I read it this morning too. Warmed my heart like a piece of fresh out of the oven pie. 
And that PIE!!!
Made a tomato pie (and corn chowder) from my purchases at the farmer’s market this afternoon. Yum! How to make vegetables less healthy. 
Oooh… do you have a good recipe to share?
This summer I’ve made:
nectarine/raspberry
nectarine/blueberry
strawberry
apricot
peach
The best was the nectarine/raspberry. Up next: green chili chocolate!
@katliamom Nectarine/raspberry is my favorite summer combo, but I usually go with a crisp over a pie for that.
Here’s the recipe I riffed on: http://southernboydishes.com/2013/07/09/tomato-pie-with-basil-and-gruyere-cheese/
I was short on gruyere so added in some sharp cheddar to the cheese mix. Also, a little minced garlic is a good addition.
@doschicos – that looks terrific, thanks. Just in time to finish off my tomato crop.
Company for dinner. Made a key lime pie. Always a crowd pleaser and easy.
I made my first galette today. I’m feeling quite proud of myself. I even made the crust. I am not much of a dessert maker.
@doschicos my D would be thrilled if I made a key lime pie
In Quebec City, at the aux Anciens Canadiens restaurant, we had maple sugar pie. Sweet but good!
@Onward – maple sugar pie? Wow… a new one for me… will search for a recipe, thanks.
@katliamom Here’s one I have pinned but haven’t baked yet. Between Bitten Word and America’s Test Kitchen, I’d trust the recipe though:
http://www.thebittenword.com/thebittenword/2014/11/maple-syrup-pie-with-cr%C3%A8me-fra%C3%AEche.html
You rock, doschicos
Here’s the recipe from the restaurant: 1 1/4 C brown sugar, 1/2 cup half & half (actually it says 35%cream), 2 large eggs at room temperature, 1/3 C maple syrup,2 tsp butter at room temperature and 1 piecrust
Preheat oven to 350. Blend brown sugar, cream, eggs, maple syrup and butter until a smooth* consistency. Pour into piecrust and bake for 45 minutes. Serve at room temperature with fresh cream
- it actually says unctuous but I think that is an odd translation from the French
35% cream would be more like heavy cream which I believe is 36% butterfat. Whipping cream is 30% butterfat. Half and half seems to vary from 10.5-18% butterfat.
Ah, good to know. I really had no clue!
I’m the pie man in our household. I keep it simple, traditional, and entirely from scratch, featuring fresh, local, seasonal ingredients: rhubarb in spring, strawberry/rhubarb in late spring, blueberry (wild blueberries only) in summer, peach in late summer, apple in fall, pumpkin at Thanksgiving. The only exception to local ingredients is a maple-pecan pie I make for Christmas. The maple syrup is local but the pecans come from the southern US. It’s a bit of a novelty, marrying the flavors of a Quebecois tarte au sucre d’erable (maple syrup pie) with those of a southern US pecan pie, omitting the corn syrup that defines the latter. It gets rave reviews…
On the savory side, I make a darned good chicken pot pie and a very good pasty, a Cornish hand pie that was brought to the mining regions of the US by Cornish miners. Next up on my list: a French tarte a l’oignon (onion pie) and a Finnish lohipiirakka (salmon pie). Another savory pie that I just love but will probably never make because I can get better locally is spanakopita (Greek spinach-feta pie).
IMO, the key to a good pie is the crust. You want a crust that is light and flaky, but strong and elastic enough to hold its shape. My mother swore by lard as shortening, but I use half butter and half organic vegetable shortening, and I get pretty good results. Properly chilling the dough before rolling it out is also important. I’ve never met a store-bought pie or pie crust that met my standards, and most restaurants, including some quite fancy ones, don’t make a good crust.
@bclintonk , the maple bacon pie sounds like it needs to be baked at my house! Can you link to a recipe? I promise to use local pecans but will have to get maple syrup from New England .
ETA - been googling…all the recipes I see online have a big slug of bourbon. Can get that locally distilled but I don’t like the taste of bourbon.
@bclintonk – great post, thanks so much!
“I use half butter and half organic vegetable shortening, and I get pretty good results.” – interesting. I’ve been making all butter crusts (agree about the refrigerating before rolling out) – I may have to try your organic vegetable shortening version to see how it compares.
@dragonmom You could substitute some other alcohol, like rum, if you prefer or just leave it out.
Speaking of pecans, when did they get so expensive? Bought a pound this weekend that was over $12!
I don’t use any alcohol in my maple-pecan pie, but if I did it would be rum because I think the taste is more complementary. But it’s completely unnecessary… I sort of improvise off various online recipes at this point, but here’s a fairly representative one:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/9459/unbeatable-pecan-pie/
I use Grade B maple syrup which is darker, thicker, and has a stronger maple flavor than the thinner, lighter Grade A syrup you usually find on grocery shelves… We buy Grade B in bulk at our local food coop and always keep some on hand for use as pancake syrup because we prefer the stronger maple flavor. Avoid any recipe that has you mix the maple syrup with corn syrup; it just dilutes the maple taste and gives you that cloyingly sweet corn syrup taste that I can’t stand in conventional pecan pies. And obviously you want real maple syrup, not maple-flavored corn syrup. I also probably use more like 2 cups of pecans, chopping most of them but keeping some halves intact to add as a top layer after dunking them in the liquid mix because the pie comes out prettier that way. Using enough melted butter in the filling is also important, as the buttery flavor enhances both the pecan and maple tastes. I use unsalted organic butter from a local dairy, a little pricier but noticeably better taste. A little vanilla extract also helps round out the taste. I make my regular pie crust using (as I said) half butter and half organic vegetable shortening (I believe the brand is Horizon) and Bob’s Red Mill organic unbleached white flour.
If you have individual serving-sized ovenproof ramekins, you could also skip the crust entirely. Pecan pie uses only a bottom crust, the taste and texture of which are overwhelmed by the pecan-syrup filling. So you could just bake the filling in the ramekins and get all the flavor you’re looking for. It also eliminates some of the concern about getting the maple-pecan filling to gel enough to stand up as individual slices of pie. No one’s going to care if the contents of their individual ramekin are a little runny. I guess that’s not technically “pie” but who cares what it’s called? It’s a delicious, elegant little dessert.
Top with a dollop of whipped cream. (Avoid ultra-pasteurized whipping cream if you can; there’s a real taste difference).
Enjoy!
I like to use leaf lard for my pie crust. Half butter, half lard. I don’t use that shelf-stable stuff from the supermarket though; I render my own.
For some delicious Cornish pasties I made recently, in the crust I used half butter, half rendered lard from the butcher (schmalz, yes, it is called schmalz even though it’s not chicken fat, and that is how it is labelled at butcher shops) But for sweet pies I don’t want a porky flavor in the crust.