Category Archives: Sarah Wu

Spinach and Mushroom Handpies

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I think my spinach and mushroom hand pies turned out really well.

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The crusts had Parmesan and cheddar cheese. They were fantastic. I had to improvise a little. I didn’t have a 4 inch pastry cutter but I did have a cap from the pine nuts container that I used in the filling. So I just used my tiny little carving knife to cut into the pastry around the circular container.

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I had made 9 pies from the first batch of pastry. I realize that my pastry probably wasn’t 4-in because I couldn’t fit the said amount of filling, according to the recipe, into them without fearing that they’d explode.

Instead, I managed to make another batch of pastry. I also realized that for my second batch, I formed my batch into a flat rectangle for chilling instead of a conventional disc. That way, I just rolled out the pastry to form this super long sheet of pastry and cut my circles out from there. Another funny thought, I actually had used less butter in my first batch due to a calculation error. That’s why my pastry was so much harder to roll out and cut in my first attempt.

Here’s a look at my filling:

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I didn’t have feta so I substituted Parmesan and goat cheese instead.

These pies were probably the most fun to make, especially after getting into the groove.

 

Currant Custard Cream Pie

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I had a lot of trouble with this pie. I had never made a custard pie before and there were a lot of factors in play. Custards have to cook at a low temperature while pie crusts have to cook at higher temperatures. And then I had thought to put this braid crust rim on the top, with the braids unfolding into tree branches. The branches fell into the custard, as you can see. I didn’t wait to put it in later because I was afraid that the braids wouldn’t’ have stuck to the edge of the pie. Luckily, the braids stick. Also, the custard browned a lot more than I expected. If I knew that were the case, I would have not glazed the rim with an egg wash.

I made this pie crust with a vodka trick with about 5 tbsp each of water and vodka. Besides that, it was the usual flaky crust. I edited the custard recipe from Purdy’s Perfect Pie book and used dried currants instead of fresh currants. Let’s hope it works out today when we taste them.

Pie Decoration Thoughts

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I am blown away by the different pie designs there are and the possibilities of what pie to bake this week.

My first instinct was to make another Asian flavored pie. What first urged me was the desire to create a crust like a Chinese cut out. It was only fitting that the pie itself would be inspired by “Asian” ingredients.

So what I first wanted to do was to make a red bean, or Adzuki bean, custard pie using this red bean custard recipe. This was sort of perfect because the custard was dark colored and would contrast with the crust.

As I kept thinking, I became worried about not being able to find Adzuki beans in the local supermarket. My next thought was to go for a very dark pie, consisting mainly of blueberries but may contain other fruits. I then thought to make a pastry/crumb combo with the following design:

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Hm. I may choose to go with a landscape than this close up. We’ll see. I do like the idea of braids that unbraid into a tree branch. I might just go w/ a design like that. I wonder if I could incorporate pine into the recipe. Maybe more dried fruits and spices then.

I then started thinking about tessellations and then came across these crazy origami tessellations. 
How awesome would it be if we could fold pastry crust as if we fold paper. I shake my head in disbelief.

I do want to try a standing meat pie like the ones served in medieval times with meat and all. Well, these are all wishful thinking.

Beef Curry Pie Part 3

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The final result!

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I tried to make little cow designs since the pie is made out of beef.

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This was probably the most successful corner. The tips of the “horns” browned nicely for this one. Less so in other places.

Before baking, I had to roll out my crusts. It turns out that it was REALLY DRY. I should have known. I had to make tons of little “surgeries” as I tried my best to prevent the cracks from becoming too large.

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The top crust doesn’t look too bad from here but It was hard to roll, I tell ya.

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Yay for filling! Don’t this look gorgeous.

I only baked my pie for 20 minutes. I think it could have used longer. Probably. Well, let’s just hope it passes the taste test. Yeah!

Beef Curry Pie Part 2

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Part 2 of my three part savory pie adventure.

For my filling, I adapted from a recipe on Waitakere Redneck’s Kitchen. I simply added celery and replaced the cup of either green peas or carrots to just one cup of a mix of green peas and carrots. I used a yellow onion, the size of my fist. It was probably 3/4 cups of onion. I could have definitely used more. Also, I added in just a lil bit more curry powder than the recipe called. Also, I’m baking this into a large pie instead of hand held ones.

On a side note, I’m confused to why the cook used the term redneck when she is from New Zealand…

I will put my recommendations in the edited recipe.

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I tried taking a photo of all the ingredients but that didn’t work! I forgot the celery, salt, water and frozen green peas and chopped carrots. On the other hand, i do have a pretty good photo of the spices:

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Thank you David for your generosity in providing your own spices to use.

Anyways, cleaning and chopping things up took a while, albeit it was very fun. But after that, i just tossed things into a saucepan in the order the recipe called.

Note to self: Prepare everything first before cooking.

I sort of wished that I had everything prepared before starting to cook. What I did instead was that I started on the onions, ginger and garlic but then had to turn off the flame and scramble for the spices, meat and potatoes. Not the best idea.

Note 2 to self: Grab a larger sauce pan when cooking fillings.

After I added the potatoes and meat, the saucepan was very very full. Potato pieces kept wanting to jump out of the pan.

Another thing I think could have gone better is that I could have chopped the potatoes into smaller pieces. When people eat this pie, they’re just gonna get a mouthful of potatoes. Haha. Whoops. I also think I put in too many potatoes. The recipe called for 2 potatoes. I think the cook should have specified in cups or something.

Things turned out pretty well in the end.

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I plan to bake this into the pie tomorrow. Yay! I will edit the recipe later as well…

Beef Curry Pie Part 1

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Alright, I thought I might as well get started on the blogging instead of leaving it for the last day. Anyways, this week, we are working on savory pies. Mm mm. I’m really feeling like bringing some Asian taste to this class, so I went with a beef curry pie. Surprisingly enough, I learned today that a lot of what people consider “Indian food” originated in Britain. According to Julia, the Scots claim to have created the famous Chicken Tikka Masala. Wikipedia agrees.

I thought I might as well split this into three parts since I made it in three parts. This part’s about the crust.

I just have a couple of thoughts. I decided to use the double crust recipe, which comes from David’s personal copy of Susan Purdy’s The Perfect Pie. I followed the recipe for everything except I replaced the lime juice with vodka. I’m not sure how good of an idea keeping the egg is. I mixed the yolk, water and vodka, which resulted in a strange mixture. The egg sort of settled on the bottom and didn’t really mix in. Never mind that. I used a total of 4 tbsp of vodka and 4 tbsp of water. I probably didn’t add enough water/vodka. My dough was still very dry. I’m sort of sad about that. I hope it roles out well though.

I don’t have any pictures from today so have a comic instead:

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Week 1: Sweet pies — complete!

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6 sweet pies for sampling on Thursday noon.

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That would be, from bottom to top: Apple-Pear in Cheddar Crust Pastry (served with melted sharp cheddar on top); Mixed Berry; Very Cranberry Pear; Cider-Infused Apple; Sour Cream Blackberry; and Cranberry Apple Crumb-top pie.

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We seriously questioned whether we would be able to make it through sampling 6 pies—and that was even with half-size slices (1/16 of the whole pie, rather than 1/8). We need to strategize about this for upcoming weeks, when we’ll have 10 pies to sample (or more if people make more than one!)

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Next week: savory pies!

Mixed Berry Pie

Heyo, two days late on the update, but better late than never, right?

First thought: Cleaning is a lot of work:

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Before we could get started on the cooking, we all made sure to clean out our utensils and dishware before using them. We sure wouldn’t want to be eating dust. Haha.

Anyways, my partner for the week, Nikki, and I decided to go with the mixed berry pie. This was our result at the end of the day (literally, since it was dark when we left the kitchen)

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This was the first time I’ve ever made pie from scratch. There were some parts when I think I went off the recipe and things became a little wonky.

Second thought: Read and be familiar with the recipe.

When we were forming the crust, I had not added water to the egg-lemon juice mixture, which I feel definitely affected how the crust came together because we had to add water later in the process than we were supposed to. We had added 3 tbls of water to the minimum before adding two more to get the dough to the consistency we needed it to be.

Third thought: Use more muscle!

Maybe I didn’t compress the dough enough… Nikki had compressed one half of the dough and it turned out okay. So I’ll keep this in mind next time.

Despite these blunderr, I hope our pie tastes good.

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I let Nikki do the pinching this time. Ha! Got out of getting messy there, although I do look forward to making my own crusts.

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We used a mixture of blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, strawberries and raspberries. They look like jewels here thanks to the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice.

Well, I sure look forward to eating pie tomorrow!