Peach Pie
I made a peach pie this weekend. I used Lora Brody's basic crust, a peach filling recipe from Epicurious and a crumble topping, also from Brody's book, that was part of a recipe for a strawberry-rhubarb pie.
The crumble topping gets Brody a thumbs-up: Nice and crunchy without being too brittle. The peaches I used were kind of tart, which was a good contrast for this sweet topping. It's made up of 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup oatmeal, 1/2 cup walnuts (recipe called for almonds) with 6 tablespoons of butter cut in. I actually got in there with my hands and mushed the butter in with my fingers; I figured it was OK for topping since you're not going for flaky with it.
I did see Tyler Florence do the same thing to make a pie crust and I think I may try that technique for my next pie crust. (I tried the food processor once, but was too heavy on the pulse button and ended up melting the butter; now I cut in the butter with a pastry blender, which I'm not patient enough to do so I end up with big chunks of butter - that doesn't seem to affect the final product, though.)
Brody's crust recipe seemed fine: flour, sugar, salt, butter, shortening, egg, water, vinegar. Sift the dry ingredients together, cut in the butter and shortening, mix the egg, water and vinegar in a separate container and add, a little bit at a time, to the flour mixture, blending with a fork until it starts to come together. I always end up with too much liquid, so I don't use it all. Form into a ball and chill for an hour. Her technique involves rolling out the dough in a ziptop plastic bag, and I never have a plastic bag that big, so that is kind of annoying, but I just rolled it out the regular way.
I can never get the crust rolled out in a nice, even round that's big enough to fill the whole pie plate - one part will drape over the edge while another section won't quite cover the side of the pie plate - but I've discovered that it doesn't hurt the pie at all to pull off the excess and patch up the parts that come up short. Once that's done, I freeze it for 15 minutes, then fill it, top it and bake it.
For the filling I mixed 7 peeled, sliced peaches with 1/4 cup cornstarch, 2/3 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. You leave it set half an hour and all the juices come out of the peaches, which makes it dry enought to use in a pie without getting the crust soggy.
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That crumble topping looks awesome! What's the recipe for that part?
That was my favorite part of the pie, too. It came from this cookbook I've been thinking about throwing out (Basic Baking by Lora Brody), but now I think I have to keep it (I made a pineapple upside down cake from it that was also pretty awesome).
Walnut Crumble Topping
1/2 cup walnut pieces
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup oats
6 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut in small pieces
Mix the first three ingredients together, then cut in the butter with a pastry blender (I actually used my fingers to mush the butter into the dry ingredients). Then you just spread the topping over the pie filling before you bake it.
just like greek! i throw my yogurt through those particular ropes when i make tzatziki..
Yes! I finished up a great Greek meal at Molyvos with the richest, thickest yogurt I've ever had, topped with a very flavorful honey and some kind of nuts. My table companions thought yogurt was an odd dessert choice, but it was heaven.
Never made tzatziki, though (Todd has a thing with cucumbers). Sounds great.
Have you ever had Total yogurt? It's an extremely creamy greek yogurt that is strained. The lowfat version tastes almost like creme fraiche.
total is almost sinful, really. a happy day it was when it came onto dutch grocerystore shelves..
you could do a raita to avoid the cucumber thing, there are loads of variations. madhur jaffrey is my heroine as far as indian cooking goes; she has an apple and ginger raita that sounds delicious, though i've never made it myself...