This may be my last for a spell. Nothing permanent but we are moving. Next Tuesday the moving men come and take most everything we own to Maine. I will remain here with an air mattress until the close, which I am sincerely hoping happens Wednesday/Thursday/Friday. Don will go with the movers to oversee the unload into our storage unit and then he will come back down to get me. Then we will only be visitors to NYC. Of course when you move to Maine you never become an actual Mainer. Unless you are born there you are always from 'away' and therefore have to work very hard to earn anyones trust. It will be interesting to see how long that takes (if it ever happens?). Luckily for us we already have a crowd of wonderful friends and even family up there so we will be somewhat insulated.
Think we have a house, although I don't want to say too much about it here to jinx it. Please just cross your fingers for us. Real estate wranglings make me crazy. I could never be a speculator in the field, I would have an ulcer within a month. In fact in all this craziness I had to do some baking last night (in the heat) in order to soothe my mind. I made the cover cake(?) from the August Gourmet. It's a peach blueberry kuchen type thing. You make a variation on a short crust (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt with butter cut in and an egg to hold it together) then press it into a springform pan. Into the crust goes peaches and blueberries thickened with a little flour and sweetened with sugar and some lemon juice. Now here's where it gets sticky. Recipes can be maddening, especially when you know they are wrong. Gourmet tells you to bake the thing for a long time at a low heat so as to curb seepage from the fruits juices. But then the directions tell you 375 degrees for an hour and 45m. Ok, come on, an hour at that temperature and the cake would be a hockey puck. An hour and 45m and you would have a horrifying burnt sugar mess to clean up. I looked at some other recipes (Deborah Madisons plum kuchen from Local Flavors) and concluded that the temperature they must have meant was 325. So in it goes at 325 and I set the timer for 1 hour, 20m figuring I would have some sense of where the thing was going at that point. After said time the crust was starting to color but the juices were definately not bubbling. To make a long story short (which is necessary because my friend came over at this point and we had some wine and I'm not exactly sure what I did and for how long) I overbaked it. The juices came together well enough for a slice to maintain its integrity on the plate, but I thought the crust was a little tough. sigh.
That's the problem with trying to bake when you are distracted......
cross your fingers and pray to the housing goddess for me. I will resurface when we are settled. Or at least when we have our internet hook up established.
A bientot,
Samantha
Got a hankering to make pie. I am still intimidated by pie crust. I don't want to be intimidated anymore. Yes, it is 90 something degrees with 100% humidity, and no, I am not a huge fan of air conditioning. I broke down and turned the damn thing on. I did. Because I wanted to make pie. I cannot move to Maine without being comfortable making pie. It's mostly the crust that I find challenging. I had this idea in my head that I didn't really understand the science of it. Previously when I had attempted anything flaky that needed to be rolled out I was unsuccessful. I had been reading on eGullet about a pie crust that used liquid fat, in this case melted butter, so I figured I could try that approach. Off to make pie.
Silly me. I know how to make pie crust. It's a step further up the food chain from shortcake, which I certainly know how to do. It's all about coating the flour with the fat enough to moisture proof it so when you add the right amount of fluid (which is also a variable due to many factors) you don't create gluten in your flour. Gluten is what makes pie dough tough. Good for bread, bad for pie crust. So after a failed attempt, that went into the circular file, with the melted fat approach, I broke out Rose Levy Beranbaum and made her basic flaky pie dough. Now this is not to say I had complete success this time out. My butter still had some chunks just a little too large, making for tricky roll out of the dough as it created tears in the dough as the butter warmed to room temperature(!) and compromised the integrity of the surface of the dough. This is a problem that can easily be rectified next attempt. I have an old Cuisinart (DLC8) which needs a new blade, as evidenced by its inability to reduce frozen butter to the correct pea size shape without over blending the rest of the butter. This is not an insurmountable issue, I just have to be a little more observant in the initial blending phase, maybe I need to cut my frozen butter into smaller pieces to begin with.
Just to back up a step, Beranbaum's pie dough goes roughly like this:
Measure out necessary butter and cut into 3/4 inch cubes. 2/3 of this amount goes into fridge, the other 1/3 into freezer. She also wants you to freeze your pastry flour, which is not an issue for me because that is where mine lives anyway. Have at hand ice water and cider vinegar. Mix the flour, salt and baking powder in the food processor to combine. Then add larger amount of refrigerated butter and process till you reach corn meal texture. Next you add the frozen butter and process so that you have pea size lumps of butter visible in the dough. She then says you can continue in the food processor but I remove to a cold (been sitting in the fridge) bowl for the next step, adding your liquid. I just find that it is way too easy to overmix your dough when you add the liquid mechanically. Better to do this crucial step by hand so you can truly control the process. Best to mix the vinegar with the smaller called for amount of ice water so that you achieve adequate integration. Pour this mixture into the bowl and begin to toss so that the flour is hydrated. This is where your powers of observation are important. You need to add enough fluid to bring the dough together, but just together. It's ok if there are crumbs still visible in the bowl. You don't want to over mix the dough because then you will bring on the dreaded gluten, so you gently incorporate. Beranbaum has you doing this within the confines of a large ziploc baggie. I didn't have one in house so used my bowl. Next time I will try and have baggies available as that seems like a good technique. When you think you have achieved the proper consistency you wrap your disc(s) of dough in plastic and refrigerate overnight. (this can be shorter but I find with my fridge only overnight gets it cold enough, great fridge, huh?) All those little crumbs will be fully integrated when you pull the dough out of the fridge. It's a miracle!
I am aware that there are millions of variations on this theme, as well as millions of opinions of variations on this theme. I think that is one of the things that I find compelling about pie dough. It has serious history of a very organic nature. I am not using organic in the 'free range, heirloom' sense but more in the deeply ingrained in the culture sense. Pie is something that many people have emotional memories about. Someone or someplace important made them pie and they will always have fond memories of that one/place. Pie is also, though this is not what endears it to me, all American. Actually after making this sour cherry pie I realized that I don't really love pie. I love the crust, but the filling is too sweet and too much cooked fruit for me. I think the next pie I make will be a double crust. This one was a lattice crust, which came out quite lovely, if I do say so myself. But there wasn't enough crust for me. Remember I am a butter freak. I bought my sour cherries at the farmer's market in Grand Army Plaza, they were beautiful tasty little red gems. (As an aside, I had two cherries tattooed on my left wrist last week. I am a big time cherry fan.) I do love the process of buying your fruit from the farmer, bringing it home and making a delicious pie from it immediately. Looking forward to more of that in Maine, maybe even from our own fruit?! I will be practicing my pie making until I feel I can do it by reflex. Certainly must master the blueberry pie if I am to hold my head up in any Maine kitchen. But am also entertaining thoughts of modifying the European tart concept to make a pie/tart hybrid with lots of crust and just the right amount of sweet fruit filling to balance the buttery/flaky/sweet/tangy ratio. We made a Breton pie/cake with apples and nuts with a flaky crust that I though was heavenly. Should dig out that recipe. I will keep you posted with pie progress. Next planned is probably peach, although maybe nectarine with raspberries......
On the moving front we are that far from an official closing date. Will probably happen the 3-4th of August. This weekend we are actually zooming up to Maine to look at a house we have driven by and seen online that appears to have everything we want (older house in good condition with barns and 18 ac of land, within our price range). Perhaps we will be homeowners again within the year. We are trying not to be too excited, expecting some fatal flaw. Although my sister in law has already walked through it and said it was beautiful. Yikes. Another door is opening.
Ran into Karen on the street the other day and told her of the move. She told me to absolutely use her name with Sam Hayward, chef-owner of one of Portland's best restaurants, and her former boss. A very good connection to have, gets me in the door at one of the finer eating establishments in the area. Guess Maine is the place for us.
A bientot,
Samantha
I find it highly ironic that on my last day at the bakery, the 12th of July, I was making pie with frozen peaches and frozen raspberries. I know that everyone is not into the whole eat seasonal movement but using any kind of frozen fruit to make a pie in the summer in the Northeast just seems counterintuitive. I mean at the very least get your distributor to send you fresh fruit from wherever to make summer pies. Even in the darkest winter we were making apple pies with fresh apples. Granted the term fresh may be qualified in that context, gassed is probably more appropriate. But come on, frozen raspberries? Frozen peaches? In July? Why did I leave that job so easily? I would think that after the long winter someone other than me, who makes decisions about menu, would crave some fresh fruit to play with. Making pies with frozen fruit is awkward too, because you have to mix the fruit with the sugar and cornstarch just before you fill the shell and it has to still be frozen solid. As the fruit begins to defrost it lets off too much water and makes for a soggy pie. Can you imagine putting together a pie with frozen peaches? They're sliced which means that they have hard edges, hard edges which poke through your pie dough. The whole idea is just plain dumb. A couple of days earlier I had made pies with nectarines they had bought from their distributor. They were hard, yet surprisingly not tasteless, but fresh. They were still, to my mind, better than the frozen fruit.
I will admit that in this situation I do not have all the information that led to the decision to use frozen fruit. Factors that could lead to that choice can include price, availibility, delivery, consistency and customer demand. The first couple of factors in that list directly relate to profit and expenses. I was never privy to decision making of that nature at the bakery. That is still a great unknown for me. Would like to work somewhere where I could be involved in that process somewhat, enough so I could have a better sense of whether this is an endeavor I would like to undertake myself. Still on the fence about owning my own bakery.
When we were in Maine over the July 4th holiday a friend of ours offered me a job. She has a small restaurant in Cape Porpoise, Maine that serves home style food. Simple but well executed, she has pot roast and roast turkey nights. Her desserts are basic: a couple of pies; something chocolate and a cake or some such. She will be down a couple of bodies come August and said if I would like to come in and do her desserts she would be happy to have me. I could do the desserts in the morning and then be done for the day. She does the plating herself, or more likely has her sous chef do them, so I wouldn't need to hang around for that. The idea is compelling. Make desserts for about 60-80 covers a night, in the morning and be done with my day. That sounds like the best of all worlds to me. Small amounts, or one offs, with the ability to vary the choices from day to day or at least maybe week to week. From what I know of her clientele there wouldn't be much call for passion fruit napoleons, it is a home style menu. But I could add expand the offerings from pies to tarts and play with the uses of fresh(!) fruit as there is lovely produce in Maine this time of year. I am intruigued. Not sure whether I really want to start working the second we get there. Have been entertaining day dreams about spending the month of August with yoga classes and days at the beach alternated with afternoon naps and desultory cooking and baking. That model may win out, as we seem to have rekindled our love for Maine and are now thinking again that it is where we will wind up. Therefore I could be doing desserts for my friend next summer.
These plans that I(we) have been nursing for a couple years now are finally coming to fruition. We should be leaving NYC within a month. Certain doors have been closing here leaving us moving forward towards new portals. It is very exciting. Who knows what I will be doing in six months. Plan to continue the blog nonetheless so you can come along on this journey with me, if you choose.
A bientot,
Samantha