly floured with the leftover semolina/bread flour mix, and turn it 90° while flipping it over occasionally. Soon enough it will get thin enough that you're worried about tearing it (unlikely; or at least it never happened to me), and you want to go even just a bit thinner.

Then pop them into some boiling water, and wait for them to float. If you got them thin enough, they'll be done now, but if they're on the thick side, it'll take a minute or two more. My batch took about a minute after floating to finish cooking the inside.

I'm certainly looking forward to eating more fresh noodles tomorrow!

pickles?

I was rather hesitant about the carrot challenge from Tigress in a Jam/Pickle because I'm a little weirded out by carrot jams and jellies, and I've never liked a pickle in my life. However, I've only had pickled cukes (and I'm very particular about cukes anyway), so I decided I might as well pickle my carrots ('cause I do adore vinegar). I followed a very basic recipe and did a ridiculously small batch.

1/2 lb carrots, quartered and cut to fit in a 1/2 pint jar and blanched for 5 minutes
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
3/4 tablespoon salt
a few peppercorns, some nutmeg, a small pinch ground cloves

The carrots and spices got packed in the prepared jar. The liquids and salt was brought to a boil and poured over the carrots. I made sure there were no air bubbles, and I boiled the result for 10 minutes in the canning pot. I'm still waiting on the results...

Early April, after I opened the jar--
So...I don't like them. Cloves were a bad idea, but just in general I think I'll stay away from pickling anything. Maybe it's more of an acquired taste, anyway.