Fresh Raspberry Pie — The Best! July 21, 2008

This weekend I made a raspberry pie. Summer really IS here. I have been making this pie for years– at least, every year when I live where you can buy raspberries without taking out a mortgage on your house to buy them. This is very likely my favorite pie in the world, at least partly because they are the perfect way to wallow in raspberries once a year, when it’s raspberry season.

Here is the recipe, from an old Lee Bailey cookbook. Unfortunately these are no longer in print, but you can find them from time to time in second hand bookshops.

Lee Bailey’s Raspberry Pie

1 pie crust, baked
Whipped cream, flavored with vanilla or very lightly sweetened with sugar

Filling:
3 pints fresh raspberries, approximately
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons of cornstarch
½ cup of water
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Make the pie crust and bake it blind. Set it aside and allow to cool to room temperature.

To make the filling, mash enough berries to fill one cup. Combine with the sugar, cornstarch, and water in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to the boil. Continue cooking for about 2 minutes over low heat until the mixture is thickened and clear. Stir in the butter and cook until melted, then allow to cool to lukewarm.

Place the remaining uncooked berries in the baked crust, saving a few perfect ones for garnish. Pour the cooked berry mixture over the berries in crust. Shake gently so glaze seeps down around the raw berries.

Chill pie for a few hours (I usually chill overnight for best firmness, but in these pictures you can see that we couldn’t wait more than three hours to eat it, so it’s oozing a little over the plate), then top with the flavoured whipped cream and garnish with the reserved whole berries.

This is one of those pies that are so incredibly easy, yet so incredibly good, that they make your reputation as an amazing baker. I really encourage you to give this recipe a try. Just make sure that you have good quality raspberries, with flavour to them. That’s the hardest part of the recipe.

You will also notice the wonky crimps in my crust. I’m afraid that my pie crusts will never again be perfectly crimped, because I can’t bring myself to sacrifice my perfect flake and taste for appearances. Remember my cooking rules? Again, taste trumps looks.

Last night I got to attend a James Taylor concert in Victoria. My friend and I were definitely on the young side in the crowd. The music was great, James Taylor himself was very entertaining, and I had a really good time. Maybe not as good as the time some of the older people around us were having, however. Even though I say, yes, everybody should do what they are interested in, be enthusiastic, have fun, there was a moment last night when, looking around at the baby boomer crowd hysterically screaming and singing along with James Taylor, I felt a deep thankfulness that my parents would never attend a concert and engage in concert-like behaviour (e.g. wave one arm back and forth over their heads toward the stage). I know. I’m a hypocrite. At least, I’m a hypocrite when it comes to my parents. But don’t we all hold our parents to slightly different standard that the hypothetical standard we apply to other people’s parents?

Some Cookbook Recommendations July 16, 2008

I’m sticking in a picture here of some Johnson’s Blue Geraniums, just so there is a picture. Blog posts now feel claustrophobic to me if there is no picture. Hm. Maybe I should try writing some non-illustrated posts.

I’ve been doing a lot of cookbook reading lately. I’ve also been reading some improving works now I’ve finished graduate school, FYI. I’ve read “Team of Rivals” about Lincoln’s presidency (very very good), I’m working my way through the novels of the Bronte sisters, and on my bedside table is Boswell’s “Life of Johnson” (no relation to the geraniums). I just wanted to preface with that information, so you don’t think it’s all food, all the time, over here.

I will mention, however, that Boswell (writing in the mid 1700s) mentions at one point that “it is commonly held” that animals allowed to range over pasture and move about have better-tasting meat than the meat from animals that are kept penned up. They knew that in the 1700s, but how much does it cost to buy the organic meat? How recently has the organic movement taken hold? Aren’t the cutting edge chefs the ones telling us this antiquated fact?

So my recommendations. If you are interested in bread baking at all, try Peter Reinhardt’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”. Easy to understand, walks you through all the science of bread baking, and all with photos and recipes that work. If you are interested in English baking and English bread, try Elizabeth David’s “Bread and Yeast Cookery”. It will probably inspire you with a need to make your own outdoor oven. But I happen to consider that a good thing. It also finally explained to me why traditional British breads do not have holes, while the bread of the Continent does.

I also finally got a hold of a cookbook by Jessica B. Harris, who was an African-American cookery specialist, who also researched and wrote about the foods of Africa. The book I read was “The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent”. Really interesting, and well-written. You do have to see a lot of pictures of African women wearing nothing but a skirt wrapped around their waists, standing over cooking pots, which I don’t happen to like, but you can ignore them. It gave me a very different perspective on the food of Africa, and on some aspects of the cultures there too. I’m definitely going to look for some more of her books. I will add, though, that I wasn’t tempted to cook any of the recipes. I love my Ethiopian food, but other than that, African food hasn’t done it for me. Moroccan cooking has tempted me, but I found out through the book that the spice mixtures of Morocco frequently contain dung beetle eggs. It’s put me off a bit.

I’ll add that I got another Delia Smith cookery book from the library that I hadn’t seen before. She is so good. If you don’t know how to cook, Delia is the woman for you. I’ve read a bunch of others, but I didn’t think they were good enough to recommend to you.

Cathy and I went to the Noodle Box in downtown Victoria today. I foolishly ordered the lamb curry. If you go there, go with one of the usual made-in-a-wok curries, like the Cambodian Jungle curry. My lunch was horrendous. Dry (but, to be fair, tender) chunks of lamb, old rice, greasy bread that purported to be roti, and a dab of yogurt holding one chunk of cucumber, advertised under the heading “a side of cucumber raita”. Usually I get thoroughly fed up and annoyed when I am served bad food, and am left prickly with repressed frustration because I don’t want to embarrass my dining companion by giving the restaurant what-for. It is a testament to Cathy and her soothing, cosy personality that I noticed the food was crap, only mentioned it was crap twice, and left calm and laid-back about having been ripped off.

Raisin Pie. The debatable coolness of chuck wagon racing. July 13, 2008

Last weekend there was no pie. I was sad, but consoled myself by making a caramel apple upside down cake from Trish Boyle’s Cake Book. It was supposed to be the peach tatin cake, but I had only one peach available to me, so it had to be apples instead. It turned out pretty well, but wasn’t the killer recipe I was looking for. I actually think I had the ultimate upside down cake recipe in my hands last summer, but I didn’t write it down and you can guess what has happened since. If I manage to find it, I will share it here with you.

Summer has arrived. I’ve got the window open at night. It is so, so pleasant to once again sleep with the windows open after freezing cold temperatures in winter and a scary siren-filled neighbourhood in fall and spring in Edmonton, which meant that my window was always shut at night while at school.

I got a Donna Hay magazine today and there was a recipe for an orange sour cream raisin pie. We tried it tonight. It had been long enough since the buttermilk raisin pie that the thought of a raisin pie no longer nauseated me, and I still felt sure that I was meant to love raisin pie. Well, we made it, as you can see. It’s OK. Very sweet. I can eat it, but my pastry is the best thing about this pie, sad to say. I’m getting very impatient for peach pie and raspberry pie. Summer means fruit pies to me.

Another reason we know summer is here is because the roses are out. The wild roses have mostly blown, but the roses in people’s gardens are in full bloom. We have two bushes of yellow roses that have a heavy, old-rose scent. They start off dark apricot colour and pale to cream as they unfold, and you can stand a few feet away and still smell them. That smell, the deep purple of our lavender bushes, the low humming of the bees that come from all over to harvest the lavender pollen, the deep blue of the ocean in the distance, and the white sailboats on that deep blue, all say summer is here.

Tonight we watched the chuck wagon races on the CBC. They are being held at the Calgary Stampede, so my Dad was reminiscing about when he was a boy, growing up in Calgary, how they used to race in real chuck wagons. That was, of course, really dangerous, so now they race small, light facsimiles of chuck wagons. These races are pretty fun to watch. They have outriders who have to load a campstove, poles, and canvas in the back of the wagon. The drivers have to circle their wagons and head for the track, while the outriders get on their horses and try to keep up, since they need to cross the finish line within 150 feet of the chuck wagon drivers. They use old racehorses that have retired from the track to run the wagons, and they go fast. I now have a real desire to race a chuck wagon. It looked like so much fun. But all the drivers were huge men. According to my father, you have to have a lot of strength to do it, and I have never had upper body strength of any kind. It looks like my dream is over before it began.

This now brings me to a question of what is cool. I am now teaching a Sunday School class of 12 and 13 year olds who are very concerned with this question. I’ve made some decisions that essentially mean I can never be cool in their estimation (I did go to library school, after all). I only wish I could get these kids to see that being cool (do kids say cool now? Did I just label myself as completely past it?) means nothing, compared to being interested in what you do, and being an interested and engaged person. …How sad that I am turning into such a moralist.

Finally, am I the only one fascinated by the chuck wagons and chuck wagon cooks as described in Louis L’Amour novels? I always wonder how they managed, and if the cowboys complained about getting beans morning. lunch, and dinner, for days in a row.

Pain à l’ancienne July 6, 2008

Not much cooking this week, partly due to the fact that I went golfing on Canada Day and injured my arm quite badly. Well, I say arm, but it was all the joints: shoulder, elbow, wrist. And don’t tell me, I know, that means I wasn’t swinging properly.

After a couple of days and a couple of chiropractic adjustments, though, my arm is much better. That, combined with a cool and overcast weekend, meant that we made bread yesterday. We’ve started grinding our own wheat and making our own brown bread according to my Welsh grandmother’s recipe, which has been good, though I am convinced we are using too much yeast. Once that is all perfected, I will be sure to share the recipe.

I checked out “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart from the library last week, since it was recommended on Jill’s blog. I think I need to buy it. It is extremely informative and well-written, and he gives the logic behind the recipes, which I love. When you understand what chemical effect you are trying to achieve, I think it helps you understand the technique and apply it better.

So I decided to try his pain a l’ancienne, and it worked really well for me on the first try, which hopefully you can see from these photos. I baked this bread this morning. My shaping is terrible, so you only get close-up images, and it’s a little too salty, but I am really happy with it. My bread is chewy and crisp on the outside, with plenty of texture within. I won’t try and write out the recipe for you–there are pages of instructions and explanations– but I will suggest you try getting a hold of a copy and taking a look.

Other than that, I have been doing some bird watching, and I have figured out that we have several brown-headed cowbirds in our neighborhood (I have no idea where that name comes from, but they do have brown heads). They are a type of blackbird with this wonderful, liquid call. I’ve tried to take pictures for you, but my picture all either show them with their heads in the grass, digging up dinner, or sitting on the fence with the sun shining so brightly on their dark feathers that the image is out of focus. So instead I will leave you with a picture of our peonies and canterbury bells:

My Waterloo: Meringue Pies June 27, 2008

This post is a few days late, since I have been busy with some other things, but I made another lemon meringue pie last Sunday for the pie project. I am definitely queen of pie pastry, my mother is now complimenting me on how good it is. But I still can’t get the meringue right.

It seems that I have made every conceivable mistake you can make with meringue, and every time I think I’ve made them all and NOW have mastered it, I go right back to the beginning and start making the mistakes again. Are meringue pies my Waterloo? Will I never be able to make one that is perfect? (You’ll remember the one time I had perfect meringue, the filling did not set properly).

So, to remind me and perhaps inform you, here are the keys to making a lemon meringue pie with perfect meringue:

1. Do not overbeat or heat the meringue. Beat the meringues til stiff and glossy and not a second more.

2. Make sure the meringue is not only spread to the edges of the pie, but is firmly stuck to the edge of the pie crust, all the way around the pie. This helps not only with weeping, but keeps the meringue from shrinking away from the pie crust. (This is one of the two mistakes I made last weekend).

3. Try to get the filling and the meringue to the same temperature as much as you can before putting it in the oven to brown. This will help with weeping.

4. Finally, (and here is a new one for me, based on last weekend’s mistakes) don’t make your peaks too high on the meringue, or they will burn before the rest of the meringue browns.

It’s very simple when it’s written out this way, but as I said, it’s been a challenge for me. My mum suggested that my problems with meringue pies are psychological. Maybe they are, though I don’t know what that means for me, exactly–?