The Best Pecan Pie Ever and How to Make a Great Crust

We have all been subjected to something at best tasteless and pasty, at worst damp or rancid that is supposed to pass for pie crust. Pies, quiches and tarts are not just about the fillings. Eating the crust should be at least as delightful an experience as eating the filling.

I have had to eat the following awful crusts: a soggy quiche crust that smeared across the plate; a whole wheat crust (the right kind of whole wheat flour can enhance a crust - more on that later) that tasted rancidly bitter and had the consistency of cement; a crust made with canned shortening that left a greasy mouth-feel and was so over-blended that is was pasty, and worst of all, crust sticks bought off the supermarket shelves (do they still make those?).

A pie crust should be all of the following: flaky, slightly crisp, able to stand up to any filling, versatile, easy to work and most important, fragrant with the aroma of pure butter. Butter is the supreme fat for pie crust (and most everything else). A good recipe is simple and contains only flour, butter, salt, sugar and water. The steps are easy, but the technique takes a little practice. In as little as three tries, anyone should be able to make a delicious crust.

There are numerous pie crust tricks. The latest is using vodka instead of water for the liquid in the crust. I tried this and I found that the crust was too crumbly. My husband noticed an "off" flavor. If you know what you're doing, you really don't need cheats. You just need to keep a few ideas in mind as you create your crust:

*Keep the butter cold. Use frozen butter if you have a food processor.

*Always use unsalted butter. The flavor is better and the moisture content is correct.

*Never over-process or over mix. Butter must remain in grain-sized lumps (about the size of bulgar).

*Don't over- or under-moisten. The crust should look crumbly but not dry and stick together when pressed.

*Work quickly.

*It is not hard to roll out a properly made crust. A crust that falls apart when you roll it is too dry.

The Best Pecan Pie Ever (adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks: The Complete American-Jewish Cookbook)

Dough for one crust - see below

1/3 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar or Sucanat
1/2 cup strong coffee
1 cup pecans plus about 18 perfect halves for the top
3 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla

After you make the crust, don't wash the bowl or blade of the food processor. Put the butter and sugar in the bowl of the processor and whir to combine. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs. Process for a few seconds, scrape again and add the coffee, salt, corn syrup and vanilla. Process until blended then add the pecans and process until they are coarsely chopped - a few seconds. Pour into a prepared, unbaked crust. Decorate with reserved pecan halves, and bake at 350 for about 35 - 45 minutes until filling is domed and set. Serve cold with whipped cream.

Pie Crust (enough for a top and bottom crust - make half or save half for the above recipe)
2 2/3 Cups flour*
1 tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 pound unsalted, frozen butter+
1/2 cup COLD water

Put the flour, sugar and salt in the bowl of the food processor and whir once to blend. Cut the butter into small cubes and add the the dry ingredients. Pulse 10 times for 1 second each time. Then pulse twice more for a fraction of a second. With the food processor running, pour in the water in a small steady stream until the dough at the bottom begins to clump together but still looks crumbly. If there are dry patches on top, add a drop or two of water to those areas and re-process for a fraction of a second. Put the dough on a dry surface and press together into a ball, then flatten into a disk. Flour very lightly, put it in a plastic bag and refrigerate while you make your filling.

To roll out crust -
After a rest of at least 15 minutes to let the gluten relax, remove the crust from the bag. Cut it in half with a sharp knife. On a lightly floured surface, gently press one half of the dough into a short cylinder shape, then flatten it into a disc. Pound the dough lightly with the rolling pin if it is cold and hard. Pat the edges of the disc together, then roll from the center out until you have an even circle about 1/8 inch thick. Fold in half and put into a well-greased or sprayed pie pan. At this point you may trim and crimp the edges and fill the crust (as for the above recipe) or fill it then roll out the top crust, cover the filling and crimp and seal the edges. Don't forget to cut decorative steam vents in your top crust.
* You may use whole wheat PASTRY flour (made from soft white wheat) for half the flour. Do not use hard wheat flour.
+If you do not have a food processor, use cold but not frozen butter. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, then cut the butter into small cubes, toss it with the dry ingredients and cut it into the flour with a pastry cutter or two knives. When the flour is the size of small grains, add the cold water slowly, tossing with a fork. Follow directions for bagging and refrigerating.

Feeding the Children What They'll Eat

Watching an anesthetized-looking toddler suck on a Dora Go-gurt in her stroller at the mall reminded me of all the years I spent feeding my children organic whole foods. Here's what I thought then and what I still believe now: if you feed kids food that looks like food - not like a Disney character or a crayon - they will eat it if you have set the expectation from the start that food looks like food not toys. Picking a strawberry from the garden and eating it in the warm sun, inhaling its fragrance and tasting the sweetness is a vivid experience that sets the expectation that eating is satisfying and healthful.

When my children were small, I obsessively fed them only whole, organic, naturally sweetened foods. No white sugar allowed! I made them Popsicles from yogurt and fresh fruit. A store-bought cookie rarely crossed the threshold. I was too hardcore sometimes, though. When Rachel was in first grade, she went on a field trip with her class to the bank, where each child received a dollar, and then to the store to spend it. There was a lesson somewhere in being a good consumer that was lost in day-glo blue lik-m-stik powder. Rachel proudly showed me the candy she had selected: Swee-tarts. I tried to be gentle as I explained to her that she couldn't have them because they weren't good for her and then confiscated them. It was a bad mommy moment and she has reminded me of it often over the years.

Finding the balance still takes effort. We have relaxed a bit over the years. Sam and Sophie were certainly not subject to the rigorous food controls that Rachel endured. Nevertheless processed food is an exception here. Dinners are usually vegetarian. In the summer, all our veggies, and quite a bit of fruit comes from our garden.

Sam loves his protein. Though he happily eats beans and rice, he really loves meat and always has. When he walked into the kitchen the other day and spied a pan full of ground beef his exclamation of "Meat! Good!" reminded me both of a caveman and the time in preschool at a Mother's Day tea when he noticed a huge plate of pink ham chunks and said (loudly) "Look, Mama! Meat," and gobbled down large handfuls.

The ground beef in the pan was part of one of the dinners I make sometimes that tries to please everyone. Ken gets fried eggplant baked in marinara sauce (no meat, no dairy - delicious). The kids get a giant pan of baked pasta with ground beef and smoked mozzarella. It's pretty healthy, it's homemade, and they'll eat it all by lunch the next day.

I make this all at the same time. I bread and fry the eggplant while the pasta water comes to a boil, and grate the cheese and brown the meat while the pasta is cooking. The sauce needs no cooking. I mix both cans at once.

For the baked pasta:
1 pound pasta shapes
1/2 pound smoked or regular mozzarella, or a mixture
1 pound super lean ground beef or ground bison
1 large can Muir Glen tomato puree
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp basil
1/4 tsp fennel seed
salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook the pasta until al dente. Drain. Toss with butter or olive oil and put in a large casserole. Brown the meat. Drain. Add 1 clove of garlic - pressed, and some salt and pepper. Spread over the pasta. Press the other clove of garlic into the can of puree. Add the rest of the spices. Pour over meat and pasta. Sprinkle with the grated cheese and bake for 1/2 an hour at 350 until browned. Serve with a salad or green veggie.

Eggplant Unparm

1 large eggplant
1/2 cup olive oil
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup flour
1 cup matzoh or cracker meal
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt
pepper
1 can Muir Glen tomato puree
1 clove garlic
1 tsp basil
1/4 tsp fennel
salt and pepper to taste

Wash the eggplant and cut it into 1/4" slices. Mix the matzoh meal with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Put the flour and egg in separate bowls. Heat the oil in a skillet. Dip the eggplant in the flour, then egg, then meal. Fry in a single layer until brown on each side. Put the fried eggplant into a baking dish. Press the garlic into the can of tomato puree. Add the other spices. Mix and pour over the eggplant. Bake at 350 until heated through - about 1/2 hour.

Enjoy!

Cougar Gold

The time has come for me to wrench my eyes away from endless games of Bejeweled and focus on a productive pastime. As of today, this blog is up and running again.

With so many subjects dear to me, I had trouble, at first, pinpointing my focus. Although food blogs are as common as dog hairs on my rug, I really want to write about food and share recipes that I develop in my kitchen in the spontaneous way that I do when I have a meal to prepare with limited time and ingredients. I hope that my readers will enjoy sharing meals with my family in this way.

My dear and generous friend Dana and her husband Dan came for dinner and poker the other day, bringing with them wine, and a whole can of Cougar Gold cheese. Cougar Gold is made locally on the Washington State University campus in limited quantities. The production quota is bought out quickly each year. It is a pale yellow cheddar-type cheese with a buttery, sharp flavor and a crumbly texture. It melts beautifully. It is sealed into flat, round cans that weigh about 2 pounds each, so a whole wheel is an extravagant luxury.

We savored the cheese that night with plain crackers, and I've had it on toast, with apples and pears and with pasta. My two teenage children who live at home declared it, "too sharp," preferring the blander, smoother, slightly bitter flavor of orange Tillamook medium cheddar. They are always suspicious of any cheese that isn't orange, unless it's mozzarella.

The best combination that I've discovered so far is Cougar Gold and Squash Soup. I improvised this soup for dinner a couple of weeks ago. My husband and I had it with Garlic Crostini and Domaine de Couron Cotes du Rhone Villages 2005. It was just the two of us. I was a great dinner.


Squash and White Bean Soup

2 tbsp butter and 2 tbsp olive oil melted together in a soup pot
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 shallots
3 cloves garlic
A 3 - 4 pound squash, cut in half, seeds removed and baked until soft
3 15 ounce cans of white beans, drained and rinsed or the equivalent in homemade white beans
7 ounces whole tomatoes, with juice
1" cube fresh ginger, grated
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
black pepper and salt to taste
1 - 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar or to taste.
Water or broth - about 4 cups
Parsley for garnish

Saute the onion and shallots in the butter and oil until soft and slightly browned. Add the garlic and saute a few more minutes until the garlic is soft and fragrant. Add the ginger and paprika and saute another minute.

Add the tomatoes and their juice. Let the juice reduce by about half. Add the beans and squash pulp, the vinegar (add part, taste and add more as necessary. It should impart depth of flavor, not sourness). Puree it all in the pot with a hand-held immersible blender. Add enough water or broth to make a thick soup - to your preference. Taste and add nutmeg, pepper and salt to taste. Simmer on low for 15-20 minutes until all flavors are blended.
Serve with grated Cougar Gold Cheese and Garlic Crostini

Garlic Crostini

Saute French or Sourdough bread fingers in olive oil and butter until brown and crispy on both sides. Rub each with a clove of garlic. Salt lightly and serve with soup.