Blueberry Pie
Last week I made blueberry pie for the first time, but I’m afraid I have waited too long to document it, so I have largely forgotten what went into it. Here is my best guess:
The crust: two cups of white flour; a stick of butter, chopped into bits; ice-water added by the tablespoon; maybe half a teaspoon of salt. That all went into the mixer until I had a crumbly substance that would stay in a ball when squeezed in my fist. The various recipes I read online went on and on about how important it was for the ingredients to be cold, and for the dough to be chilled, so I made two balls which went into the fridge for the morning.
The filling: about two cups of blueberries squashed with a potato-masher, another couple cups of unmolested blueberries; about half a cup of brown sugar, the zest of one lemon, plus some of the juice; and I think I also added nutmeg and some more butter, cubed small. Also a tablespoon or two of arrowroot powder as thickener. (The recipes all suggested flour or cornstarch, if I remember correctly, but I had a bit of arrowroot on hand so I went ahead with that.)
This is only my second or third time making pie from scratch, and I had forgotten both how simple and how frighteningly complex pie can be. I almost ended in disaster when I attempted to roll the pie crust. It was as hard as iron and it crumbled in my hand! So I thought, “what would Mom do?” Mom would have added more ice-water. Sure enough, some combination of cold water and warm hands got it to be just workable enough to roll without sticking to anything and without even tearing much! But wow, does it take muscles to roll out pie dough!
Anyway, I rolled out one wafer-thin sheet of dough for the bottom, and another for the top. The berry mix went in the middle, the top was pinched on, holes were punched in the top, and then the pretty-looking pie went into a 350-degree oven for most of an hour, until bubbling berry-juices blorped up through the holes and made it not-so-pretty.
Oh, I nearly forgot - I painted the top of the pie with a mix of water and egg-white, and then sprinkled brown sugar on that.
I was forced to let the results cool while we went out to watch Wall-E. If you have not yet seen Wall-E, go see it. It is worth even waiting for pie. If you watch Wall-E while waiting for your blueberry pie to cool, then the innards of your blueberry pie will not flow out everywhere when you attempt to cut said pie. (It is a sad thing to make a pie and then to ruin it by cutting it too early.)
For a novice pie, I think I did a darn good job. But I can definitely see areas where I will need to improve. One was that the crust was leather-hard and bland. The leatheryness was good when eating a slab of leftover pie in my hand, because it had ample structural integrity. Also, the brown sugar on top helped with the bland flavor. I will have to consult recipes and my mother to improve in the crust department. Maybe Crisco instead of butter will help.
The other thing was that the filling could have easily used twice as much sugar. Froggi, you would have loved this pie filling exactly as-is. For everyone else, a scoop of vanilla ice-cream was needed to make this a properly sinful dessert.
By the way, I'm not in labor yet, but I'm dialated to 3 cm already, so I'll be lucky if I make it all the way to my due-date on the 28th. :D When I post next, it may be a complaint about hospital food!