Author Archives: Lia Steinhardt-Keely

A Tart: Tasty, but not quite so Tantalizing

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This week was all about decoration. I thought about pulling out my piping tips and doing some kind of meringue or whipped cream decoration, but ultimately I decided to go a more laid-back route.

Ultimately, this tart didn’t turn out quite as beautifully as I had hoped, but I was really pleased with the flavors.

I think a different treatment of the sweet potatoes and the red wine would have allowed me to impart the same flavors while having a better presentation.

All the same, a tasty pie is a tasty pie.

lop tart

Crust:

½ cup walnuts

1 ½ cups flour

1 stick butter, softened

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

 

1 medium red onion

8 oz Italian sausage

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp brown sugar

 

8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature

12 oz tobasi (or other creamy, pungent cheese), at room temperature

1 egg

1 tsp black pepper

 

1 medium sweet potato

½ cup red wine

¼ tsp cinnamon

⅛ tsp ginger

⅛ tsp allspice

1 tbsp water

½ tbsp cornstarch

 

Preheat oven to 425°F. Toast your walnuts until they are quite fragrant – if anything, err on the side of burnt, rather than underdone. Combine all of the ingredients for your crust in a food processor and blitz until dough becomes smooth. Remove from machine and pack into a large tart pan, making sure to press into the sides as well. Bake at 425°F for 6 minutes. Crust will not be fully done, but rather lightly toasted. Decrease oven temperature to 350°F.

Put red wine, cinnamon, ginger, and allspice into a saucepan and allow to reduce by half. This will take time.

Slice a red onion in half and then into slices. Put into a frying pan with a couple pats of butter, and allow to cook down. In an additional pan, crumble your sausage, and cook until no longer raw. Once your onions are cooked down, add your brown sugar and allow to caramelize. Add in your cooked sausage and saute together for about a minute more.

Blitz your cream cheese, and tobasi in a food processor until creamy. Add your egg and black pepper and continue to mix until well combined. Use a spatula to avoid any clumps or unmixed material.

If your red wine has reduced, make a slurry with your cornstarch and water and add it to the reduction. Allow this to cook for another minute or two until thickened, but not gelatinous.

Peel and slice sweet potato into thin (about ¼ cm) half-moon pieces.

Take your pre-baked tart shell and layer in your onions and sausage. Pour on your cheese layer and spread smooth. Layer your sweet potatoes on top in a decorative fashion. Brush your red wine sauce on top of the sweet potatoes, covering, but not drenching them.

Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes. Serve warm or chilled.

How to make a Mushroom-Ricotta Pie

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  1. Spend several days promising yourself that you’re really going to look up some starter recipes for what you want to make. Alternate this by thinking “I know how to cook mushrooms, dammit.” Ultimately find one (http://www.completelydelicious.com/2013/01/wild-mushroom-pie-with-parmesan-crust.html) and mostly ignore it for the rest of the process.
  2. Take your grocery list, with your boyfriend in tow to the overpriced price chopper on the way to the airport. Try to convince yourself that just because you paid four dollars for an 8 oz bag of cranberries here last week doesn’t mean they’re set on price gouging you.
  3. Yell across the practically empty price chopper about the weight of mushrooms.
  4. Debate internally about the two dollar and fourty-nine cent container of fresh rosemary. Decide against it because rosemary is overpowering (you will later ignore this reminder).
  5. Argue about the benefits of part-skim versus all-fat ricotta with your boyfriend. Cave when he reminds you that the all-fat is “just going to taste better.”
  6. Start baking Wednesday afternoon in a kitchen full of people who are all planning much more elaborate dishes than you. Feel mildly inadequate, but remind yourself that you like mushrooms, and that’s all that matters (right?)
  7. Distract yourself with the rosemary that someone has left on the corner, and convince yourself it’s a worthwhile addition to your pie. Conveniently forget that rosemary is overpowering and it’s going to mess up your garlic and leave little bits of rosemary interspersed in the pie.
  8. Make your ricotta mixture. Eat your ricotta mixture.
  9. Cook your mushrooms, and proceed to cook out too much of your wine. Add more until it seems like it’s about the right consistency.
  10. Put together your pie, watching sadly as your lattice melts slowly into your still-steaming mushrooms. This is your fault and you knew it. It will taste fine. It will taste fine.
  11. Continue to pull out the visible stems of rosemary as you place your pie in the oven.
  12. Vow to omit the rosemary from the recipe.
  13. Remove your pie from the oven. Look at it with a mixture of sadness and fondness as you are reminded that it will not be available to you for another 22 hours. Remind yourself sadly that Mission dining hall will have to do for tonight.
  14. Make yourself sick on pie the next day.

 

2 ¼ cups flour

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

⅓ cup parmesan cheese

2 sticks butter

ice water

 

½ cup heavy cream

1 head garlic

 

½ Tbsp. butter

1 Tbsp. olive oil

2 lbs mushrooms, mixed (crimini, portabella, shiitake)

5 oz pearl onions, ends trimmed and peeled

½ tsp. dried thyme

salt and pepper

1 cup red wine

2 Tbsp. flour

 

15 oz container of ricotta

1 egg

salt and pepper

½ tsp thyme

⅓ cup parmesan

 

  1 egg
In a small pan, insert heavy cream and a peeled head of garlic. Cover and simmer on low for around half an hour. After this time, strain and put any resulting liquid in with the mushrooms. Mush the garlic until it is a sort of paste and add to the ricotta.

Make your pie crust as normal, simply adding parmesan cheese to the flour mix. Shape into rounds (or rectangles) and place into the fridge, covered in clingwrap.

Clean and chop your mushrooms, varying your sizes. Place butter and oil into a large pan and allow butter to melt. Add your pearl mushrooms and saute until they are lightly colored. Add the prepared mushrooms along with ½ tsp dried thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Cook down until mushrooms are tender. Add in ⅔ cup red wine and continue to cook until almost all liquid is evaporated. Add in your flour, stirring to cover 20160113_133001all mushrooms. Remove pan from heat. Add in last ⅓ cup of red wine and set mushrooms aside.

Mix together the ricotta, thyme, salt and pepper to taste, and parmesan. Remember to add garlic.

Roll out your pie crust, and your top lattice strips. Fill the crust first with the ricotta layer and then with the cooked mushrooms. Top with lattice, and brush with egg wash.

Bake at 425°F for 20 minutes, and then cover edges with tinfoil or silicone protectors. Bake for another 45 minutes at 350°F or until golden brown on all sides.

Allow to cool slightly and eat (preferably) that day.20160113_144509

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An abundance of sugar

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This week, we made sweet pies.

After settling ourselves into pairs, we set off to make pastry, filling, and a plan for the next three days.

I worked with Katie and we decided that, with pies, three is better than two. Our intention was to make a chocolate raspberry pie, a pear cranberry pie, and some apple hand pies. The two full-sized pies were to have all butter crust, and the hand pies were to have a butter-shortening mix.

We selected no specific recipes, and instead opted to work off of taste alone.

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Raspberry Chocolate Filling

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Pear Cranberry Filling

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katie made the butter-shortening crust, and I made the all-butter crust, so I’m just going to be listing the ingredient list for that pastry.

 

All-Butter Pie Crust

2 ¼ cups flour

5 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 sticks butter, cold and cubed

ice water

 

I prefer an all-butter crust because a) I think it tastes better, and b) shortening freaks me out. It’s nothing more than that.

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Full-sized pies, pre-bake

The pie baking took, in total, around 3 ½ hours (plus the time spent making pastry two days before), and I think that for the first week, everything turned out pretty well. My only qualms with our pies had to do with some slightly over-browned crust, and a lack of suitable ice cream.

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Golden Apple Hand Pies

The crust issue can be solved by adding silicone crust covers earlier in the baking process, and the ice cream issue was presumably just a fluke. I’ve never seen ice cream behave quite like that before, but as I prefer my ice cream to be neither icy, nor liquid, I think perhaps I will choose another brand in the future.

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Pear Cranberry

 

 

 

 

All of the recipes are listed at the bottom of this post, but for now, I’m going to take a short jump to talk about tasting.

I’ve never been asked to try 14 pies before.

I will be totally honest: going into this, I thought it would be a breeze. I now question my lack of foresight, as fourteen pies – even if all quite well-made and delicious, and totally, 100% overwhelming.

I left with a very full stomach, an ache in my head, and a new understanding of the weeks to come.

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Chocolate-Raspberry Pie

Ingredients:

1 12-oz bag dark chocolate chips

2 12-oz bags of frozen raspberries, thawed

1 pear

¾ tsp almond extract

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

⅓ lemon, juiced

¼ cup cornstarch

5 tbsp white sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 double pie crust

 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425°F

Strain excess liquid from raspberries, and prepare pear by peeling and finely chopping the fruit.

Mix fruits, chocolate, extracts, lemon juice, cornstarch and sugar in a large bowl. Stir and allow to marinate.

Roll out one pie crust, and place into a buttered pie plate. Allow to cool in the fridge.

Roll out the second crust into a rectangle and slice for a lattice.

Remove the bottom crust from the fridge, fill with filling, and form lattice on top of filling. Arrange crust as desired, and brush pie with egg wash.

Bake at 425°F for 20 minutes and then lower oven temperature to 350°F for around 50 minutes, or until pie is golden brown on all sides.

 

Pear-Cranberry Pie

Ingredients:

1 orange

1 8-oz bag of cranberries

4 pears

½ tsp ground ginger

3 tbsp bourbon

6 tbsp cornstarch

6 tbsp white sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 double pie crust

 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425°F

Zest and juice the orange, setting aside all of the zest and ⅓ of the juice in a large bowl. The rest can be discarded.

Peel, thinly slice and then halve those slices for each of the pears.

Add fruits, spices, bourbon, cornstarch and sugar to the juice and zest. Stir and allow to marinate.

Roll out one pie crust, and place into a buttered pie plate. Allow to cool in the fridge.

Roll out the second crust into a rectangle and slice for a lattice.

Remove the bottom crust from the fridge, fill with filling, and form lattice on top of filling. Arrange crust as desired, and brush pie with egg wash.

Bake at 425°F for 20 minutes and then lower oven temperature to 350°F for around 50 minutes, or until pie is golden brown on all sides.

 

Apple Hand Pies

Ingredients:

4 apples

2 tsp ground cinnamon

¾ tsp ground ginger

¾ tsp allspice

½ lemon, juiced

3 tbsp cornstarch

5 tbsp white sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 double pie crust

 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°F

Peel and thinly slice the apples, then cutting the slices into thirds.

Mix fruit, spices, juice, cornstarch, and sugar in a medium bowl and allow to marinate.

Roll out your pie crust into a large rectangle. Slice into desired number of smaller rectangles (10 works well).

Putting filling on half of each rectangle, leaving a 1 centimeter border around the entire edge (and leaving half of the rectangle empty).

Fold the empty half over the full half, and use water, or some of your beaten edge to hold the two edges together.

Crimp, fold, or fork your edges so that no juices will leak out during the cooking process.

Place hand pies on a parchment lined baking pan and brush with egg wash. Bake for around 30 minutes, or until golden brown.