The Savory Pie, a love story.

Sorry about the terrible pictures.  I have a complex about taking pictures of food when I'm not alone in the house. Blog anxiety.  Once a day I decide that I'm never writing in here again. 

What a treat! I love the idea of a savory pie.  Why not? It's so satisfying in so many ways.  It makes me feel really accomplished...more accomplished than say sweet dessert pies.  It's all like, here's this thing..................this thing will feed a family............and this thing carries within it a lot of nutrition protected by crusty, flaky layers of fatty goodness.  THIS THING will taste good no matter what.

I will say, the idea of a meat pie grosses me out to the max.  ESPECIALLY after seeing trueblood cannibalism via the meat pie.  I'd rather have a pie crust that hides tofu, spinach and mushrooms than bloody flesh, membrane, and body pieces.  RIGHT?! Let's be real, it's the same thing. 

Speaking of, I did actually make a pie with tofu, spinach and mushrooms.  When I was in Germany, we made up a tofu pie that came out pretty well.  We filled it with potatoes, spinach, zucchini and mashed up the tofu, combined it with cornstarch and hoped that it was solidify at least a little bit.  It came out really well! We used a pie crust recipe from Vegetarian Epicure, book 2. 

This time I used a Pickarski recipe from Friendly Foods.  It was actually very similar to the one I've made before, this just used arrowroot instead of corn starch.  Also featuring fresh dill, parsley, basil, garlic, sea salt, and of course the tofu, spinach and mushrooms.

*** Mushroom Tip!*** 1.  If you are making something with mushrooms for people that don't like mushrooms, use baby portobellas.  Apparently, they are less fungal seeming. 2. Do not wash your mushrooms under water.  Wipe them gently with a paper towel or regular clean towel.  Mushrooms carry an incredible amount of moisture and therefore will suck in more moisture if you rinse them.  That's cool, except that when you cook them you will get the mush factor.  I'm convinced this will help those with anti-mushroom sentiments.  I actually hardly ever even wipe mushrooms! A little dirt never hurt anyone! Hope it's organic or at least non-fecal.  Ugh.

  The pie crust was really interesting.  It uses frozen corn oil. Yes! Actually freezing the flours and oil for an hour before making the dough is supposed to make it more flaky.  It was a good recipe but the dough seemed a little wet to me and therefore hard to roll out really thin and not fuck up.  The real issue was that I should have used a smaller pie dish.  There was not enough dough for it.  Also, my favorite part of this recipe was that it called for a simple glaze made from barley malt syrup and water to be brushed onto the crust 15 minutes before the pie is done. 

And maybe I should have taken my time and really recalled how to make a lattice, because I forgot like half way through and decided I was in a rush and it wasn't worth it.  

See?  Could have been worse! I could have baked my silly little cat into the pie.  That's the blurry black figure.  Also, full disclosure.  Everything I make has cat hair in it.  It's completely out of my control.  I guess if you have an allergy, this would be a good/gross way to wean yourself off of that.

 over and out,

jp