Fresh Peach Pie

 

When we lived in California years ago, we looked forward to the two weeks out of the year that Marie Callender's restaurant offered fresh fruit pies, peach, strawberry, and boysenberry.  We think the boysenberry may be extinct (becoming the olallieberry).  Marie Callender had a signature pie crust that was perfect, and they filled that shell with heaps of fresh fruit, then poured a glaze over it.  Those pies are a distant memory now, but I've tried to replicate them as closely as I can over the years.  When we first moved to State College, there were no good peaches in the grocery stores.  I think they hadn't figured out how to ship them for a reasonable price.  So we'd order those wonderful Oregold peaches from Harry & David's and anxiously await their arrival in August.  Now we can find good peaches for several months in the summer, although you have to be careful.  At the end of the season they look good, but they go from ripe to rotten in record time.  So mid-July is now optimal peach pie time.

The challenge of the pie crust is to have it be strong enough to hold up to the juiciness of the fruit.  I had made a fairly disastrous blueberry pie using a recipe I saw on the Food Network.  Alex Guarnaschelli (the latest winner of the Iron Chef competition) had demonstrated this recipe and it looked delicious, with a thick, solid crust.  However, when I made the crust, I thought the pie dough needed more moisture, and the filling was more like soup.  That may be because there was too much water in the blueberries, or not enough pectin in the preserves.  We all loved the taste of the crust, so I decided to use it here (cutting the recipe in half), with the substitution of vodka for half of the ice water.

The glaze recipe is a modification of an orange glaze that is in the Betty Crocker Cookbook from 1975, one of my first cookbooks.

FRESH PEACH PIE

Crust

4 Tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
1/2 cup (4 ounces) shortening, chilled and cubed
2 1/2 cups (10.625 ounces) AP flour
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup total, ice water + chilled vodka
Nonstick cooking spray

Filling

10-12 peaches, ripened but still firm

Glaze

1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 peach, mashed
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup water

To make the pie crust:

Spray a 9-inch pie plate with nonstick spray.  I find this is the only way to be sure it will release later on.

Put the butter and shortening cubes on a dish and let them rest in the freezer while you get the rest of the ingredients.  I actually keep the flour in the freezer, especially in the summer when your pie crust needs all the help it can get not to form gluten.

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse to combine.  Add the butter and shortening, and pulse about 5 times, just until it's mixed.  Add the ice water/vodka and pulse another 5 to 8 times just until it starts to come together and no longer looks dry.  If it still looks dry add a little more water.

Scrape the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap and form it into a flat circle.  Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Put the dough on a floured surface and roll it out.  I like the method where you keep lifting and turning it so it doesn't stick to the board.

Keep going until it is at least 4 to 5 inches wider than a 9-inch pie pan.  Gently roll the dough onto your rolling pin and lay the dough into the pie plate. Press it into the bottom and the sides of the pan.  Fold the excess dough under along the edge of the pan, then flute the edges.  This is a very thick pie crust, which will help it hold up later on, so don't be alarmed if there is quite a bit of dough to flute.

Refrigerate the pie shell for 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Once chilled, prick the pie shell with a fork to allow steam to escape during the baking process.  Spray a piece of parchment paper with nonstick spray, then place it in the pie shell.  Fill it with dry beans.

Bake for 15-17 minutes until the edge is golden and the sides seem firm enough to support themselves.

Remove the weights and parchment very carefully so as not to disturb the crust, and continue to bake until it is golden brown on the inside bottom.  In my oven, it took 12 minutes until the fluting started to brown and I covered it with a pie shield.  Then it took another 7 minutes for the inside bottom to look brown and firm.  Your goal is a firm and crunchy crust, so don't underbake it.

Let the pie shell cool completely before you fill it.

In the meantime (maybe when you first put the pie dough in the refrigerator), make the glaze because it, too, will need to cool to room temperature.

To make the glaze:

Stir together the sugar, salt and cornstarch in a small saucepan.  Gradually stir in the mashed peach, orange juice, lemon juice and water.

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils.  Boil and stir 1 minute.

Remove from heat and cool completely.

Peaches:

The easiest way to peel peaches is to put them in boiling water for 40 seconds,

then immediately move them to an ice bath for 1 minute.

This should cause the peel to slip right off and leave the peaches looking smooth and pretty.

Chop the first 8 or so peaches into chunks (they'll be easier to eat that way), putting them in the pie shell as you go.  Once you have a layer, put a few Tablespoons of glaze over them.

The glaze serves two functions, first to prevent the peaches from browning and the second to give some cohesiveness to the filling.  You may not end up using all of it, but you can always save it for another use.  Continue to drizzle glaze on the peaches as you fill the shell, but use a light hand.

You can continue cutting the peaches into chunks, or for a prettier pie, you can slice the last 4 peaches and lay them in concentric circles on the top.

Now spoon the glaze over the top of the peaches, being sure to completely cover them so they don't turn brown.

In the end, the peaches will spill out all over the plate, but they're the star of the show, so they're entitled.  Top it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (or vanilla bean gelato, my new personal favorite), and enjoy.

Last weekend we entertained a couple who are starting jobs at Penn State, Jennie and Chad, so I made the peach pie for them.  Jennie commented that she appreciated the minimal use of the glaze on it, and that it didn't in anyway detract from the taste of the fresh peaches.  Thanks Jennie!

Adventures in Eating

We just returned from two weeks in Asia, where we thoroughly enjoyed the food.  Needless to say, I haven't been cooking, which is why the long silence here.  And now I'm so jet-lagged that both my appetite and my alertness are impeding my interest in cooking.  So, I thought I'd share some of the interesting things we saw, ate and learned in South Korea and Japan.  However, we now realize that we were both pretty jet-lagged while we were there.  It's been hard to piece together what we ate or even exactly what we did.  Next time, more pictures and notes.

Steve was participating in a Geriatric conference in Seoul, along with a Penn State colleague and several current and former graduate students who originate from Seoul.  The students, Kyungmin, Jel, Soomi, and Bora, were our enthusiastic guides to sights and dining while we were there for a week.  The second week we stayed in Kyoto, Nagoya, and Tokyo, and enjoyed the able guidance of Steve' longtime collaborator, Yumiko, in Kyoto and Nagoya.  We appreciated having someone to answer our questions ("what is that?"), and even more to help us sort through the many and varied eating options.  For example, the photo above is the plastic food display outside a restaurant.  These were particularly good plastic imitations, but some of them were almost comicbook versions of the food.  It also turned out that sometimes the food on the menu was different from the plastic versions in not insignificant ways.  Luckily, our friend Yumiko made sure to question everything and translate for us.

Here are some of the culinary highlights of our trip:  For our first meal in Seoul we went to a famous restaurant high up on a hill that actually had a wedding in progress while we were there, with the bride and groom in traditional Korean costume.  We tried various bibimbap, an iconic Korean dish that consists of mixed rice, vegetables, sometimes meat, and an egg.  You can control the heat by not adding as much kimchi and/or chili sauce, which was wise on our first day there after a 20+ hour journey and not much sleep.

We ended our first day at a Korean Barbecue restaurant, where we shared a private room and ate a dizzying variety of foods.  There was sashimi, and other appetizers, but the star of the show was the barbecued beef ribs which were quite delicious, and were cooked on a grill in front of us.  This is a traditional meal, with many small dishes where a balance is achieved between heat, sweet, and sour.

The next day we went to a Thai restaurant, called Thai Orchid.  This is an appetizer we shared.

And here is our group right before we dug into the food.  While the chef was Chinese, the food was very similar to Thai dishes we've had in the U.S.

We took one trip to the outskirts of Seoul, to a Korean Folk Village.  There we tried some traditional dishes,

including these scallion pancakes.

On our way back into the city we searched out Jel and Kyungmin's favorite warm weather treat, red bean ice cream.  We tried to find a popular restaurant, but they turned out to have an hour and a half wait, so we went to the Galleria, a luxury department store with a gorgeous food hall (just like the ones we love in London and Paris).

Red bean ice cream is shaved ice with sweetened condensed milk poured on it, some Japanese candies, and a red bean mixture that you stir into it.  It was quite refreshing, and quite different from western ice cream.

Here's the Japanese plastic version:

We also went to a Chinese restaurant, where our table shared Sweet and Sour Pork and Garlic Chicken that were quite different than they might be in the U.S., but quite tasty.  The chicken had a generous hit of peppers.  Then we each had a bowl of noodles, green noodles with red bean sauce, that were seriously hot.  These were the specialty dishes of this restaurant, but we were also told that this is how most Koreans would order at a Chinese restaurant.

On our last day in Seoul, Jel and Kyungmin took us to a market where Jel did some shopping for a dinner she was making for her parents that evening.  It was in the basement of a "shopping center," and there were dozens of food concessions.  Each concession specialized in a different type of food, sometimes raw materials, like a butcher shop or vegetable vendor, but more often, something that had been created by someone who specialized in that particular item, such as rice cakes, kimchi, vegetable side dishes, dumplings, etc.  It was absolutely fascinating, and the purveyors exhibited the skill associated with having great experience in the specific thing they made.  They all insisted that we taste their wares, and I have to say that most things were as tasty as they looked.

In Kyoto, we sampled Chinese dim sum and Tempura at Takashimaya, a luxury department store with branches throughout Japan.  It has a number of restaurants, which are all of very high quality.  The dim sum was freshly made, and just the snack we were looking for on our first day there.  The next day, we sat at the counter while the chef made our tempura, which was so fresh that we watched him catch the sardines and the eel that very shortly were placed on our plates.  The tempura batter was incredibly light, and the oil is kept at a constant temperature, so it is not greasy.  Takashimaya also has a food hall like the one in Seoul, so we spent a fair amount of time wandering around looking at the beautiful food.  Of course, only part of it was Japanese, the rest was an international mix, Chinese, and French being most prevalent.  In fact, the Takashimaya in Nagoya had an outlet of Fauchon, the pricey French bakery.

One day when we were touring the temples in Kyoto, we happened upon a tiny restaurant called Cafe Alba.  The sign said, in English, that they had soba noodles and preservative-free, organic ingredients.  Inside there were only four tables, and the chef made the noodles to order while we watched:

It was a blistering hot day, and the soba noodles were put in a cold broth.  Mine came with duck and vegetables:

We also had a sukiyaki dinner with Yumiko that was quite enjoyable.

We had booked a restaurant tour in Tokyo that turned out to take us to places we would never have found on our own.  The first restaurant specialized in "bar food," skewered and grilled things like
chicken wings and chicken breast with wasabi,

Japanese meatballs,

and whatever these things are:

The other restaurant we went to was a Japanese pancake restaurant.  I have to say that I had no idea such a thing existed.  There are a variety of "pancakes" on the menu, but the general idea is that you have a griddle in the middle of the table and they bring you a bowl with what you ordered.  The "batter" is on the bottom, and vegetables and sometimes some meat are piled on top.  The diner mixes up the ingredients in the bowl, then oils the griddle and pours the batter on.  You wait until the bottom is brown, then flip it over.  The one pictured below is called okonomiyaki.  It had a little bit of pork, but a lot of cabbage.  Once it is browned it is topped with a thick, sweet soy sauce, then (and this was a little surprising) mayonnaise and bonito flakes.

I know it sounds unusual, but it was delicious.

So we tried a number of new things, along with some new versions of familiar things.  We wish now that we'd done a better job of taking pictures of the food, and promise to do better the next time we travel.

Blueberry Coffee Cake

We've been recovering from jet-lag for the past few weeks, so I haven't been doing much cooking or baking.  However, while we were gone our Elks Club blueberries arrived, so they've been calling to me.  First, I made a rather unsuccessful pie, but this coffee cake was perfect.  My sister froze the berries without washing them, so the first order of business was to defrost them, then rinse them, then be sure they were completely dry.

BLUEBERRY COFFEE CAKE

Crumble

1/2 cup (4 oz) brown sugar
1/2 cup (2.88 oz) AP flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon (I used Vietnamese)
1/4 cup (2 oz) butter, room temperature

Batter

3/4 cup (5.44 oz) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (2 oz) butter, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon orange oil
1 large egg
1/2 cup (4 oz) milk, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups (8.5 oz) AP flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 cups (9.6 or so ounces) blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Spray a 9"x2" round cake pan with pan release spray, and set aside.

Mixing the crumble:

In a mixing bowl combine the brown sugar, AP flour, and cinnamon.  Mix with your fingers to combine the ingredients, taking care to break up any large pieces of brown sugar.  Add the butter to the sugar mixture and cut together with a fork.  Cut just until the mixture becomes crumbly.  Set aside.

Mixing the batter:

In a mixing bowl, combine the sugar and butter and beat to combine with a wooden spoon.

Add the egg and beat until mixture becomes light and creamy.

Add the milk, orange oil and vanilla to the creamed mixture and stir to combine.  It will look curdle-y.

In a separate container, combine the AP flour, baking powder and salt.  Stir with a fork to blend the dry ingredients.  Add all of the dry ingredients to the bowl of wet ingredients, stirring with a wooden spoon until smooth.

Fold in the fruit just until mixed.

Pour the batter into the pre-sprayed pan and smooth to the edges.

Sprinkle the top evenly with the crumble mixture

Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 to 40 minutes (mine took 40 minutes), checking with a toothpick in the center of the cake to see if it comes out clean.

Remove the cake from the oven and cool for 5 minutes.  Serve warm.  It can be reheated the next day with 24 seconds, full power, in the microwave.  This is a lovely, moist cake, and can be made with almost any fruit (peaches, apples, etc.).  

Note:  A while back I made this coffee cake using the recipe I got from the Zingerman's baking course. I ran into the measurement dilemma.  The recipe called for 2 cups of flour, which is 8.5 ounces.  However, they listed the weight as .64 pounds, which would be 10.24 ounces.  I reasoned that since they measure their recipes in weight, the weight must be right, not the measurement.  That coffeecake was just okay.  So this time, I used the 8.5 ounce measurement, and the cake was delicious!  The blueberry, orange oil, and cinnamon flavors just sang.  So, you get to benefit from my experiment.  

You're welcome.