Cook. That is what I do when I'm feeling blah. Cooking always seems to make me feel good....and healthy. So this morning on my way to the San Juan de Dios market I finished up a roll of film in the Holga and then did my shopping. When I left the house I wasn't sure what we were having for dinner except I knew I had some chicken breasts. Somewhere along the way, I decided that I'd make cream of broccoli soup for lunch and a rustic apple tart for dessert for dinner. The rest of the dinner would be the chicken breasts, Brussels sprouts and whatever other vegetable looked good in the market.
Of course I don't have a recipe for the soup but I do have a kind of master recipe for cream soups in my head. I use some rice in the soup to thicken the puree and then I only need to add a tablespoon or two of crema to give it that silken creamy soup taste. It didn't take any time to make and felt very warm and comforting on this Fall day.
Now the rustic tart.....that is another issue. I do have a recipe. I NEED the recipe because I may be the world's worst pie crust maker. My mother could put together a pie crust without even thinking about it and she always made some extra so that she could sprinkle a little sugar and cinnamon on the leftover pieces as a treat for my sister and me. I have tried different recipes for pie crusts and somehow I can't get it in the pie pan in one piece and I certainly can't make it have beautiful fluted edges like my mother's pies. I gave up and just bought frozen pie crusts in Houston. Here I can get the bakery to make a pie crust and put it in my pie pan but they charge an arm and a leg for that. Thanksgiving is coming and I'm going to need some pie crusts. I'm a good cook and I hate to let a little thing like a pie crust defeat me.
At any rate, today I'm feeling lucky. We'll see how my rustic tart crust turns out. So far so good. It is a flattened disk, wrapped in plastic wrap and "resting" in the refrigerator until I'm ready for it.
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3 comments:
Let me tell you, I'd eat your pie crust and be thankful for it, no matter what it looked like!
Well I admire you for trying to make them from scratch. I never do anymore, partly because I live in such a small space now that the whole house would be covered in flour.
I buy those boxes with the pre-rolled pie crust in them. I have found them in Mexico at upscale stores although I usually put a couple boxes in the refrigerator of the RV before we cross the border. They are easy, they taste fairly homemade, you don't need to sprinkle flour everywhere as they are already rolled. You just unroll them and lay them on the pie pan, room for flutes too!
The tart sounds great and the rice in the cream soup idea is a keeper.
Like you, I have never mastered the art of pie crust making. It just eludes me for some reason. My pecan pie will be demanded by guest this Thanksgiving and Christmas....how I got to be the pie maker I'll never know. Maybe I'll try doing the crust one more time. Those damned people over at Darby's (our little French bakery) keep showing me up....
P'taker
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