First, I found a recipe for apple pie with dried sour cherries. Perfect, I thought because I have some of those cherries in the pantry (the SO didn't like them as well as he thought, though he does like the sour cherry drink). But I'd forgotten that they had the pits still in them. Next.
Then I found a recipe for a simple apple pie. I've never made a pie and certainly not a pie crust in all my life, but how hard could it be? I perused the ingredient list and compared it to my pantry.
Uh-oh. I was down to maybe half a cup of sugar. I don't know when that happened; I never use it. So this recipe was going to require a trip to the grocery store. Okay, I thought, I can do that. So I read the rest of the recipe. The instructions were for a food processor. Not only did I not have one, but I was in no mood to figure out how to do it by hand. Next.
By this point, I'd consulted a Gourmet cookbook, some other fancy cookbook and a couple of vegetarian cookbooks. It was time to pull out the Bittman. How to Cook Everything. (I don't yet have the vegetarian version, but I'll get it soon.) There was a nice, simple apple crisp recipe that was not only easy to make, but required no run to the grocery store. I used light brown sugar (so as not to overpower the apples) instead of white, added a teaspoon of ginger to the apples, and skipped the coconut and nuts. And I made a fabulous dessert in less than an hour, including prep.Unless I count the apple prep. Here's where I admit I'm a cook, not a chef or a baker. There's a lot of technique I don't know, a lot of gadgets I don't have (aside from the aforementioned food processor). The apples? They needed to be peeled and cored. I have a corer. I've had it for years and never used it until now. So I got that. It's the peeling part. My "logical" mind decided that since I use a corer to core, I'd use a peeler to peel. Yes, I used a peeler (some might call it a potato peeler) to peel my apples. Like, 15 apples. Even while my hands were cramping up, while the peeler would sometimes slide right over the apple peel, it never occurred to me to step back a moment and think about how one might best remove a peel from an apple. Or even to reach back in my brain to remember how my grandfather peeled an apple with a paring knife--in one long piece.
Oh, well. The point is that after about, oh, half an hour, I got the apples peeled and ready for baking. And the apple crisp was delicious.
5 comments:
I stink at pies, too. I have no excuse, as I like to bake.
I use a peeler for apples. Is there a better way, if you don't have a good paring knife? Lemme know if you find one.
Hmm. I use a peeler too! Actually I just leave the skin on - there are health benefits to the skin.
I just got one of those gadgets that peels and cores apples at the same time. I used to do it they way you mentioned before getting this gadge... but, then I hardly ever made any apple desserts due to the time it takes to peel and core them.
I think the peeler/corer gadget is the best, but I don't have room for one. No room for a unitasker!
And I usually do leave skins on, but these skins were scary gross with those black spots on them. Which is why I cooked them instead of eating them. Oh, and the fact that they were Granny Smith, which I don't like raw.
I've come to more or less the same conclusion -- unless there's a compelling reason to make pie crust, or a pie, I make apple crisp. It's easier and people like it better.
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