Oh My, Pie (and Tart Too)

Officially I suppose, last Friday was my first go at pie day, as I did bake a pie later that night, but yesterday was very seriously, no question, without a doubt Pie Day. When I do a thing I'm apt to overdo a thing, though actually I did have good reason to make several pies yesterday in preparation for my partner's birthday this weekend. So, it wasn't completely superfluous baking, not that I am, you understand, at all opposed to superfluous baking. I'll bake for the sake of whatever. Give me a reason.

Cinnamon Peach Pie

This cinnamon peach pie is a recipe from Julie Hasson's upcoming (and kickin'!) Complete Pie Book. I admit to being skeptical initially. Cinnamon in pie seems to me the provenance of apples and fall, but I was willing to give it a go and good thing I did, because this pie is glorious.



It baked up beautifully, loaded with the sunset golden-orange, rosy tinged fresh picked peaches. The juicy summer taste of peaches isn't at all damaged by the addition of rich, spicy and fragrant cinnamon (I used my favorite Vietnamese cinnamon) and freshly grated nutmeg (dangerously executed with my microplaner...no accidents to report though!). It's still a 100% summer pie, the spices are a delicious complement to the sweet peaches and give the pie a dusky spicy color that I thought was beautiful.

á la mode, ice cream is necessary in this horrible humid heat

The crust came out perfectly--crisp, flaky and light. It also consented to hold together, not crumbling or otherwise falling apart. The picture above is the first slice of the pie, a notoriously mangled operation, but for this pie--perfection. Julie's recipe called for a top crust, but I wanted to get a lot of mileage out of one pie crust recipe, so I cheated it, just doing the bottom crust. I like to see the fruit though, so I actually prefer my pies this way, but I've had a couple requests for top crusts, so next pie day will feature pies with tops.



Following Fran Costigan's pie class advice, I let the pie sit over night before slicing. In that time the filling set up well, soaking in the excess juices that can make pie, especially peach pie, a runny mess. It's rather hard to wait that long before eating a pie you've just made, but worth it if you're going to be serving it to people who might pass aesthetic judgment on their food. In general, I think most of my friends would rather have pie served to them in a Dixie cup than wait 24 hours for it, but every once in a while it's good to know that the wait can yield a perfect slice.



I employed these pluots for last week's pie after having been seduced by their beautiful colors in the grocery store. I believe that I've eaten pluots before incorrectly thinking they were just a different variety of plum. In some respect they are, but pluots are actually a cross between the plum and the apricot.



More specifically, pluots are the product of a cross between a plum and a plumcot (which is itself the result of a plum and apricot cross), so pluots are in fact about 75% plum and 25% apricot. They were born of hand grafting rather than test tube experimentation with the genetic material of plum and apricot trees, so my ethics are unchallenged by purchasing pluots in that regard, however, I did just learn that they are a copyrighted fruit, which does rankle me. I understand that labor is invested in developing a unique fruit or plant, but people have been doing this shaping and developing of crops for centuries, coaxing the best flavors, yields and attributes out of plants without copyrighting their results. What would our global food landscape look like if the DNA of every banana, every ear of corn, every crop of rice were copyrighted? The exertion of rights over roots and seeds, fruits and trees has some deeply troubling implications as the building blocks of life are doled out as company's intellectual property.



I used Julie's shortening-based crust and slightly modified Fran Costigan's plum-peach pie recipe for this pie. You can use pluots in place of plums in any recipe, though they tend to be a little sweeter than a plum, owing to the influence of the apricot, so I'd suggest cutting back on the sugar. I chose to leave the skins on the pluots because I thought they were pretty, but took another tip from Fran and punctured the fruit all over with fork tines to help break them up a little so the skin wouldn't be a long stringy or tough presence in the pie. I did, however, choose to blanch the peaches for this pie and the cinnamon peach pie as well because the skins were so tough on the peaches we picked.

slice of pluot peach pie

Blanching can feel like a fiddly step, but it is a kind of miraculous way to peel fruit. Simply bring a large pot of water to boil, briefly submerge the fruit in the boiling water and then plunge it into a large bowl of ice water and the skin will easily roll off in your fingers. I do this whenever I'm baking with peaches and have done it with tomatoes before too, an extra step, but just the thing for smooth homemade tomato sauce.



The pluot peach pie was the perfect kind of sweet-tart for me and the crust held up well, rich and slightly sweet with the addition of a little vanilla sugar.



Pie number three is a raspberry mango pie from Julie's tester recipes. It seemed so unusual that I instantly wanted to try it. I'd hoped to make it with fresh picked raspberries, but that didn't happen and it seems that we're between the early summer raspberry crop and the early fall one here in Massachusetts, so I made this with frozen organic raspberries and three beautifully ripe mangoes ($.50 each! Market Basket= Somerville's mango hook-up).



Again, a problem-free crust rolled out between two sheets of parchment which prevented it from sticking to my counter or ripping. When using parchment paper to roll dough out in this way, it helps if you pause to loosen the parchment on both sides of the sandwiched dough once or twice to prevent it from getting stuck on the parchment. Gently pull the parchment away from the dough on both sides before transferring it to the pie plate, then completely remove the parchment from one side of the dough, fold it in half, parchment side on top and folded in toward one another. Align the dough's seam with the middle of the pie plate and place it on the plate, letting the dough hang over the edge of the plate. Then carefully unfold the other side and lift the remaining sheet of parchment off the dough.

dragon fruit, unpeeled

I'd gone to my local Asian grocery store to get some fresh noodles for dinner and impulse bought this dragon fruit (it was on sale and I'm a sucker for unusual fruit). While I thought that it wouldn't likely do well in a pie, it seemed like it might be just the thing for a tart, the crust of which I could make with pie dough.

dragon fruit, peeled

The idea of a fresh fruit tart prompted me to scour the produce isle for some other potentially interesting additions.

cheery looking dua gan, a crisp Korean melon that tastes a bit like a mild cantaloupe

Kent mango, actually an American grown mango which is known for being very smooth and lacking the "fibrous" texture of many other mangoes. This makes it a particularly good choice if you want to cut or slice the fruit in any particular way since it will not unravel with many little mango threads going everywhere. It is, however, very soft when ripe so it needs to be handled carefully.

Well-stocked with these fruits and a few kiwi (green and golden), as well as the peaches, a handful of blueberries, and green gage plums, I had the makings of some fun tarts. I began by blind baking a thinly rolled out crust in one large rectangular tart pan and three tiny rectangular ones that I recently got at NY Cake Supplies when I was in New York City.



Blind baking is the term for baking an unfilled pie crust either before adding fillings that will not be baked or as a means to get the crust a little "pre-baked." I've heard it said that blind baking will eliminate soggy crusts and know that some people blind bake almost every crust they do. To blind bake, just gently lay the pie dough over your pan (it can be a pie plate or a tart pan) and lightly press it into the pan. You want to avoid pulling, stretching or mashing the dough into the plate because it has a kind of memory and will want to shrink back to its former shape, so you need to let it sort of settle into place in its own shape and form.



Once the dough is nicely arranged, trim it with a knife and puncture the dough in several places with the knife tip to prevent bubbles in the dough. Then fill the dough with some kind of weight. There are special pie weights that are sold, but you can do it just as easily with dried beans. I have a sack of chickpeas that I use and reuse for pie. I keep them stored in a bag on which I've written PIE in big red letters so that I never make the mistake of trying to cook with them because after using them to blind bake you really don't want to give them any other occupation.



Once the crust has blind baked, just let it cool and then you can fill it with anything you desire.



I used several small fondant cutters to cut the fruit out in different shapes for the tart. The peaches and mango became stars of various sizes for the large tart above while the melon made beautiful cut white cut out spiky wheels. It's good to use a really firm fruit with any cutter that has many small pieces to it since they will hold up to it. A peach, for example, would be too fibrous and soft to cut out with that shape, but it does well as a blunt star.



I applied the fruit to the tart with fine pointed Japanese chopsticks and felt a little foolishly precise, but really, it was the only way to get it in their without making a mess, especially when stacking the fruit pieces on top of one another.



The small tarts were a so thin and crisp and fragile, I thought for sure I would break them just in filling them, but they managed to stay intact.



The white and black speckled fruit on these is the dragon fruit, which looks so great and dramatic. An idea that I had after I did these was that it might be cool to dip the dragon fruit, which is fairly porous, in a dye-tinted water to have it pick up some unusual colors. Next time.



I used a straw to punch out tiny dots for this art-deco inspired tartlet.



A tiny peach formed the base fruit layer for this one and the few remaining local blueberries were a delicious complement to them.



Kiwi is a little difficult to cut, as it's so soft and stringy, but a firm kiwi can be cut well with a very sharp knife.



It was fun to have such different looking tarts to choice from and everyone had a different favorite. I think the one above was mine...it really reminded me of sushi somehow.



The filling for these tarts was a deliciously creamy and tart mix of homemade lemon curd and faux cream cheese, 1 cup of curd beat with an 8 oz. package of non-hydrogenated Tofutti. For the large tart I used a batch of lemon curd in which the zest was strained out and for the small tarts I left the zest in. You can see the variation in texture if you look closely at the pictures, or click on them for a larger view. I also added a toothpick's end of yellow dye to the filling on the little tart to make it really bright and cheery. I left the dye out of the large tart and the cream cheese really obscured the gorgeous pale yellow of the lemon curd itself, which was kind of too bad.

plain lemon curd, whipped smooth

I have a few other ideas of how this lemon curd might be made, but we're all very much enjoying the current incarnations of this recipe in tarts, on toast, in yogurt and with chopped fruit. Perfect thing for summer.

Vegan Lemon Curd

2 lemons, zested and then juiced
1 cup water
½ cup cane sugar
3 tablespoons arrowroot
½ cup soy creamer

1. Zest and juice the lemons into a saucepan.


2. Add water and sugar and heat on the stove, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.


3. Allow the mixture to steep for at least an hour. (I let it sit overnight or throughout the day while I'm at work.)


4. Strain the zest from the mixture using a cheese cloth or thing wire mesh strainer and return the strained mixture to heat.


5. As the lemon water heats, whisk the arrowroot and the soy creamer together.


6. When the lemon water begins to steam, just before boiling, add the arrowroot mixture and whisk until mixture thickens, about three minutes.


7. Pour into a sealable container and chill in the fridge until mixture has set. It will have the consistency of a jelly.