Mmm… Food

Damn if we didn’t make the tastiest Apple Pie this weekend.  After 20 minutes of debating on what we should do with our evening…  Go out to eat?  Stay at home and make something?  If we stay what will we make?  If we go out where would we go?  Would we see a movie?  Would we go somewhere else? What if we need ingredients to cook at home and have to go out?  We landed on staying in, using food we already had, and then with initial intentions on cooking down some of the last pumpkins that we have to make pie, we decided instead to make apple pie with all the organic apples we had left from the food share.  I was skeptical at first at how we would pull this off.  I’ve never made an apple pie, but according to April it was just “apples and butter in a pie shell.  My grandmother used to make them that way”  So we set out with a mish mash of recipe ideas.  Some coming from April’s head,  some from the sweets issue of Time Out Chicago and some from Martha Stewart.  It was definitely a mish mash of recipes.  We ended up using Martha Stewart Flaky Pie Crust, which was scrumptiously delicious, and perfect with the apple pie.  It was indeed very flaky and a different kind of crust than I am used to.  Perhaps it the addition of sugar to the crust which creates the flakiness, as I haven’t added sugar to any of the other crusts I’ve made before. 

For the filling we went out on our own to create a filling by cutting up 7 apples (of varying sizes and flavours) into small chunks, adding 1 cup of sugar, 2t lemon juice, and 1t Five Spice Powder.  The apples were a big mix of all the apples we had left from our organic food share.  Some of them were crab apples, very tart and hard to eat on their own, perfect to add to a pie that will be sweetened with sugar.  The others were an odd mix and match variety of which I cannot name.  Maybe this is where our good fortune took over.  Whatever they were, they worked out perfectly. 

We rolled the crust out, added the filling, dotted it with 2TB of butter, and added the top crust and cut some vents.  Then we chilled it for a bit in the refrigerator before baking.  Just before popping it in the oven we brushed it with a beaten egg to give it that glossy appeal when it was baked.  With our mix and match recipes we weren’t totally sure on timing, but things came to perfection by initially blasting it for ten minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit.  Then we turn the oven down to 350 and continued to bake for another 25 minutes until the crust was browned.  At this point the crust is done, but the insides still need longer, so you can tent foil around the pie to prevent the crust from burning while the inside of the pie continues to come up to temperature and cook.  We cooked it for another 30 minutes at 350 until the juices were bubbling up from the vents.  It cooled overnite (as we started too late at nite to eat it right away) and had it for dessert with dinner on Sunday. 

We brought it with us to have dinner with Jennifer and Rene, and after we had a piece, I declared that while we love our friends dearly, we would not be leaving the whole half pie left with them, we would need to take two pieces back with us, as I had never tasted apple pie that was just this tasty!!!  Seriously I’m still a little in shock at how well it turned out.  I am usually such a recipe follower, and it makes me very nervous to deviate from those directions, but this paid off and then some and is encouraging me to be a little more adventurous in the kitchen.   Who knows what else I might whip out this week. 🙂