Pie!

So I know it's been a bit since I've posted (excepting the reading list--Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by the way, is a great read, and makes good ol' Jane Austen much more interesting--sorry Levi, I know that's blasphemy, but . . . ), and I wasn't sure if I was going to post about my recent triumph in the workplace--no, it's not a job yet--which I should probably not blog about (even though I was and am totally in the right).

Wow.  That's a terrible sentence.

So instead I decided to blog about pie.  Not the infamous Stevie/Natalie incident (which actually isn't that interesting, other than it more or less confirmed what I've always thought about Natalie), and not the number pi (which also isn't that interesting if you're not into math and stuff, but I know it starts 3.14159) but the actual, edible pie.  Savoury or sweet, that's what I'm talking about.

Most of you know that I love food and like to cook.  Some of you may even know that my maternal grandmother used to make the best pie crust in the land.  Adam argues that his mother does, but he's never had Grandma Mary's, who has sadly retired from cooking.  Pam's pie crust is also good.  Mom makes pretty good pie crust.  But I make angry.  Or it makes me angry, rather.  Only once have I been able to get a pie crust to hold together, and it was so tough that it wasn't really worth the effort.  Pie crust also nearly ended my marriage in divorce about 3.5 months after we got married.  Adam got angry at the pie crust he was making, I made suggestions, and it went downhill from there.

So about 14 months on from the near divorce, we were jonesing so bad for a pie that we could no longer ignore the urges.  We split the duties up, since Adam wanted corned beef pie, and well, I'm American and can't bring myself to boil meat.  Ever.  I don't care what the final result tastes like.  So Adam made the filling, and I nutted up and attempted a pie crust.

Mom swears by her food processor.  She knows it makes the crust a little tougher, but it also means that she no longer swears for 3 straight hours the day before Thanksgiving (3-4 pies: apple, berry, pumpkin, and sometimes pecan).  The crust is only minimally tougher, so the trade-off is well worth it.

I, on the other hand, do not own a food processor.  Or a blender.  Or a stand mixer (I have a fake one, but it's mostly a really awesome hand mixer--thanks Pam and Tony!).  Or a stick blender.*  Basically, I own most of these things in the states (scratch that, I own all of them), and we're not planning on staying here in England for too much longer, so it's hard to justify the cost of these things when they're just going to go to friends or a charity shop.  That means I had to make pie crust the Grandma Mary way: by hand.

So I pulled my recipe out (that's not the Grandma Mary way, but I've only made pie crust about half a dozen times, so I couldn't remember proportions), and very carefully ignored the wholemeal flour when I went to get my ingredients.  I was not about to push my luck.  So two cups of white flour, 152 grams of margarine and butter (2/3 cup), and about 5 tablespoons of cold water later, I had a ball of dough.  The butter/marg mix was because I didn't have nearly enough marg in the house, and I don't even know if you can get Crisco or the equivalent here.  I cut the ball in half, weighed the halves, and then actually made them equal (I was only off by about 50 grams . . . sheesh).  I stuck them in bags, then shoved them in the fridge.  And prayed.

But low and behold, when the time came to roll them out, it was lovely and beautiful and easy.  Both crusts held together perfectly, and they were fairly thin.  Remembering something Kristan said she does (but she makes oil crusts, so I'm not sure she can be trusted!), I greased my pie pan lightly with some vegetable oil.  Probably unnecessary, but since the crusts worked so well, I didn't want to ruin it by them not coming out for some reason.  I even had excess crust, which I rolled back into a ball and put in the fridge, and made cheese tartlets the next day (enh.  Don't use mild cheddar, use sharp.  Sadly, we didn't have any.).

In short, the pie was tasty and delicious, even if Adam forgot to season the filling (the gravy made up for it though, because I loves me the Worcestershire sauce).  The pie crust was fairly tender, and very buttery tasting, which was nice.  It went well enough that I'm willing to nut up again, this time for a hamburger pie.  Mmm . . . white-trash food.

It's sad that I'm nearly 31 years old, and am still unsure of having mastered the pie crust.  At least I've mastered pizza dough!

*I made soup the other day that looked like sick after a night at the pub and a post-drinking curry, but it tasted fine--a stick blender would have solved the visual, however.