Runner-Up Pie

 

I entered the Manard Farmer's Market apple pie contest this past weekend with this pie. It was the runner-up in the "Tastiest" category. The categories were "Prettiest", "Tastiest", "Most creative filling", and "Best crust". There were 25 pies entered. My pie used the Cooks Illustrated "Foolproof pie crust" recipe, which was great. It uses half water and half vodka as the wet ingredients because vodka doesn't make gluten with the flour like water does, creating a more tender crust. I highly recommend looking it up and trying it. For the filling, I used local ginger gold and cortland apples. I like my pie filling to be pretty spicy, so I use a healthy dose of cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg. One of the biggest dissapointments with apple pie can be cutting into it to reveal a watery mess. Two things can help this: 1) don't cut it hot!! Let it cool- I think it even best the morning/day after it has been cooked. 2) Use a binder in the filling- either flour or corn starch. I typically use flour in an apple pie (a tablespoon or two) and then dot the filling with butter before putting the top crust layer on. It's hard to gage how watery your apples are going to be, but the fresher they are, the more water content they usually have. Plus some varieties of apple just seem to be more watery than others- I've had trouble with macs in the water department.
Happy Pie baking!

Taking on a dreaded veggie

If you ask my Papa what vegetable I refused to eat as a child (though he did make me try them) he would easily answer, without much though I imagine, brussel sprouts. No offense Papa, but I think it had to do with the fact that they were frozen to start, boiled to mush, and no amount of slathered butter took away that cabbage flavor (something I also wasn't a huge fan of).
Recently, I have come to enjoy cabbage (both in slaw and boiled) and I decided it was time to take on this old-time hatred.
I remembered reading something a while ago with fresh brussel sprouts with bacon and I thought that sounded interesting. I mean, really, few things aren't made better with bacon, right? Perhaps it takes away from the "I'm healthy!" status of the dish, but hey, I'm trying to overcome a deep rooted disliking here.
Taking that memory of that dish, I decided to go all out with flavors and add shallots and apples to the dish. To start, I cut the bacon into little pieces and put them in a frying pan until they were crispy. I poured off the excess fat, and removed them to a plate with a paper towel. I added a little olive oil to the pan and added some sliced shallots and let them soften a bit before adding the sprouts. To prep the fresh sprouts, I peeled off the outermost layers of leaves, which are a nice dark green, but some were a little browned on the tips and I knew would be tougher. Then I cut them in half and added them to the pan and sprinkled with kosher salt. I covered the pan so that they would cook through faster and more evenly. Soon they were getting a beautiful caramelized crust on their flat sides and I added one Granny Smith apple, peeled and diced. Covered again to cook some more. When the sprouts were just about tender with a fork, I added the bacon back in, stirred a bit and put them out to serve.
This dish has everything! It's pleasing to the eye with the vivid green, rusty red and white. It has tons of texture with the leafy sprouts, soft apple and crunchy bacon. Plus it mixes sweet and salty in a way that is not jarring to the pallet.
I prefer the sprouts not crunchy, but in no way mushy. They need to still hold together and make you have to chew them. But of course, that is a matter of taste- you could eat them raw if you wanted or cooked to a paste. So experiment! And perhaps take a look back as some childhood aversions of your own.