Another Three Berry Tart

I've been jonesing for another three berry tart. I want to come up with a quick and easy recipe, with a tasty crust that can be done in the food processor and then just put in the pan, with the berry mixture right on top. I just bought a boatload of almonds, and so I've been contemplating a ground almond crust and topping. I'm thinking of grinding up a cup of almonds, adding a cup of flour, a little bit of sugar, cinnamon and almond extract with a stick of melted butter. I think I'll need to prebake it a little bit, just to set it and I think precooking the filling while the shell is in the oven will speed the baking process and make sure the crust doesn't burn before the filling is finished.

I'll let you know how it turns out, and Jim and Kara will be able to sample it tonight, since I'm heading their way tonight to help with some home projects tomorrow.

(I much prefer this to following a recipe.)

Three Berry Tart

One more thing...I need to record the fixin's for a tart I made for Memorial Day. I've had my eye on a massive bag of frozen berries at Costco for about a year. It has four pounds of blueberries, raspberries and marionberries and I figured that would be a nice ready-made pie filling. I decided to try my theory.

I'm a fan of tapioca as a pie thickener, which I've taken from my mom's many years of pie experience. Corn starch and the like creates a nasty sticky gooeyness that I don't like. It's always a question as to how much to use, but there's a rough guide on the side of the tapioca box and so I used their suggestion for blueberry pie. It calls for four cups of fruit, a cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of tapioca.

Here's what I learned for next time: 1/4 cup of tapioca is too much. I think an 1/8 of a cup plus a tablespoon should be enough. You don't want a pie filling to be thick like pudding, and this was just a tad too thick for my taste. I dropped the sugar back to 3/4 cup, since I've never liked an overly sweet pie. It was just about right.

I improvised a little bit too, and I think I'll continue doing this the next time around. I added a little each of blueberry, raspberry and blackberry port wines that I have at home. Alcohol brings out certain flavor compounds in food that can only be released by alcohol and adding some alcohol made from the berries included in the pie can't be a bad idea. The blackberry is closely related to the marionberry, so I figured adding all three would be a good idea. I added just a dash of salt too to bring out the flavor some more, as well as a bit of vanilla to add some roundness and a hint of black pepper which you can't really taste but that I think makes it have an extra something. The one thing that I'm going to increase next time is the orange extract I added. The last time I made a blackberry pie, I added lemon zest but it was way too much. I like a little citrus kick with berries, so I thought the orange extract would be a nice note. I only added an 1/8 of a teaspoon though, so next time I'll add a 1/4 teaspoon and see where that takes the filling. I think I'll also add a dash of raspberry wine vinegar for a little raspberry tang.

All in all it was a success, except for the crust. I still have a dickens of a time with pie crusts. This time it was so unwieldy I turned it into a tart by stuffing the crust into my tart pan and using the remaining dough to make a crumb topping with some added brown sugar, regular sugar and cinnamon. It's a heck of a lot easier than a pie crust and looks and tastes just as good.

I'll be making a few more of these three berry pies/tarts this summer.

From Whence the Pie-love Comes

I've been spending some time scanning in some old pictures for a couple of reasons. A lot of them have started to fade from age, and I'd like to capture them and try to fix them before they become too far gone to do anything with them.

I think this was taken when I was about four years old or so, and proof I've been messing around in the kitchen for as long as I can remember, as well as proof that my mom has known how to make the perfect pie crust for as long as I can remember too. I suspect I'm mixing up the filling for some pumpkin pies, just in time for Thanksgiving. That was my usual perch, just to the right of the counter. There are several pictures of me plopped right there, helping my mom whip up something tasty in the kitchen.

Some birthday pies...

Alison and Torey had their birthdays this week, and so I whipped up a couple of pies. The top is a peanut butter cream pie, using a mixture of recipes and ideas from some people over at Food Network--the crust from Emeril, with shaved chocolate placed on the bottom, which is an idea that came from Gale Gand, while the filling is from a recipe of Paula Deen, with the addition of Reese's Peanut Butter cups, an idea of mine. It's tasty, but really rich. Though I like it, I'm still more of a fruit pie kind of guy, so the other one is the one I liked more. That one's a cherry/blueberry pie, based on a recipe from this month's Gourmet. I decided to go with adding some blueberries, though the recipe didn't call for it. I'm not sure if I enjoyed the cinnamon in the pie so much, and I don't think cinnamon really belongs in a cherry pie. In a blueberry pie maybe, but not cherry. I did add some things to the recipe: two tablespoons of blueberry port, and a teaspoon of cherry wine vinegar, as well as a dash of black pepper, all three of which I think add some interesting dimensions to the finished pie.

I made my own crust, using the 3-2-1 method which the Culinary Institute of America teaches. The last time I tried this, it didn't work at all, and I wanted to give it a whirl again. I looked back at my blog to read the directions I had written last summer, and realized that I had made a fatal error in my description. This method is based on weight (1 unit of water, 2 units of fat, 3 units of flour), and I mistakenly wrote that a stick of butter is 8 oz., instead of 4 oz., which led to not having enough butter the last time I tried this. This crust turned out just fine, but it's not the best I've made, though it certainly got the job done.

I see a few more fruit pies in my future this simmer. I'm jonesing for a straight up blueberry pie, and around the corner, I'm sensing some peach pies being churned out. One of those is going to be a peach/raspberry pie. I've never made a nectarine pie, and I think that should happen too.

I think it's the summer of the pie. (And ribs.)