Plum's the Word

friends are cute.

It's Friday, and I'm struggling for clever post titles. Blame the sunshine and absolutely gorgeous weather we've been graced with this week. Work and screens keep me inside - I've tried to go outside and play as much as I can, but it gets harder as we get older. Ya know?

Got the pie back on track with a Thursday baking. This will shock no one, but I didn't read the recipe thoroughly beforehand and did not allow the dough to chill for two-plus hours. Ain't nobody got time for that! The bigger mistake made was loosely squishing the dough between a Sil-Pat mat instead of wrapping it in plastic, and it dried out a little. A lot. I broke a sweat rolling out the dough. Also, I took my food processor blade in to get sharpened, so I made the dough by hand with a pastry cutter and it worked just fine.

I upped the recipe to 1.5 times because I wasn't sure how many people would come partake with me. I'm glad I did - I had a little filling leftover, but lots of room to make sure the crostata wrapped up prettily. It took a little bit of searching to find lemon thyme, but I highly recommend it - the flavor with the plums was really tasty.

I've been heading to Findlay Market for their Findlay After 4 events- as an exercise to convince vendors to stay open later, the Market is attempting to drive more traffic for their shops. Take some time on your Thursday (between 4 -6pm) and come down and shop! So far I've bought pie ingredients at Daisy Mae's Market, Dean's Mediterranean Imports, Madison's, Saigon Market, and Colonel De's Spices. I'm pretty sure the local ingredients and small business purchases make the pies taste even better.

Liz and I snagged our pie, some snacks and blankets, and met friends up in Mount Adams for an impromptu picnic and a screening of Singin' in the Rain in the Seasongood Pavilion. It's been really rewarding to share my treats with different groups of people- and saves me from eating entire pies alone (though, let's be real... it was all gone before bedtime. Just that good.)

Tips:
Crostatas are peasant pies - perfect circles are not the aim of the game. Roll your dough in (mostly) a circle, and pile the fruit filling in the middle, leaving plenty of room to fold the crust over. I pressed down the fruit and dough after it was all folded up to spread it out, and it worked beautifully. Don't be afraid of the thyme!

Rustic Plum Crostata With Lemon Thyme, adapted from this recipe
serves 8-10
takes about an hour, hour an a half to put together, plus two hours for chill time, unless you're me.

Here's what you need:

• 1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup (40 grams) whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup (100 grams) plus 1 tablespoon (15 grams) sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon (2 grams) plus a pinch fine sea salt
• 1 large egg
• Heavy cream
• 6 tablespoons (85 grams) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 3 cups sliced and pitted ripe red and black plums (about 1 1/2 pounds before pitting)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons (22 grams) cornstarch
• 2 tsp dried lemon thyme, or a small bunch of leaves if you can find it. In which case, lucky you because I looked everywhere!

Here's what you do with it:

• In a food processor fitted with a steel blade, pulse together the flours, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt until blended. In a measuring cup, lightly beat the egg, and add just enough cream to get to 1/3 cup. Lightly whisk the egg and cream together.
  
• Add the butter to the flour mixture and pulse to break up the butter. Do not over-process; you need lima-bean-size chunks of butter. Drizzle the egg mixture over the dough and pulse until it just starts to come together but is still mostly large crumbs.
  
• Put the dough on the counter and knead to make one uniform piece. Flatten into a disk, wrap in plastic and chill for 2 hours or up to 3 days. (I chilled mine for about 30 minutes while I made the filling and it was fine. Be sure to wrap it, though!)
• Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Roll the dough out to a 12-inch round (it can be ragged). Transfer to a rimmed baking sheet and chill while preparing the filling.
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• Toss together the plums, all but a tablespoon of the remaining sugar, a pinch of salt and the cornstarch. Pile fruit on the dough circle, leaving a 1 1/2-inch border. Gently fold the pastry over the fruit, pleating to hold it in (sloppy is fine). Sprinkle remaining sugar on top, with the thyme.
  
• Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the crust is golden and the fruit is tender. Cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Remove the thyme branches (some leaves will cling; you want this). Serve warm or at room temperature.

Zen and the Art of Cherry Cobbler

There's something soothing about the precision in baking. I'm not normally a exacting person in the kitchen. Eight times out of ten my experiments work out well - the other two times it's generally a quasi-inedible disaster. It's a good ratio, but the other problem with 'a little of this, a little of that, oh what's this random thing I have in the fridge, that would be really good with this other random thing' - is that it's nearly impossible to replicate. Constant reinvention keeps me fresh, but I really need to be better about writing down my successes if I ever want to eat them more than once.

What did you do to those poor cherries?!

Following the recipes from the New York Times page (well, mostly...) is an exercise in mindfulness and stretching my fine motor skills - being more precise, leveling off the dry ingredients, triple checking the wet. Getting fingers and countertops sticky in the process of creation is a wonderful respite from my extremely screen-focused life. And while my previous efforts were solo, this go-round I had help from my fantastic roommate Liz. She pitted two and a half pounds of cherries, surrendering her porcelain fingers to a hue more appropriate for a crazed serial killer.

In honor of my younger sister's 22nd birthday last Thursday I asked her to choose which pie to make this time around. She's had an aversion to birthday cake for about ten years, and consequently always has a pie on her day. I felt it was only appropriate. She picked Cherry Cobbler with Almond-Buttermilk Topping. Which isn't technically a pie. Take it up with the Times, they're the ones who picked the recipes.

This recipe was relatively healthy (considering it's a pie). I appreciated the mix of flours - the almond meal was excellent and contributed to the texture. I didn't have any almond extract, so the trusty bourbon vanilla was substituted. Make some bourbon vanilla, ya'll. Two vanilla beans in a jar filled with bourbon. Let it sit for two weeks. I use it ALL THE TIME and it's so delicious.

At any rate, the cherries were pitted, the topping came together like a dream, and several friends gathered in my apartment to try it out. Though it was late in London (Katy is overseas for the summer as an au pair), I called her on FaceTime and we sang her Happy Birthday from across the pond. There's one serving of the dish sitting in my freezer, awaiting her return. She's pretty incredible and deserves some yummy pie when she gets home from her adventures. It was really delicious. So delicious that I forgot to get a picture of the finished result. 5chw4r7z snapped a pic of the decimated dish.

Okay, here we go.

Cherry Cobbler with Almond-Buttermilk Topping - adapted from this recipe

takes about an hour, depending on how fast you can pit cherries (if you have someone else pitting cherries while you make the topping, then it comes together quickly!)
can be prepared ahead of time and re-warmed later
serves about 8. it could easily be doubled - everyone definitely wanted seconds!

Here's what you need:

(For Filling)

• 1 1/2 pounds cherries, stemmed and pitted (about 5 cups)
• 1/3 cup sugar
• Juice of one lemon
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract - or bourbon vanilla. And if it's vanilla, up it to a tablespoon.

(For Topping)

• 1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 cup almond meal, also called almond flour or almond powder (1 1/2 ounces)
• 1/2 cup fine cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2/3 cup buttermilk - I used 2/3 of a cup of milk with 3 tablespoons of lemon juice added. Because who buys buttermilk on purpose? Not this guy.

Here's what you do with it:

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter a 2-quart baking dish. Place the cherries in a large bowl, and add the sugar, lemon juice and all-purpose flour. Carefully mix them together with a rubber spatula or a large spoon until the sugar and flour have dissolved into the liquids. Transfer to the baking dish, making sure to scrape out all of the liquid in the bowl.
• Sift all of the dry ingredients for the topping. (If you can't find your sifter, just put it all in the food processor because it's going to basically sift it for you.) Place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade, and pulse a few times. Add the butter, and pulse to cut in the butter until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. Turn on the food processor, and pour in the buttermilk with the machine running. As soon as the dough comes together, stop the machine.
• Spoon the topping over the cherries by the heaped tablespoon. The cherries should be just about covered but may peek out here and there. Place in the oven, and bake 35 to 40 minutes until the top is nicely browned and the cherries are bubbling. Remove from the heat, and allow to cool to warm before serving. Serve warm (heat in a low oven for 15 minutes if necessary before serving).

Battle Scars

 This pie project is a marathon. 20 is a large number. There's going to be a lot of butter in my future. And each recipe is its own tiny battle. This week was pretty much Waterloo.

As I was contemplating which recipe to knock out this week, two things stuck out to me:

1. It is too damn hot.
2. Peaches are currently at their peak.

I was afraid if I waited too long I would have a peach pie recipe to make with peaches no longer in season. So I headed to Madison's at Findlay Market, whose peach selection is practically taking up half of their tiny store. I didn't want to turn on the oven, so the obvious solution: DEEP FRY!


This recipe yields delicious results. Flaky pastry, a boozy, delectable filling; but it's not for the faint of heart. If you're a pro at handling high stress situations, juggling multiple deadlines, not collapsing under pressure, and rolling with the punches (and working with hot oil) - by all means, be my guest.You've been warned.

I got my first kitchen injury of the challenge this week - a small welt on my hand from some bouncing oil as I was transferring a cooked pie from the pot to the paper towels. As my friends and colleagues with Cincinnatians For Progress will agree - it was totally worth it.


#PROTIPS:
 * Don't be a hero with the filling. The picture to the left has too much filling, and consequently got drippy and broke the seal of the pie.
* Flour and the fridge are your friends. Adequately chill both the filling and the pastry so the pies won't leak before you fry them. Use a ton of flour on the rolling surface - both sides, and use more flour after sealing the pastry to help solidify drips.
* The NYT picture makes these guys look like empanadas, but by the end I was treating them more like dumplings. This made them easier to construct.
* Don't freak out! They're going to break, you will make a giant mess all over your kitchen. It's worth it. Keep going!

Fried Peach Pies with Bourbon and Cinnamon - adapted from this recipe

takes about 1.5 hours with proper chill time
best served hot and fresh
technically serves 10 but I made 12

Here's what you need:

(For Crust)

• 2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), chilled and cubed
• 1 large egg, whisked with enough ice-cold water to make 1/2 cup

 (For Filling)

• 1 1/4 pounds ripe peaches
• 2 1/2 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon tapioca starch (find it at Asian markets)
• 2 tablespoons bourbon
• 3/4 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Vegetable oil, for frying
• Cinnamon sugar (see note), for sprinkling. 

5chw4r7z tested, mother approved

Here's what you do with it:

• In a food processor, pulse together flour, sugar and salt. Add butter and pulse until mixture forms pea-size crumbs. Pulse in egg mixture a tablespoon at a time, until dough just comes together (you may not need all the egg mixture). Divide dough into 10 (or 12) equal pieces. Flatten into disks with your palm, wrap in plastic and chill for at least 45 minutes.- I used a plastic produce bag and layered the disks on top of each other. Use this time to clean your kitchen, play Candy Crush, and feel really good about your kitchen skills so far.
  
• Meanwhile, make filling: Using a paring knife, peel and pit peaches (I didn't peel); slice into quarters or eighths, if they're giant peaches. Transfer peaches to a large skillet. Stir in sugar, tapioca starch, bourbon (and bourbon vanilla, if you've got it), lemon juice and cinnamon. Let sit for 10 minutes, then bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Cook until sugar dissolves, 2 to 3 minutes. - I think I wandered off at some point, and when I came back the mixture had REALLY cooked down, so I deglazed my pan with a 1/2 cup of water, which ended up making more of a sauce. So do that. Transfer mixture to a bowl, preferably metal, and freeze for at least 20 minutes to cool, stirring once or twice. Stirring is important. You want both the pastry and the filling to be cold. It's cool to still feel good about your skills at this point. You awesome cook, you.
  
• Fill a medium pot with 4 inches of oil and heat to 375 degrees. On an extremely floured surface, roll out dough into 6-inch rounds - or so. Don't make the pastry so thin you can see your counter top through it. Use lots of flour. Put the pastry in your hand, and place a spoonful of filling in center of each round. Don't overdo it. Using a pastry brush, lightly moisten edges of each circle with water. Wrap the pastry around and seal. Flip the pastry over in your hand to ensure the seal, also because having a bunch of pastry on the bottom will hold the seal better. Don't make too many at once. How ya feeling now, hot shot?
  
• Okay, now it's go time. Make a pie, put it (gently) in the oil. While it's frying, make another. Flip the first one over, put the second one in. While that one's frying, make a third. When you're done with the third, take out the first, put it on a paper-towel plate, put cinnamon sugar on it, flip the second, put in the third. Check your oil temperature. Curse at the pies that are exploding in your hands. Try not to freak out. It will be over soon. Here's the point where your formerly clean kitchen is a flour-covered disaster zone, your hand is burnt, your pies have oozed and exploded a hundred times, and you have to be somewhere in a half an hour. This is what humility feels like. Savor it.

Note: If you don't know how to make cinnamon sugar, you should maybe re-think making this recipe.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl: a Defense

it starts early.

I am eccentric - always have been. From a young age, I was the bookworm who made up stories in her head and never quite had enough play-dates. In high school, I wore a duct tape dress to prom, and was very nearly voted "Most Unique" - queen of the drama kids, floating in between social circles - cool enough to say hi to in the hall, but not to get invited to parties. It didn't bother me.

Thrift store shopping, weird catch phrases, a propensity to speak my mind and somehow get away with it- I embraced the strange parts of me, and so did everyone else. I mostly grew out of my awkwardness and quickly learned that my bubbly personality and unique style was attractive (especially in art school). The attention didn't inspire me to work harder on my twee - but it certainly didn't discourage it, either.

Then a year or two ago, I learned there was a term for girls like me. Manic Pixie Dream Girl! You know, like Zooey Deschanel. or Audrey Hepburn. I got grouped in with two of my favorite actresses? Sign me up for that. It didn't change who I was, and it was a cute moniker; an easy to understand facet of my more public personal brand.

Over the last few months, though, it's stopped being sunshine and unicorns. Ugly, dismissive articles are popping up across the web. Dissecting the stereotype - women bravely coming forward and confessing that it was all just an act - a way to get men to like them - that they purposefully diminished certain parts of their personality to come across a certain way.

I'm here to tell you that some of us are authentic. This is just the way we are. Just like there are some men who are more or less Michael Cera's shy character. I know; I dated one.

oh God. the twee. Make it stop.

To assume that I am manufacturing my personality to fit a stereotype or please someone else is even more condescending than backing away from the label in the first place. Just because you put a name on who I am and stuck it in there with your other female stereotypes does not somehow make me less. To insinuate that I should stop being so cutesy - how dare I?

That my interests and personality should be changed in some way so you can feel better about the way you think and feel about me as a man - so you'll stop making me the girl of your dreams - is not going to happen. Screw you.

I have a girlfriend who is Elle Woods. Graduated law school, blonde and bubbly as they come, with an apartment full of inspirational sayings and glittery tchotchkes that would look out of place anywhere else (hey Britt!) She is also one of the smartest, most articulate women I've ever met, and she will not hesitate to rip you a new one - even dressed to the nines in her favorite OSU gear (light up sunglasses and pom pom gloves). We are who we are. You're the ones putting us in a box.

So this Manic Pixie Dream Girl label - the backing away from it, the dismissal of us women who have always embraced the quirky - eventually it will go out of vogue, and intellectual men-children everywhere will find some other trope to jerk off to. That's not going to change me. When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple, with a red hat that doesn't match, and continue doing and acting however I see fit - and we'll see who has a crush on me then.

Are you actually attracted to the idea that I'm some waify little daydream that's going to swoop in and magically change your life? Maybe you're drawn to my authenticity and confidence - and the rest of the world has followed suit. No doubt about it - MPDG is the fashion of the times.

Let's break apart the acronym and see where it goes south, shall we? Remember, the original definition was created by a (male) movie reviewer who saw a pattern to these tragic supporting actresses whose characters were presumably written by men, but based off real women- or so he assumed.

Manic - Dictionary definition: frenzied, intense, mad, frenetic. from mania - infatuation, passion, preoccupation, craving, fixation, madness. Wait one second. Infatuation? Preoccupation? We're not the crazy ones - it's you sad sacks that are obsessed with us. The mania is not from the girl - it's of the girl. Not her fault (or often, even her intention.)

Pixie - playfully impish or mischievous; prankish. Again - another assumption - we're driving you mad, and it MUST be intentional. We're playing with your heart strings, tugging you around by the nose, all for a good laugh. Because sucking you in with my eclectic nature and then breaking your heart by not actually being interested in you is somehow my fault. 

Dream - not based in reality. I am a real person, with flaws and imperfections and bad hair days. Sometimes I'm not witty or interesting or adorable. And the moment I'm not, the illusion shatters. Get to know the real girl and embrace her wholeness.

Girl - not a woman. Definitely defenseless. Must be taken care of. - Okay, I'll admit fault on this one. It's fun to occasionally play the damsel in distress. Being taken care of feels good - sometimes. I've experienced enough heartache in my life - and seen the real life scenario play out in my family - to know that at the end of the day, I have to take care of me. Just because I wear twirly dresses and ride my bike in high heels doesn't mean I'm helpless.

This label is not a reflection of me. It's a reflection of you - I'm not manic, pixie, a dream, or at this point, even a girl. Yet somehow, these tragic, shallow adjectives got attached to a category of women who dared to step outside the confines of acting "normal".

I'm gonna keep doing me, whatever you want to call it.

The negatives of the trope do not diminish the positives of my personality. Am I doing myself a disservice by accepting the stereotype? (I did the same thing with 'hipster', by the way.) I'm gonna go with no.

I can't change the way you act or perceive me. I can only directly affect how I act and how I perceive others. And you know what? I choose positivity, and petticoats, and painted toes, and looking for the best in people.

Stop pooping on my parade - leave us quirky women alone, to our cats, bicycles, and pie baking. Or swoop us off our feet and fall in love with our unique natures and sparkly souls - and our bad sides, too. But seriously, stop the shame, and adjust your viewpoint.

Maybe we need a new label - I'm certainly open to suggestions. I'll still be here, doing my thing, whether you're paying attention or not.

Loose Bottomed Tart Pans and Other Baking Innuendos

There's a lot of things I excel at. Pie crust is not one of them. The New York Times recently posted an article rounding up their top twenty pie recipes- with a suggestion to try a few while summer is in full swing. Friends, I am convinced that it would be a shame to let any of these delicious sounding pie remain unmade. Thus begins my challenge.

End result

I am making one of these pies every week (barring sickness or travel) for the next twenty weeks. Every Thursday at 7pm I will be serving a new pie - hopefully bringing together new groups of people to enjoy company and dessert.

So anyway. I made a pie yesterday. An Easy Summer Fruit Tart - with a mix of jams and jellies and fresh to bursting peaches and plums from Findlay Market. The crust came together surprisingly well, though a little sticky - I didn't flour my work-surface quite enough. I thought it would be harder to arrange the fruit, but seven or eight little plums and five or six largish peaches exactly filled my pan. It was a little leaky after removed from the oven - I may have used too much jam. But the lovely people I shared it with at the cookout (cook-in, it was really rainy!) yesterday didn't seem to mind too much.

The one thing about the recipe that really threw me off (I had to consult my mother and a foodie friend for secondary opinions) was the it called for a specific type of pan - specifically, a springform style with removable sides. I used the pan usually required for cheesecakes, but I had a good chuckle over their recommendation of a "loose bottomed tart pan". Oh, come on. You laughed, too!

Easy Summer Fruit Tart - adapted from this recipe

Total time: 1.5 hours
Serves 8
Really good cold and for breakfast

Here's what you need:

• 1.5 cups flour, plus more for rolling
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 11 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
• 1 egg yolk, beaten
• 2 1/2 to 3 pounds fruit - I used six or seven small plums and five or six larger peaches. Figs, nectarines, or apricots would also work well. 
• 6 tablespoons preserves - I used a combination of strawberry jalapeno, apricot, and raspberry

Here's what you do with it:

• Blend flour, salt and 2 tablespoons sugar in a bowl or food processor. Dice 8 tablespoons of the butter. Use a pastry blender or two knives to blend flour mixture and butter, or pulse them together in a food processor to make a crumbly mixture. Beat the egg yolk with 3 tablespoons cold water. Dribble it over the flour mixture, then stir or pulse slowly until the mixture starts clumping together. A bit more water may be necessary. Gather dough in a loose ball and form into a disk on a floured surface.



I was nervous the fruit wouldn't stand up,
but it worked out well.

• Heat oven to 375 degrees. Roll out dough and line a 10-inch loose-bottom tart pan- what they mean here is some sort of springform pan. But they worded it funny-  Blind bake pastry for 12 minutes - line with foil and put pastry weights or dried beans on top. Meanwhile, melt the remaining butter, cooking it on low until it turns a light brown. Pit fruit and cut in eighths or, if fruit is small, fourths. After 12 minutes, remove foil and weights from pastry. Return pastry to oven and continue baking until it is lightly browned, another 8 to 10 minutes. Remove pastry from oven and increase temperature to 400 degrees.
• Brush pastry with preserves. Arrange fruit in tight concentric circles, starting by placing it around the perimeter, skin side down, against the vertical sides of the pastry and standing it up as much as possible. Brush with melted butter. Dust with remaining sugar. Bake about 35 to 40 minutes, until edges have browned but fruit has not collapsed. Refrigerate and serve with creme fraiche, if desired.