Galettes/Pies/Tarts

I've been obsessed with pies lately.  It happened when my talented baxtress friend Abby mentioned she hated making pies.  I happen to love baking pies and offered my services as an overflow option if she ever needed it.  I usually try not to do this because there are few things more annoying than someone trying to weasel her way into your culinary project.  In fact, I'm a firm believer in staying out of another cook's home kitchen entirely.  That being said, Abby is my PLP and I know she would feel comfortable saying, "Monica, stay the eff out of my biz," if she had to.  So I offered, and then stayed the eff out her biz, but I made pies anyway.  For myself.  Of course.

So Abby got pies back on my brain, but with a twist.  I'm usually an apple pie baker with a full top crust, but she got me thinking about galettes - rustic topless pies.  Pretty sexy, eh?  Indeed.  My first go was a mixed berry version, which Andrew still requests.  It was great.  I'm a big proponent of lemon in pies, so any pie I make will get the juice of at least 1/2 lemon.  It's just for some extra zing.  For me, a berry pie/tart with no hint of tart zing is a failure.  I hate failing.

Then, a couple weeks ago I got up at an ungodly early hour on a Sunday morning while spending the weekend at my friend Sabina's place in Gig Harbor.  I raided her kitchen for pie ingredients and threw together this:

Okay so it's not rustic, but it was delicious and simple to throw together - literally.  I put six eggs, some provolone, ham, zucchini, dill, and a shallot int a bowl, stirred it up, and threw it in a pie crust (which I half-baked ahead of time). We ate it like this:

While we ate, I had this in the oven:

This one is indeed a rustic pie, which just means I pay more attention to the way the fruit looks and forget the top crust altogether.  It was scrumptious.  We ate it like this:

The secret's in the crust.  I am fortunate enough to come from a long line of pie-baking women who have a tried and true crust.  I'm sure it dates back before Grandma Miller, but that's as far as I have ever bothered to ask.  That was four generations ago and out to the plains of Kansas, a generation before the Great Depression.  It's damn good crust and even if she didn't create the recipe, she gets a nod for keeping the pie tradition going, as does Gma Benton and Gma Shank, and especially my mama.

So I've been making these galettes since Memorial Day weekend and I just can't get enough.  It's a lazy way to make pie without compromising on any of the deliciousness or presentation.  Last night I made a recipe I saw on Smitten Kitchen for a zucchini ricotta galette with some of my own mods.  I plugged the recipe in HERE so I could calculate the nutrition info per serving too, because I like to do that.  We all loved last night's galette so much, I made it again this morning for lunch/dinner tonight, plus a peach one with lemon-scented ricotta.  My car was extremely fragrant.  Here they are in my back seat:

Happy July to you all!

Food.

I like to cook.  A lot.  Monday night I made one of the more delicious dinners I've had in a long time.  The pasta dish was inspired by a recipe I'd seen on Smitten Kitchen for asparagus, goat cheese and lemon pasta, but I simplified it for my own ingredients, using peas instead of asparagus, and leaving out the tarragon.  The peas were actually really nice in the dish because it offered a subtle sweetness rather than the subtle bitterness asparagus has.

The herbed cucumber salad was inspired by a dish I saw in my latest issue of Food & Wine Magazine.  I didn't actually go look at the recipe; I just gawked at the picture with its chunks of cucumber tossed in fresh herbs, and thought, I could do that.  I just peeled a hothouse cucumber, sliced it, and tossed it in the Splendid Table's Basic Vinaigrette, and snipped some fresh dill and fresh mint I had on hand.  I lightly salted and peppered it before serving.  It was fresh and delicious.

It is the pork chop I'm most proud of.  Safeway was having a 30% off special on thin-cut pork chops, so I snagged a package of three.  I rinsed the chops under cold water, patted them dry, let them sit at room temp for about 30 minutes and rubbed them with Montreal steak seasoning before putting them on a pan to sear them.  Andrew always gives me a face when I suggest pork, probably because of a bad past experience he had with over-cooked dry pork.  One bad experience and he tends to write off an entire food.  Same thing happened with an over-garlicy lamb burger (not mine), but I've done lamb he said was delicious, so I take his protests with a grain of salt and as a challenge to prove there's a delicious way to prepare all food, and it doesn't have to be masked in butter and cheese.

I've been doing a lot of reading on the proper way to cook meat, and I think I've got it down: pat it dry, rub it with seasoning, place on medium-high heat and don't touch it until it's ready to flip.  It's also a cardinal sin to stab your meat with a fork in order to pick it up and flip it - I got myself some silicone-coated tongs to turn meat, and they work great.  Above all, don't over-cook it!  I allowed the meat to rest for a couple minutes after taking it off the heat and it ended up being super flavorful and juicy.  Andrew said a couple times how delicious it was.  See, Andrew?  Pork is delicious if you do it right.

The best part?  There were leftovers, and I get to have them for lunch today.  Yessssss.

[update: the pasta does not reheat well, but it tastes great cold!]

Dear Deb of Smitten Kitchen, I Love You.

Now I want to talk about food. I'm thinking about all of the delicious things I want to make but can't because they require an oven or a stove.

I made the poor decision of turning on my oven last night. I had my heart set on pizza, because I'd made some pizza dough out of Cooking Light July and nothing else would do. MISTAAAAAAAAKE! The pizza itself was delicious, but what a dumb idea to preheat my oven to 500 and bake a pizza! Who does that when it's 92 in the SHADE? Apparently, I do.

I think we'll be grilling out today, if we can stand that heat outside. I have a million hot dog buns left over from my birthday BBQ, so that seems the right way to go. But what I reeeeeeeally want to do is browse Smitten Kitchen and choose a recipe from her stock to try. For those of you who don't know, Deb of SK is the best food blogger out there. She is the Barefoot Contessa of the blog world: simple, delicious recipes made accessible to cooks of all levels. When I didn't know what to do with my remaining half a roasted chicken, I looked to Deb for a chicken and dumplings recipe that ended up being one of the most delicious meals I've ever eaten (I improvised a little and left out the tarragon because that's what I do). She is a constant source of culinary inspiration to me. Oh, hell; I'm going to browse her recipes anyway and daydream.