Green Grape Apple Pie

This pie did not explode, counter to all our expectations.
This pie did not explode, counter to all our expectations.

You read that right. Green grapes and apples. It was just too weird not to try.

“Will the grapes explode when we bake them?” we wondered. “Will they turn to mush?”

We decided that A) they would most likely explode and B) that’s probably why no one makes  Grape pies anymore.

They did not explode. They stayed pretty grape-like, in fact. It really wasn’t much different than apple pie, and we agreed that while it tasted fine, the grapes didn’t add enough oomph to make us want to make it again. But if you want to, here’s the recipe:

You need:

Two crusts.

Filling

2 cups seedless green grapes
3 cups sliced peeled apples
1 cup sugar
3 TBSP quick-cooking tapioca
1⁄4 tsp. each cinnamon, cardamom and salt
2 TBSP margarine (originally butter)

Mix everything together except for the margarine. Allow to sit for a few minutes, to get all melded and tapioca-ed. Pour into a piecrust, and dot the top with margarine. Put on the top crust, seal the edges and vent the crust. Bake for 50-60 minutes in a 425 degree oven.

So if you encounter a really good grape sale, or something, you can make a pie! I would gladly eat this on any occasion, but doubt I’ll make it again.

 

How to Make a Piecrust

Four crusts waiting for glory.
Four crusts waiting for glory.

Don’t freak out. You can totally make a piecrust.

It’s not actually that hard. I don’t know how the idea that piecrust is mysterious and difficult has gotten around, but it certainly has. I used to be very intimidated by piecrust, convinced I’d mess it up somehow and that there was something, nature or nurture, that gave other people certain piecrust know-how that I could not access.

Piecrust is really just a matter of science, practice and patience. It contains, at it’s core, three things: flour, fat, liquid. With a couple of tricks, you’ll be rolling with the best of them in no time.

Things You Need to Make a Piecrust.

  • A trusty pie crust recipe.

For Seven Pie Mountain, we used A’s grandma’s old, top-secret, very special recipe. AKA, the one from the Crisco can. It’s very simple. Two cups of flour, two-thirds of a cup shortening, quarter cup of water. The original Crisco one includes salt, but we didn’t. I’ve also had great luck with the single pastry crust recipe in Veganomicon, which includes apple cider vinegar, and the olive oil crust in Vegan Pie in the Sky.

  • A rolling pin, or something that works like one.

A good wooden rolling pin is my weapon of choice, but you can use something else. I’ve rolled cookies out with a drinking glass, and A says her grandma’s first rolling pin was a sawed-off broom handle. Anything solid and cylindrical will do the job. But if you see a lot of baking in your future, find yourself a rolling pin. Thrift store kitchen sections may be your friend here, or fancy kitchen stores, if you, too, are fancy. You can spend as little or much as you want.

  • A surface for rolling.

Trying to roll out pie crust on a surface that is too small leads to much sadness and banged elbows. Make sure you’ve got enough room, even if you have to move it to the dining room table, or a piece of clean cardboard on the floor.

  • A pastry cutter (preferred) or two knives, or a knife and a fork.

A pastry cutter is a nifty little hand-held device with several u-shaped blades, used to combine flour with fat. They are not expensive, and they are really, truly, the best tool for the task, as far as I’m concerned. However, if you don’t want a gadget or hate cool things, go ahead and use two knives, or a knife and fork to cut and cut and cut the flour and fat together. See what I care.

  • Extra points: parchment paper. Wax paper in a pinch.

Some people are: A) very skilled piecrust rollers or B) don’t mind making a really big mess. If you, like I, are neither of those things, then parchment paper is going to be very useful for you. You can, conceivably, flour your surface, roll out the crust directly onto it, and take it from there. That would be the most vintage thing to do. A’s grandma could roll her crust out onto the counter, pick it up with the rolling pin, and toss it into the pie plate, but people aren’t raised to be that badass anymore. However, to retrofit, I suggest using parchment paper. I used to use wax paper, but A taught me a better way, and I saw the light.

Methodology Continue reading “How to Make a Piecrust”

Giant Baking Projects, Frustration-Free!

Seven Pies. Unicorn and Bat proudly guard them.
Seven Pies. Unicorn and Bat proudly guard them.

As the holiday season approaches, consider heading into the kitchen and making a bunch of something, and giving some of it to everyone you see.  The choices are many–cookies, candies, soup mixes, moonshine. A large scale making operation can be a lot of fun, whatever you make.  However, making a bunch of something can be trickier–the larger the number of things you’re making, the greater the opportunity for disaster.

The Illustrious A and I just finished making seven pies in as many hours. We’re a little bit strange, in that both of us thought, “Let’s make as many pies as we have pie plates between us, in a single day, and each pie shall be different, unique amongst the pies!” was an absolutely swell idea. We had a special, “Let’s look at the recipes!” meeting. We had emails about the pies. We had dreams and hopes about the pies. I think we’re awesome, and you would too, if we gave you some pie.

Baking a lot of things at once may not be everyone’s idea of a swell time, but we had an irrational amount of fun. However, our pie baking extravaganza could have been a disaster, even though we both love baking. It wasn’t, because of some very specific things we did in the name of efficiency, camaraderie, and sanity. We’ll introduce each pie we made from the Farm Journal Complete Pie Cookbook (c. 1965) this week, but before all of that, let’s cover some basics for baking success when you’re making a ridiculous quantity of baked goods.

Here are some of the top lessons from our successful seven hour pie extravaganza, to help you in your own adventures:

1. Don’t go at it alone.

A and I agreed, climbing Seven Pie Mountain alone would have been a drag. It would have taken a lot longer, and we’d probably have gotten a little frustrated and bored.  Instead, we were able to entertain each other and became a two-woman pie-making machine. If you are working on something big, consider inviting a friend, or spouse, or child, or neighbor into your project. Twice the hands make half the work, and all that.

2. But choose your partner carefully.

Not everyone who likes each other should share a kitchen. When choosing your partner-in-crime, think about how you might work together. A and I are very well suited to baking together, because we have a similar working style and energy, and were equally excited to do the project. If you and your spouse constantly bicker about who is chopping apples the “right way” and who is out of their damn mind, I suggest that an epic baking project may not be that fun for you. Likewise, if you’re very neat, and your son uses every single bowl in the kitchen to make toast, again, maybe you should just go to lunch together, not bake for hours on end. Perfectionists and “Looks Good Enough to Me” people, people who are having a fight about something else, people who are trying to decide if maybe they should get married or if maybe it’s the wrong time–stay out of the kitchen.

3. Plan ahead.

Figure out what you can do ahead of time. We chose our recipes and made a grocery list to divide and conquer a couple of days before Piemageddon. Since she is a true hero, A peeled and chopped all of the apples we could possibly need before I got to her house. She also bought 15 lbs of flour, just in case. I made seitan the night before. We gathered dishes, and made sure we had an extra rolling pin and  pastry cutter. These little things made everything run smoothly. We didn’t have to wait for the other person to finish with a tool, or run to the store for another pound of apples. Since we had scheduled the entire day to work on pie, we could work at a reasonable pace, rather than frantically try to finish up by a certain time.

Try to gather your supplies before the day of your project. That way, you can spend your project day doing the project, rather than doing prep work for the project. Consider scheduling your day a couple of weeks ahead, and blocking off the calendar. Then collect the supplies over the course of the weeks, rather than all at once.

4. Strategize

Not only do you need a plan to prepare, you also need a plan of attack for the day of your project.

This is where following the first lesson and teaming up with someone really worked out. “What’s the oven temp for each recipe?” A asked, at the beginning, like a smart person does. We noted each temperature, and then scheduled the order of our baking from the lowest to the highest temperature. We didn’t have to wait for the oven to cool down, we just turned it up as we went. Without her, I would have no doubt ordered things haphazardly, turning the oven up and down and up and down, and making everything take a hundred years.

We were very strategic about multi-tasking. Instead of trying to do many things at once, we cooperated to make the most of our time while each doing one thing. We made the pie crusts one recipe at a time, but each made our own batch, doubling the output without doubling the recipe.  We didn’t try to work on multiple pies at once, instead we cooperated in true Sesame Street fashion–I’d stir filling on the stove while A rolled a crust, she’d put things in the oven while I washed some dishes. Neither of us got flustered or confused, because we still only had one job at a time.

Consider variables like temperature, baking time, and how recipes might overlap, then make a plan to maximize your time, but don’t try to do everything at once.

5. Clean up as you go.

Or you will never, ever emerge from the pile of dishes. Never. And unless you have a truly endless supply of measuring spoons, you will eventually run out of clean ones, if you aren’t keeping up on the washing.

6. Eat something that isn’t what you’re baking.

If you attempt to bake for seven hours, eating only snatched spoonfuls of pie filling, and the leftover bits of apple on the core, you are going to be cranky. And possibly dizzy. And you will say a lot of angry things about deciding to climb Seven Pie Mountain. Instead, we ate a quick, sensible lunch. Taking the time to do this saved us time in fainting.

6. Keep your sense of humor.

After all, you’re just making pie, not fighting The Man, or speaking truth to power, or saving the world. No one will die if your crust breaks. And break it will. So you might as well loudly beg it to stop being a jerk. It may make your partner laugh, and then you’ll laugh, too.

 

Have you ever baked an irrational amount of something? What are your tips?

 

 

 

 

 

Get Ready for PIE

Thanksgiving is coming. This means that it’s time for pie. I personally think it’s always pie time, but Thanksgiving is certainly a pie-featuring holiday. Here on Retrofitting Vintage, we’re getting ready for a whole week’s worth of vintage pies. Baking-enthusiast A and I will be making seven (!!) vintage pie recipes, giving you many pie options. All recipes are from the 1965 Farm Journal’s Complete Pie Cookbook, which belongs to A.

Thanksgiving is an excellent opportunity to talk about taking good and leaving garbage from the past. Expect a post on this soon.

700 Best Dessert and Main-Dish pies in the Country, y'all.
700 Best Dessert and Main-Dish pies in the Country, y’all.

Meanwhile, check out these vintage pie ads!

Shopping Local is an Old-Fashioned Activity

There’s something terribly romantic about little mom-and-pop shops.

Don’t get me wrong: online shopping is great. It gives us access to all kinds of products, and is very convenient, but every once in awhile, I like to actually leave the house.

I wouldn’t knock the convenience of one-stop shopping, either. When you need to buy paper towel, toothpaste, a drill, a can of paint and a pair of socks, a department or big box store can really come to the rescue. Still there’s something appealing about going to the specialists, and I try to when I can.

Chain stores are not that new an addition to American life.  We’ve had department stores since the 19th century, supermarkets developed in the early 20th. Still, there was a greater division of expertise and the chains were not the omnipresent giants they are now. One of the things I love about living in Chicago is the number of small family-owned specialty businesses. There are still green grocers, and bakeries, and tiny garages.  So I try to patronize them when I can.

Last week, I had some romantic after-work shopping, on Grand Avenue in West Town. It started with wanting flowers to combat the drear of November and the terrible, terrible affliction that is Daylight Savings Time. Using my ultra retro Internet, I learned about Steve’s Flower Market. Their website claimed they were a “European style” flower market, and offered “wholesale prices.” I was skeptical. Flower markets in Europe are something else.

I was not disappointed. The little shop is charming, friendly, and full of glorious flowers for sale by the stem. Everyone working there was knowledgeable and helpful, and I picked up some greenery and a few blooms to brighten things up. They’ve held up remarkably.

I followed my trip to Steve’s with a stop at Bari Deli, an Italian deli that also has grocery items. I bought some olive oil, basil, fennel, and gnocchi.  They had a lot of olive oil to choose from, and their small selection of produce looked fresh and lovely. Then I went next door to D’Amato’s Bakery, which is a true trip back in time, complete with wooden and glass cases filled with Italian cookies and loaves of bread. I picked up a focaccia, and headed home.

Absolutely, I could have obtained all of these items faster at Trader Joe’s. But I want these little places to stay around, so I’ll take 40 minutes instead of 15 to shop at a couple of places. I want to keep having the option.

Enjoy pretty flowers, against romantic alley back drop.
Enjoy pretty flowers, against romantic alley back drop.