Saturday, March 14, 2009

Project #71 - Pies for Pi Day



Happy Pi Day everybody! I love any holiday that is celebrated by eating PIE! Delicious, circular PIE! I invited some friends over and made a peach pie and a broccoli, tomato & cheese quiche. Quiche is round and it has a pie crust, so it counts, right?



I started preparations last night by making all of the pie crusts. I didn't have unsalted butter and or all purpose flour, so I made up a pie crust recipe to account for this.

Pie Crust
Ingredients:

  • 1 1/3 cups of bread-making flour
  • 1 stick salted butter
  • 1/3 cup super cold ice water
Put the flour into a large mixing bowl. Cut the stick of butter into small pieces and then cut it into the flour until the mixture is crumbly and there are no pieces of butter left larger than the size of a pea. I like to use a fork in one hand and a butter knife in the other to smoosh everything together. Be careful not to overwork.

Next, add your water a little at a time until you can roll the dough up into a ball; you probably won't need all of it. Cover it with saran wrap and keep it in the fridge for at least an hour. Freeze if you'll need it after 3 days.

The trick to having extra flaky crust is to make sure that the butter stays as solid as possible and only melts in the oven. To make sure this never happens, I never touch the dough with my hands until it's ready to be balled up and placed in the refrigerator. I also dice my butter and then freeze it for 30 minutes. I also freeze the mixing bowl for 30 minutes.

I made three, one for the quiche and two for the peach pie. The bread making flour made the crusts extra chewy, which was surprisingly good, kind of the texture of pizza crust.

I liked the recipe for tomato and basil quiche at Cooks.com, but I adjusted some of the ingredients to better suit our purposes. My version of the recipe is below.



Tomato, Broccoli and Cheese Quiche
Ingredients:
  • 1 Pie Crust (see above)
  • 2 plum tomatoes
  • 1 head of broccoli
  • 1.5 cups of shredded cheese (we used mild cheddar)
  • 2 tbs olive oil
  • 2 tbs balsamic vinegar
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk

Roll the pie crust out and put it in a 9 inch pan and bake in a preheated oven at 400 for 8 minutes. While the crust is browning chop your veggies and sautee in the olive oil and vinegar until the broccoli just starts to wilt. Take out your crust, add a layer of half of your cheese and pour the sauteed mixture on top. Whisk your eggs with the milk and pour it into the pie crust. Bake for 10 minutes at 400 and then turn the heat down to 350 and cook for another 20. Enjoy!



I didn't think that quiche would be this easy and tasty. I even made little ones for a friend who is lactose intolerant.



I couldn't find good fresh peaches, so I took a chance and used frozen ones. I used this recipe from allrecipes.com. I like pie recipes with tapioca because they're less likely to fall apart. I've had two slices of this pie today and I'm contemplating having a third.



Mmmm...pie.

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posted by Alison 3/14/2009 04:11:00 PM : (0) comments : splink



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