Life of Pie | THEA 10 | Documenting a January of pie-making at Williams College

Decorative Thoughts

January 20, 2014 No comments

While researching pie decorations this weekend, I have found that pastry is often used to make decorative crusts and pie toppers and designs and the like. The alternative is NOT using pastry to make decoration. I have a few thoughts for both:

I found a Bon Appetit recipe for Strawberry and White Chocolate Mouse Tart, which looks amazing to me. I really want to eat it, so I think I’m going to make it.

I think it would be cool to arrange the strawberries into concentric circles. The strawberries themselves are made to look especially appetizing because they are brushed with a melted-strawberry-jam-and-lemon-juice mixture. I would like to experiment with chocolate drizzle designs to make to little dark chocolate pieces to incorporate into the circular strawberry design. Something along the lines of these little hearts:

Or maybe make a chocolate ribbon to place in the middle. Seemingly impossible, but I need to do more research to see whether or not this would be feasible.

The other option would be to make a pie and manipulate pastry for decoration. Here are just a few of the really cool things I found while poking around in Pintrest.

This sunny, yummy looking spinach thing. Wow.

This work of art!

An interesting take on a lattice-top-esque prebaked thing that is apparently set atop a pie like a lid.

And this use of color. I’d never really thought about dying pastry before…

Yep, just a few thoughts of mine. I am leaning towards the tart at the moment. I’ve never made one before and would really like to try!

Possibilities for Decorations

January 20, 2014 No comments

Ever since I was a little kid, I have had little to no artistic ability. Whether it be my “chicken scratch” handwriting, that my Dad claimed looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics, or having to draw circles while everyone else in my art class in high school drew self portraits, my fine motor skills have always been terrible. In turn, when thinking about decorations for pie, I have been trying to find concepts that are relatively simple and even I can’t mess up. With that in mind, I was thinking about a lattice top for a blueberry pie: Shouldn’t be too hard right?

I think both the pie and the design are realistic aspirations on my part. I was also thinking that another simple alternative could be to roll out the dough and make patterns with a cookie cutter that I could insert as the top layer of crust like so:

Ultimately, I think either of these decorative ideas are viable. We shall se in class this afternoon!

Pie Decoration Thoughts

January 19, 2014 No comments

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:

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.

Thoughts on Presentation

January 19, 2014 No comments

I’ve always liked the way tarts look. I think there is a lot of potential with regards to the placement of fruit within the tart to make really a really beautiful pie. I think it would be really interesting to think about presentation in a tart because it is so open, so the presentation all depends on the filling itself. I’ve been looking at a pear and goat cheese tart online, and I think it would be cool to slice the pears into thin wedges and play with the layering and spiraling of the pears on top of one another to create a unique and intriguing presentation.

In other news… my entry is having a reunion snacks type thing tonight, so I decided to make a pie. I did a jumble berry custard pie, which I haven’t eaten yet, but I’m hoping is going to be really good. I cut a simple sailboat design into the top, which I guess was my first foray into presentation of pie… I did learn that if you cut designs into a pastry top they can get distorted during cooking as the filling cooks and bubbles up through them. I’m hoping everyone enjoys it!

Possible Decorations

January 19, 2014 No comments

A lot of the recipes I’ve been looking at for this week are single-crust recipes. I have been thinking about adapting the recipes to a double-crust recipe for decoration purposes, but I was excited to see that there are certainly some decoration options for single-crust pies as well. I liked this braid one from pinterest because I think it’s clean-cut while also adding some pizzazz to the pie at the same time.

Obviously this one is less exciting because it is not adding on top, but I still think it makes it looks slightly nicer.

I was also thinking that if I did not want to do too much pastry on top, I could do cut outs in a similar way to this one. I would do different designs, but I think it sort of accomplishes both – not too much pastry if it does not seem to go as well with the recipe but also still makes the pie look more festive. If I were to do something with just designs in the middle such as this, I would probably use a design similar to the one above around the edge.

As far as having more pastry on top, I think either a regular lattice top or one that’s a little fancier such as this would be interesting.

I am curious if there were a crumb top on top, what types of decorations we could do with that. Something I was thinking perhaps making them into discs and laying them out instead of just pouring it on top. I wonder if it’s important for bringing the pie together though to have all of it covered with crumb.

An Experiment in Recipe Synthesis: The Thanksgiving Pie

January 19, 2014 No comments

When we were throwing around the idea of ‘an entire Thanksgiving dinner baked into a pie’ in class, I laughed and appreciated the ridiculousness along with the rest of my baking buddies. But something about the idea took root in that part of my brain where thoughts like ‘how awesome would it be to make a giant kit-kat bar’ and ‘I wonder if you can take cats for walks?’ flourish. Or it might have been the fact that I missed the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes, green vegetables, something orange, and pie Thanksgiving while I was away in Turkey. Either way, the idea stuck, and even though no recipe for this existed online yet, I was not going to let that stop me.

First, I had to do a bit of research. That meant looking up every vaguely related recipe to this concept and picking up ideas from them. The first mockup of my internal schema for the grand design for this pie contained a layer of bacon mac & cheese. Upon consultation with my idea guy (read: girlfriend), that part was shot down as the flavor could be too overpowering in relation to the others, it could make the pie soggy, and layers of filling was something to be avoided, if at all possible. Onto Step 2…

I found the perfect approximation of what I wanted for my pie here. Unfortunately, they did not also offer a recipe. So, it was back to the drawing board to create my own. After viewing a few more recipes, I decided on the following concept:

A butter and shortening crust that would include craisins, savory herbs, and a bit of chicken stock baked in.
A filling consisting largely of mashed potatoes, with the other ingredients suspended within. (An excellent recipe can be found here).
Turkey, green beans, and sweet potatoes all simmered in a bit of stock, then mixed into the mashed potatoes.
A crumb-top crust of cornbread stuffing for the upper layer.
A bit of brown gravy to be poured over each slice upon serving.

Basically, doing that worked! The following is a series of pictures I took while baking that idea into life:
*Note: The measurements as well as rough directions are listed in the recipe section of this post.

[The Crust, while it was cooling in the fridge; note the the Cranberries]

[The Mashed Potatoes]

[The Green Beans, Turkey, and Sweet Potatoes stew; note the small bit of thick Gravy]

[The previous two items combined; this will be the Filling]

[Raw Pie with Filling]

[Raw Pie with Filling and Cornbread Stuffing Crumb Coat]

[Freshly Baked Thanksgiving Pie]

[Brown Gravy to Serve with the Pie]

[Cross-Sectional View of the Finished Product]

Reflections: This experiment turned out pretty great, actually! I was a little worried that the crust would be too soggy, especially after a lot of it kept sticking to my utensils as well as the wax paper, but good flakiness was achieved. Next time I try the Vodka Trick, I think I’ll use slightly less liquid, haha. Other than that, another thing I might try differently is to not put in the filling and top crumb coat crust and leave it overnight. Perhaps doing both right before baking it in the oven would have achieved a flakier crust. Either way, it worked out, and the pie tasted delicious!

Spinach Pasties

January 17, 2014 No comments

I tried to makes these pasties with a traditional hot water crust. It all went well until I started rolling it out. As I rolled it out more it got less and less solid, more inclined to split, crumble, or generally fall apart. It tasted okay though, if a little bland.

Steak and Stilton Pie

January 16, 2014 No comments

It was very difficult to choose a single recipe to try this week. I am quite unfamiliar with savory pies, but so many recipes were making me salivate. I narrowed it down to a mushroom pie (I am a sucker for mushrooms) and a steak and Stilton pie (which looked so fun to make). I made my decision by literally flipping a coin.

I made several changes to the original recipe. First of all, instead of using a store-bought, frozen puff pastry, I made my own. I used Susan Purdy’s recipe for Quick Puff Pastry. There was also the option of making a Classic Puff Pastry, but that would’ve taken me fifteen years to finish. So Quick Puff Pastry it is. The ingredients were very similar to those in the basic flaky pastry which we’ve been making. The difference is in the procedure.

First of all, you roll the pastry out, then slather it with a nice layer of butter, as seen here:

Then you use things like the “letter fold” and the “book fold” to layer the dough. The latter is featured in the picture below.

Then you fold, then roll, then fold, then roll, then fold, then chill, then roll, then fold, etc. For a long time. And then your puff pastry is ready! Here it is, awaiting to be chilled overnight in the fridge:

With the puff pastry done, it was time to begin on the pie filling. This is an English style pie, so it doesn’t have a bottom crust. The original recipe was supposed to make four individual pies, but I adapted it to make one 9-inch pie. The recipe said to brown the meat first, then work on the vegetables. The most exciting part of this recipe was adding a bottle stout beer to the vegetables and leaving them to simmer for 1.5 hours.

Once that was done, the steak and mustard powder and cheese were combined with the rest of the filling. The original recipe calls for English Stilton cheese, which was unavailable at Stop and Shop, so a more generic blue cheese was used instead. I also cut down on the amount of blue cheese; the recipe called for 6oz, but I used 3-4oz instead. I know that here are some diehard blue cheese lovers out there, but I like mine in moderation. A taste test suggests that the pie should be good. It needed a little seasoning with salt and pepper, but I think I got it right. Here’s a picture of the filling, waiting patiently for its top crust.

The puff pastry was surprisingly easy to roll out/work with. I made a very simple design on it. Man, I’m going to have to up my game for next week.

Here’s the final product. There was some bubbling-over happening, so not the prettiest thing, but should still taste good! I guess we’ll see 🙂

Beef Curry Pie Part 3

January 16, 2014 No comments

The final result!

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

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.

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

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!

Roasted Butternut Squash Pie

January 16, 2014 No comments

I kind of made this pie up, so here’s hoping it isn’t awful. Basically, I like roasted butternut squash, so I decided to use that, and just went from there. I looked up a bunch of pumpkin and/or squash recipes online (pie fillings, but also pasta sauces, soups, etc.) to get some ideas for ingredients, and I landed on using onions (which seemed to be in almost every recipe), gorgonzola (most recipes used gruyere, swiss, or cheddar, but gorgonzola has a stronger flavor. Plus, I like it a lot), spinach, & chives (my personal favorite herb. When I was a kid I would munch on raw chives all the time. They’re delicious).

As for the crust, I tried whole wheat, and I’m not sure it worked out too well. I didn’t use a recipe specifically for whole wheat flour – instead, I used a recipe that called for all-purpose flour, and replaced part of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour. The dough was really difficult to work with. Anyway, I’m not terribly pleased with the crust, and I probably won’t be doing whole wheat again without a recipe specifically designed for that kind of flour.

-Ali Bunis

(pictures below)

Turkey, Brie, Apple Pie!! with apple cider turkey gravy.

January 16, 2014 No comments

This pie actually came about because of a panini I had while I was home for break. Turkey, brie, and apple panini. The brie melts and is delicious, and the apples provide a little bit of crunch and tartness. It is awesome. So when given the chance to throw savory things into a pie, I jumped on it! The only problem was that I couldn’t really find a recipe, so I made it up as I went along and I’m really hoping it’s good. Figuring it out as I went along, though, was a really good learning experience for me because with David’s help I began to learn how to know when something needs more of a certain spice. Definitely a good skill for cooking.

English Pork Pie Redux

January 15, 2014 No comments

Robbie here! After spending a year abroad in London, I wanted to pay homage to my second home across the pond by making an English pie. While I had eaten and enjoyed the English pork pie amongst other delicious pies in London, I was never enamored with the dish since it is eaten cold. Although that is the way that the many English pies are served, I am a hot food kind of guy. So, I decided to take the traditional English pork pie and put my own American twist on it. Instead of serving this pie cold, I served it piping hot. With that in mind, I followed saveurs recipe which you can see below for my meat mixture:

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/English-Pork-Pie

Yet since I would not be serving the pie cold, I completely discarded the directions on making a broth which would later become a gelatinous mixture that helps to firm up the traditionally cold pie.

Furthermore, though I am a carnivore, I wanted to make the pie about more than just the meat alone and give it some nuance while putting my own spin on the dish. In turn, I decided to caramelize some onions, stew some apples in apple cider, and grate cheddar cheese to put on top in addition to making the aforementioned pork mixture from saveur.com.

Hopefully the flavors will meld together as a pie version of pork chops and apple sauce. It’s like peanut butter and jelly: the two things just go well together!

I know the pie might not need it, but I also very excited that there will also be true English mustard, Coleman’s, to accompany my dish. It will knock your socks off with the kick and cure any sinus problems one may have.

Hopefully this will pay homage to the city I have grown to love. For as Samuel Johnson once said, “he who is tired of London is tired of life.”

Portobello Pot Pie

January 15, 2014 No comments

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Portobello-Pot-Pie/

From start to finish, this pie caused me some difficulties (but I’m crossing my fingers that it will still taste good tomorrow!). I tried the vodka trick. When I first did my pastry, it seemed a little dry, so I put it back in and put a little tiny bit of liquid in. It proved that even that little bit was too much. It was sort of dough-like. Hopefully enough of the vodka burned off that it is more pastry-like.

I think the timing with the recipe was very underestimated. It took me over an hour-and-a-half or so to prepare everything, and it said it would be thirty minutes (I may just be a slow chopper). When I did the step of letting the gravy simmer, I actually think it should’ve been taken off the heat. It burned a little by the time the portobello mushrooms were added. I wish it had said how long to simmer for. I may also have been too slow to add, but I wasn’t quite sure how long it should simmer. I ended up making additional gravy with cooking wine and flour from the burned parts in the pan. Hopefully it will not taste too burned as the majority of ingredients were not burned.

I left it in the oven for over sixty minutes – twenty minutes longer than expected. It still did not seem golden brown to me by the end. I was surprised at how much longer it took.

I think it is interesting how the mushrooms simply act as a substitute for the chicken here. I’ll be interested to see how the combination tastes all together because I do not typically think of mushrooms and potatoes together. Initially when I was looking for a recipe this week, I had a difficult time because I have not had many meat pies other than chicken pot pie. I’m excited to taste everyone’s tomorrow so I can wrap my mind around it better and start to figure out how to bake them my own!

Beef Curry Pie Part 2

January 14, 2014 No comments

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.

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:

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.

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

Beef Curry Pie Part 1

January 13, 2014 No comments

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:

Life of Pie | THEA 10

Decorative Thoughts

Possibilities for Decorations

Pie Decoration Thoughts

Thoughts on Presentation

Possible Decorations

An Experiment in Recipe Synthesis: The Thanksgiving Pie

Spinach Pasties

Steak and Stilton Pie

Beef Curry Pie Part 3

Roasted Butternut Squash Pie

Turkey, Brie, Apple Pie!! with apple cider turkey gravy.

English Pork Pie Redux

Portobello Pot Pie

Beef Curry Pie Part 2

Beef Curry Pie Part 1

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