Freedom from Fear of Pie Crusts

For a long time, I thought the world was split between bread people and pie people. Not bread and pie eaters, but bread and pie makers. Either you weren't scared of yeast and made bread or you weren't scared of the crust and made pie. I was a bread person, no question. I'd been baking bread since I was a teenager and laughed in the face of yeast fear.

Pie, on the other hand, scared me. It was the crust, of course. That delicate balance between flour and fat. How would I know when the butter was mixed in correctly? What if I put too much water in? What about the endless sticking and the attempts to put the sticky sad crust into a pie plate. By the time the crust was done, I was too stressed out to enjoy it.

So, I just didn't make pie. Occasionally I'd buy a supermarket crust for a quiche. But more often, I found alternatives for quiche and stuck with cookie crusts for pie.

I have Melissa Clark to thank for my conversion. Or maybe conversion isn't the right word. But I think I can safely say that I am no longer afraid of pie crusts, and I give Melissa Clark my gratitude. It was her perfect pie crust recipe in In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite that helped me face my fear and overcome it. Melissa's recipe was the start, but there were several other simple things that made this possible.

First, the chopper.


If you mix the flour and butter in a mini-chopper or food processor, you don't really have to think about pastry blenders or wonder about when the ingredients are mixed enough. A few whirls, and it's done. And when you add the cold water, a tablespoon at a time, it becomes clearly apparent when the dough is sticking together.


The second crucial piece is the plastic wrap.

I use this method when I bake biscotti--you spoon the wet and too soft batter onto a length of plastic wrap, which allows you to mold it into a shape that you can freeze until it's hard enough to work with. So it is with pie crust. You dump the messy, sticky mass of flour/butter/water onto the plastic wrap, and in moments, you have a nice round disk all ready to chill.

The last crucial item is the Silpat.

I used to try to roll out pie crusts on a cutting board, and it was frustration incarnate. But from the start of my getting-over-my-fear-of-pie-crust attempts, I realized I needed to change that. I put my Silpat on the dining room table, so there was room to work, with some flour handy nearby.

The marble rolling pin was a gift from my friend Derick 20 years ago. Why Derick decided he should send me a marble rolling pin in the mail from Boston to Eugene, Oregon, I have no idea, but 20 years have now passed, and while the rolling pin has lost its handles, it still works beautifully.

Because the dough is chilled, you can roll it out before it gets sticky. I put a bit of flour down on the Silpat, added a bit more as I was working and turned the dough over a few times. Rolling a pie crust out on a floured Silpat is not stressful, it turns out. Just when you wonder whether the dough is warming up, it's big enough for your pie. Voila.

This is maybe the fourth or fifth crust I've made since I discovered Melissa's recipe and the method documented here, and I've made 2 in the past 2 weeks! Unthinkable even a year ago.

Not that losing my fear of pie crusts is going to make me scared of yeast. I'm just going to have to widen my view of the world just a little bit, now that I am a person who can not only make bread, but also pie.

All-Butter Perfect Pie Crust
from Melissa Clark's In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite

Time: 15 minutes plus one hour's chilling

1 1/4cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

8-10 tablespoons unsalted butter, preferably a high-fat, European-style butter like Plugra, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces (Clark's recipe calls for 10 tablespoons; my crusts have been plenty buttery with 8.)

2 to 5 tablespoons ice water (I seem to always need 5.)

1. In a food processor, briefly pulse together the flour and salt. Add butter and pulse until mixture forms chickpea-size pieces (3 to 5 one-second pulses). Add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time, and pulse until mixture is just moist enough to hold together.

2. Form dough into a ball, wrap with plastic and flatten into a disk. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before rolling out and baking.

Yield: One 9-inch single pie crust. Recipe can be doubled for a double crust; divide dough into two balls and form two disks before chilling.

Thai Soup, Maine Shrimp

I was going to start this post by whining about how hard it is to eat soup in Thai restaurants because of the chicken stock factor, and then I read this piece in the NYT Travel section about finding vegetarian food in Thailand, and I realized that for true vegetarians (rather than fish-eating mostly vegetarians like me) it's much harder because of the fish sauce factor. I still eat fish for many reasons but that it makes my life easier in restaurants (and countries other than India) is one of them. So, no whining.

Still, while I have no doubt that I have unknowingly consumed chicken stock more than once over the years, I won't eat it knowingly, so that rules out a lot of Asian soups. One of my favorites that I hardly ever get to eat is the Thai soup with coconut milk and lemongrass and galangal root, since it's often made with chicken. (I know it's made with prawns sometimes, but I'm never sure about the stock.) So, a year ago, when Melissa Clark published a recipe of a similar kind of soup, easily made at home without chicken stock, I was excited.

I suddenly remembered it last week, and the timing was fortuitous since we're at the end of Maine shrimp season here on the east coast. I'd never known about Maine shrimp before this year. I saw some at Whole Foods right earlier this year, and they looked very appealing--they were little but advertised as wild caught, and they were cheap (on sale for $3.99/lb, I think). It turns out that they're in season from January-March, and if you don't get them at Whole Foods, they may be even cheaper. I made Melissa Clark's roasted shrimp and broccoli with them the first time, and they seemed like just the thing for this soup.

The recipe calls for chicken stock, and originally I'd been thinking I'd use vegetable stock, but one thing about the Maine shrimp is that they come with their shells on. To get to this bowl of pretty pink shrimp, you have to spend some time and get your hands rather sticky.


And after I'd spent the time separating the shrimp from their shells, it seemed silly not to use them. I started looking up recipes for shrimp stock, and I found some that were very involved (a list of 10 ingredients and an hour on the stove) and some that were very simple (Mark Bittman said you could make it with just the shells, water and salt cooked together for 20 minutes). I opted for the middle route, and I combined the shells with some chopped up onion and celery, bay leaves and peppercorns, plus the salt and water and cooked it for a half hour or so.


Once the stock is done, the soup comes together very quickly. I already had rice vinegar and fish sauce on hand, and then it was just a matter of chopping the shallots, garlic, lemongrass and cilantro. I would like to think of a better way to use the lemongrass--I chopped it into tiny pieces, but we still ended up spitting out little bits of lemongrass as we ate the soup because it didn't soften up. I may try putting it in a food processor next time, or I may try keeping it in in larger pieces and then pulling them out before serving the soup.

Even with my minor tweaks--I couldn't find any basil, I forgot the jalapeño--the soup was still delicious--a lovely layering of flavors and just the thing for an early March night. I made a pot of jasmine rice, and we ladled the soup over that. Although he didn't want to, I made Alex leave me enough so that I could have some for lunch the next day. And just as much as the flavor, I loved the flexibility. Last year I made it with non-Maine shrimp and scallops; next time maybe I'll try fish. And whatever I do, I don't have to worry about the chicken stock. I can have my soup and eat it too. Very satisfying.

Coconut Fish Stew With Basil and Lemon Grass
adapted from Melissa Clark's "A Good Appetite" column

Time: 20 minutes (I would say it's closer to 30, not including the time it takes to shell the shrimp and make the stock, if you're making stock.)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 shallots, thinly sliced

1 small garlic clove, minced

2 1/2 cups chicken stock (or shrimp stock or vegetable stock)

1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk (I used light coconut milk)

1 lemon grass stalk, finely chopped

1 jalapeño pepper, seeded, if desired, and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 tablespoon light brown sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

Finely grated zest of 1 lime

3/4 pound snapper or other firm fish (cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks), peeled shrimp, scallops or a combination

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Fresh lime juice, to taste

Cooked rice, for serving (optional).

1. Heat oil in a medium pot over medium heat. Add shallots and garlic and cook, stirring, until shallots are softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in stock, coconut milk, lemon grass, jalapeño, vinegar, fish sauce, sugar, salt and lime zest. Simmer for 10 minutes.

2. Stir in seafood and herbs. Cook 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in lime juice and serve, with rice if desired. (Note: Without rice it’s more soup than stew.)

2-3 servings, depending on how hungry you are