Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Martha's Cooking School- As Easy As Pie

OK, so making pie isn't that easy and it's a little intimidating.

I was inspired to make a pie by last week's episode of Top Chef.

Last week's "Quick Fire" was a pie challenge. A lot of the chefs complained about how they never make pies and how deserts often stump savory chefs.

In my cooking adventures, I don't want to forget deserts. I will admit I stay away from them for two reasons: (1) they kind of scare me and (2) I am forced to eat them-not to say I don't love desert, but that is the problem; I love desert!




Of course when I am ready to tackle a huge task, like making a pie, who do I turn to...Martha. Her Cooking School book has helped me in the past, so I trust her (and the team behind her).


First step: Make the Pate Brisee (which is a real French way of saying pie dough). I can't say it but I can make it. This step was pretty simple. I did my best to keep the butter cold. I did fudge up a little, the water I added to the mixture wasn't cold, it was more like "cool." Despite this oversight everything seemed to come together. I ran out of plastic wrap so I had to use a freezer bag for the 2nd disk of dough.


Second Step: Roll it out. I avoided this step. I cleaned the bathroom, did some yoga, watched t.v., started the first draft of this blog. Thanks to my good friend's words of confidence, I took the dough out of the fridge and started rolling. This part was a small obstacle for me. I have no practice in using a rolling pin so it took me a while to get the hang of it (actually, I don't think I ever really got the hang of it), but the dough was rolled out.



I did use my cooking sheets as a cool surface to work the dough. I placed them in the freezer, then took them out when I was ready. It worked out well.

Third Step: Assemble and bake. The easy part.

Final Step: WAIT!!! According to Martha, you let the pie cool for 4 HOURS!! Buster and I will be eating this tomorrow. Possible for breakfast. So I made some Strawberry Lemonade to hold us over.

This will not be the last pie I make. Soon making pie will be as easy as pie.

3 comments:

the determined 30-year old said...

yummmy!! looks fantastic

jackiee said...

This looks AMAZING! I'm not sure if you have a lot more healthy recipes of your own that you make, but if you do, you should send them into this contest I know of that’s making its way around the country, the Aetna Healthy Food Fight. It’s coming to San Antonio on October 2-3 and Houston on October 9-10! I noticed your recipe and thought you would be interested. You could get great exposure for your recipes and meet celebrity cooks (Bobby Flay, Sunny Anderson, Sara Moulton, or Cat Cora). All you have to do is go to healthyfoodfight.com to submit one of your healthy recipes. Deadline to sign up for San Antonio is September 15th and Houston is September 22nd so hurry! Good luck if you decide to enter, and if not, keep posting! :)

BusterFrito said...

Thanks jackiee. I will look into that. I appreciate you passing the message along.