I came into the week without a clue as to what I wanted to do. I played with apple roses, celtic knot lattices, and floral cutouts but in the end chose something entirely different: hand pies. I’ve never tried making hand pies before and I started with the idea of a classic apple hand pie with a cheddar cheese crust shaped to make different flowers. After hearing what everyone else was making for the week, I changed again and decided I would go the savory route. With this in mind, I searched through dozens of recipes. After a while, I noticed a trend in my searches that included pears and cheese. Building off of that, I decided to be adventurous and gave up recipes all together. This week, my pie was entirely my own, the first I can put my name to. I ended up with a pear, gruyere, and toasted almond hand pie. To add the decorative aspect, I poached the pears and stuffed the halves, wrapping them into pear shaped pies.
Ingredients:
1 double crust pastry, 4 Bosc pears, block of gruyere, almonds (toasted and chopped), a few sprigs of rosemary, honey (I used solid honey butter)
To make the pies, first make a double crust of your choosing (good for about 3.5 pears or 7 hand pies). I went with the vodka crust which gave me some anxiety as it seemed quite crumbly for a while but ended up delicious. Leave your crust in the fridge and poach the pears by heating a pot of water, adding about 1 cup of sugar and adding the whole peeled pears at a simmer for 15-20 minutes until the pears are softer but not mushy. Remove and drain. Halve and scoop out the center of the pears. Slice the cheese and chop the rosemary finely. Roll out the dough and use a pastry cutter to cut around the pear halves, leaving an edge to close the pies. Brush the edge with an egg white wash. Slice the pear in half again laterally, so there are two non-symmetrical pieces. Then lay the pastry down, spread a layer of honey, place the larger slice on the pastry, stuff the hole with toasted almond and chopped rosemary, then place a couple slices of gruyere on top. Place the second half of the pear over it to cap it off and cover the entire pear half in pastry, pinching the pastry pieces together to seal. Brush the pastry, shape hand pie into a pear, and cut slits down the long length.
Savory pies are entirely underrated. I’ve never baked a savory pie before so I was incredibly excited this week to explore a new side of what I’ve considered pie. Upon pouring through internet blogs and recipe books, I found I was consistently attracted to pies that centered around cheese. In the end I chose a pie and a galette for some variety. I’ve made fruit galette before, but the idea of a savory one was novel and exciting. The galette contained tri-color potato, caramelized onion, goat cheese, and fresh rosemary while the pie was a brie, apple, prosciutto sweet and savory mix.
where I substituted half of the water with vodka in order to make the pastry extra fluffy and light when the vodka evaporated. Then I cut the potatoes, caramelized the onions, and layered them on the rolled out dough adding dollops of cheese and pieces of rosemary on top. The only addition I made was that I used herbed goat cheese with thyme. I was pleasantly surprised by how colorful the miniature potatoes were and if I had made the galette again, I might have added a bit more potato. As it was, I found the galette to be delicious. The vodka trick made a noticeable improvement and although there was a large crust to filling ratio, the rosemary flavored the crust well. I liked this recipe because the pie felt light and airy with little filling which is not the case for many pies.
This green chili chocolate pie was taken from the Four and Twenty Blackbirds pie cookbook. For the pie, the jalapeño and ginger were simmered in milk and cream in order to give a spicy kick to the chocolate. This cream mixture was later strained and poured into the chocolate in order to melt it. We found this idea intriguing, but in reality the spice was too overpowering. The jalapeño pepper outside of the actual spicy taste was a bit too prominent and the chocolate was too dark to be sweet. This made the pie savory and spicy If I were to try this recipe again, I would have added more sugar and perhaps a whipped cream topping as well. There was also cardamom in the recipe, but I couldn’t taste it in the final pie. We partially baked the crust beforehand using beans in order to weigh the crust down and keep the pastry from puffing up with air bubbles. This was the first time I had partially baked the crust using this technique.
The pear ginger pie was an adaptation from a fresh pear pie in our course packet. It called for crystallized ginger and apricot jam which were twists from the typical pear pie. It was interesting to try and overall quite good. The pears themselves ended up a little undercooked, probably as a product of being under ripe. Additionally, the filling was a little on the runny side. The recipe called for cornstarch or tapioca to thicken the filling and we tried cornstarch, but it would have been interesting to see if there was any substantial difference with using tapioca. The crystallized ginger was a good idea, but I would have liked a little more to make the flavor a bit more prominent. In order to combat the under ripe pears, it might have been good to cook them in a saucepan with the ginger and all the spices before putting the filling in the pie. I’ve done this with apple pie, and it has worked pretty well.
We found the recipe for the grapefruit meringue on a cooking blog called Sweet and Savory. I was intrigued by this because lemon meringue is one of my favorite pies and this was an interesting substitution. I was a little hesitant because grapefruit has the tendency to be quite bitter, but this recipe was surprisingly successful. The filling was boiled on the oven and it thickened surprisingly well and quickly, so it was important to have beaten the meringue topping earlier rather than later. One small tweak I would have made is to add some lemon or lime juice to the recipe. I found it to be a little too sweet especially with the addition of the sweet meringue topping. When the pie came out of the oven, it was gorgeous, but as it cooled, the meringue shrunk from the topping. This could have been because we put it in the refrigerator before it completely cooled and there was a large drop in temperature.
