Double Peanut Pie

Skipped another week of baking, but that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking and using my Good Housekeeping book. On Valentine's Day I made linguine using GH while Howard made shrimp and scallop cream sauce. Yesterday I made chicken pot pie using a recipe from Southern Living and made the puff pastry using GH. I love making puff pastry--it's such a simple task with such a beautiful, delicious outcome.

This afternoon I made the double peanut pie using a butter dough I'd kept frozen for a few weeks (I think it was the remains of the shoofly pie). I rolled it out painlessly and transferred it to the pie plate, surprised to see little green lines speckling the crust. I had rolled the dough on the surface where my dying Valentine's bouquet had just been, and tiny bits of flower were now imprinted in the dough.

Oh well. They're probably edible.

Though the dough didn't make it quite up and around the entire pie plate, it was enough to satisfy me. Pinching the dough up just a little more, covering just a bit more of the glass plate was satisfying work. I did this on our new rolling butcher block feeling very "rustic."

The oven started smoking while preheating, and I had to pause to let it cool down enough before wiping up charcoal remains of pot pie drippings. This prompted a conversation about Sylvia Plath and how to turn off a pilot light in an oven.

The filling is made up of a cup of corn syrup (which I didn't have enough of, so I added homemade simple syrup, hopefully that's fine), half a cup of peanut butter, 3 eggs, half a teaspoon vanilla extract, and half a cup of sugar blended together until smooth, and then half a cup of salted peanuts gets stirred in. It's baking at 350 for 55 minutes, which gives me enough time to clean up the dog's vomit, try and get the cats to be together and not kill each other, and write this post.

Howard and I are going to be quite decadent today, and in addition to our peanut pie he's making a berry cobbler. We're welcoming the night with champagne and once we piece together a dinner, we'll enjoy our rich, comforting desserts on this frigid day.

Baking with Brittney

Howard and I rented a car and drove up to Milwaukee this weekend. My friends Brittney and Brian are living in Wauwatosa (or Tosa, as it's called) for Brian's residency, and this summer they're moving down to Greenville, South Carolina. I blame my atrocious geography for the fact that it's taken three years to visit them. If I'd known Milwaukee was just an hour away it wouldn't have taken me so long to make a trip up there!

I haven't seen them since their wedding, but like with all good friends, the lapse in time didn't matter. Brittney and I met while working at a tavern in Cleveland and bonded, among other things, over our love of good food and drink. In that vein, we started off our visit at this amazing Milwaukee restaurant called Wolf Peach, which I would recommend if you make a trip up there. We enjoyed delicious food while overlooking the city. After brunch we went to the Public Market and picked up some delicious Wisconsin cheeses and a bottle of Musar Jeune, a Lebanese wine. Over wine and cheese Brian taught us euchre and pinochle. When I asked Brian if he knew how to play, Brittney, with her characteristic snappy humor, said: "He's breathed Michigan air, of course he knows how to play euchre!"

After games, Brittney, Howard, and I went to a charming little French place called Pastiche. It was snowing heavily by that time, but the place was packed full. The food was incredible! It was so good we even each ordered desserts. There were no leftovers. 

We planned to leave the next day, but the snowstorm had other plans. We weren't bothered! Luckily, I have a great coworker and friend who made time to stop in an additional night to visit the cats, and Howard and I were able to rest easy and just enjoy our snow day with Brittney. Brian was at work for the day while we watched The Shining, shoveled the drive, and baked. 

Which brings me to what this blog really is about: Baking. Brittney had picked out a savory pie from Bon Appetit for us to make for this week's post. Here's what we aimed to make:

A carmelized garlic, spinach, and cheddar pie with a braided crust. Brittney and Brian have a nice big kitchen with everything you'd need.

Across the way you see evidence of a middle schooler: 

Mealy Cyrus?

I really enjoyed the other window that read: "Don't make me ginger snap!" Ginger pride!

We started making the crust as soon as I woke up on Sunday, using Brittney's family recipe. While the dough chilled, we went about our morning, and then returned to the kitchen to roll out the dough and start cooking the garlic. 

Brittney was in charge of the garlic, so I'm a little fuzzy on what all that entailed. Two whole heads of garlic were first browned, I believe, and then boiled in water and balsamic vinegar, lastly cooked with the herbs. 

We rolled out the dough, put it in a pie plate, and chilled it for fifteen minutes. Then we rolled out a second disk of dough and sliced it with a pizza cutter. This was the toughest part. I didn't actually expect we would make the braided decorative crust, but Brittney insisted we try. 

Hearing Brittney talk about food is one of the most exciting things about being with her. She's so passionate and knowledgeable and so clearly loves food. If she ever decides to leave social work, I think she'd be wonderful running her own catering business.

Despite years of braiding my sister's hair, I completely forgot how to do it when it came to strips of dough unattached to a head. Luckily, Brittney came to the rescue, and with copious cursing we managed to braid all the dough before it broke into pieces. We brushed the edge of the dough on the pie plate with egg and laid the braided strips down like this:

We were very proud of the result:

We then lined the crust with waxed paper and weighted it down with beans and baked for tenish minutes. If I remember correctly, it baked again for a few more minutes, and then we took it out and put down a layer of cheddar cheese, a layer of spinach, then drizzled a crème fraîche mixture over that, and finally added the carmelized onions. It baked about an hour and came out looking like this:

Delicious and beautiful! Considering that a lot of food pictures in magazines is made out of materials not at all edible but considerably more malleable, we were very proud of our finished product's appearance. Brittney really upped my game! I wish she lived in Chicago so she could continue to push my limits and help me braid dough.

It was such a pleasure baking with her and spending a couple days with that wonderful couple! Visits like that cement friendships, and I look forward to future visits, wherever we may end up.